DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Religious Dick on August 02, 2010, 10:03:34 PM
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The Myth of Technological Progress
Many of you will still be alive in 50 years. It?s interesting to think about what life will be like in 50 years technologically and otherwise. Predictions are risky, especially when they?re about the future, but I believe we can make some pretty good guesses. To predict a predictable future, you need to look at the past. What was technological life like 50 years ago? 50 years ago was 1959. The world of 1959 is pretty much the same world we live in today technologically speaking. This is a vaguely horrifying fact which is little appreciated. In 1959, we had computers, international telephony, advanced programming languages like Lisp, which remains the most advanced programming language, routine commercial jet flight, atomic power, internal combustion engines about the same as modern ones, supersonic fighter planes, television and the transistor.
I?d go so far as to say that the main technological innovation since 1959 has been space flight -- a technology we?ve mostly abandoned, and it?s daughter technology -- microelectronics. Computer networks came a year or two after 1959 and didn?t change very much, other than how we waste time in the office, and whom advertisers pay.
Other than that, man?s power over nature remains much the same. Most of the ?advances? we have had since then are refinements and democratization of technologies. Nowadays, even the little people have access to computers and jet flight, and 1800s-style technology like telegraphy can be used to download pornography into their homes. Certainly more people are involved in ?technological? jobs, and certainly computers have increased our abilities to process information, but ultimately very little has changed.
Now, if we?re sitting in unfashionable 1959 and doing this same comparison, things are a good deal different.
The rate of change between 1959 and 1909 is nothing short of spectacular. In that 50 years, humanity invented jet aircraft, supersonic flight, fuel-injected internal-combustion engines, the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, space flight, gas warfare, nuclear power, the tank, antibiotics, the polio vaccine, radio; and these are just a few items off the top of my head. You might try to assert that this was a particularly good era for technological progress, but the era between 1859 and 1909 was a similar explosion in creativity and progress, as was the 50 years before that, at the dawn of the Industrial revolution. You can read all about it in Charles Murray?s Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, though I warn you, if you?re in a creative or technical profession Murray?s widely ignored book is even more depressing than this essay. Murray didn?t restrict his attentions to technological progress: across the entire panoply of human endeavor (art, science, literature, philosophy, Mathematics) the indications are grim. You may disagree with the statistical technique he used (I don?t), but you can?t escape the conclusion?things are slowing down.
Certainly, people can be forgiven for thinking we live in a time of great progress, since semiconductor lithography has improved over the years, giving us faster and more portable computers. But can we really do anything with computers now that we couldn?t have done 30 or even 50 years ago? I don?t think life is much different because of ubiquitous computers. Possibly more efficient and convenient, but not radically different, much like things got after the invention of computers in the ?40s. Now we just waste time in the office in different ways.
Remember the kind of ?artificial intelligence? which was supposed to give us artificial brains we could talk to by now? The only parts of which work look suspiciously like signal processing ideas from, well, the 1950s. The rest of it appears to have degenerated into a sort of secular religion for nerds.
Looking forward, I can?t think of a single technology in the works today which will revolutionize life in the 21st century. In the 1930s, there were dozens of obvious ones; you could read about them in magazines and science fiction. Now ... I don?t know ... biotech. Maybe. Making insulin in toilet water is a neat trick, but all that really does is allow fat people to eat more sugar without slaughtering horses and pigs. I suppose some of the genetically engineered crops are impressive, though the birds-and-bunnies people tell me they are a bad idea. Some wise acre is likely to pipe up and sing the glories of ?Nanotech,? a ?subject? which was ?invented? in K. Eric Drexler?s Ph.D. thesis in 1989. In the 20 years since he penned his fanciful little story, we have yet to see a single example of the wondrous miniature perpetual motion machines Drexler has been promising us ?real soon now.? I wonder what his timeline for delivery of this ?technology? will be?
Presumably some time well after his retirement. I?ll go out on a limb: since we don?t even have computers that can program themselves in any useful fashion, the probability of anyone inventing self replicating miniature robots to give us magical powers (or any kind of powers) by 2059 is approximately zero. The very idea that we?re banking on a glorious future ... powered by magical robotic germs seems to me a titanic failure in human imagination. Once upon a time, we dreamed about giant stately space dirigibles to bring us to strange new worlds. Drexler dreams about inventing mechanical bacteria.
Need more evidence? Let?s look at aerospace. The SR-71 was designed in 1959. It took about two years to get the thing deployed, and it remains a faster jet than the F-22, which cost a lot more and took a lot longer to develope?first design was in 1986, first deployment in 1997. Sure, these aircraft aren?t made to do the same thing, but there is little apparent progress here: both represent the best we?ve got of respective eras.
This is despite the fact that the SR-71 was mostly designed with a paper and slide rule, and the F-22 with the most modern CAD design technology. Perhaps you consider this a bad comparison? OK, let?s consider the lowly passenger jet. The 747, a revolutionary passenger jet, was a concept in 1966. It was flying in 1968. The 787, which is not a revolutionary passenger jet, but one designed to be merely cheaper to operate, has been ?in development? since 2004. It?s now 2009, and still no 787s.
Speaking of jets, I had a chance to fly on the Concorde for a reasonable price, and I passed it up out of misguided thrift. As a result I shall very likely never have the opportunity to fly a supersonic passenger flight, unless the Russians revive theirs. If this isn?t technological regress, I don?t know what is.
Are cars better? They are certainly safer, and it?s easier to buy a very high performance car than it was in 1959, but they don?t get much more efficient than they were in 1959. The Nash metropolitan got 40-mpg in real world driving tests, much like the overrated hair shirt Toyota Prius.
Medicine? Surgical techniques are unarguably better now than 50 years ago, but they?re not terribly different either. And compared to what was developed 50 years prior, not so impressive. I hope humans can learn to do amazing things like grow new livers in 50 years, but I?m not optimistic at the prospects. Drugs? I can?t think of anything in the last 50 years which was as cataclysmic as the invention of antibiotics. Most of the drugs since then have done little more than give people excuses to behave badly. We?re certainly not any healthier now, just more dependent on medical intervention to keep us alive and functioning. People may blame the pill for the sexual revolution, but there were even more effective contraception techniques used for decades before then. Really, the sexual revolution happened because of antibiotics. Before antibiotics, people died from being promiscuous. Syphilis and gonorrhea were lethal, and when they didn?t kill you, these diseases would often cripple or blind their offspring.
Nowadays, all this is forgotten. People who believe in evolution with every fiber of their being seem confused as to where those antiquated sexual mores come from. Well, that?s where it comes from, dummies?biology. Antibiotics and the non-lethal promiscuity they?ve allowed have helped us to discover less-lethal viral plagues, which I suppose is progress of a sort. Similarly, the invention of SSRI?s have allowed entire populations to make terrible life choices and not feel badly about them.
Anti-psychotics have made it possible for psychotic people to avoid the madhouse. This is probably great news if you?re a psychotic, but I can?t really look at it as an improvement in things for the rest of us who have to live with psychotics and hope they take their medicine! Should they actually invent new cures for human stupidity, I have no doubt that people will find ways to behave badly, and there will be very little practical differences in how people actually live, other than making it less pleasant for decent people to live in. I?d love to be wrong about all this, but history isn?t encouraging.
Telephones are better than they were in 1959, but the use of cell phones hasn?t really changed much. If you?re far from civilization, you will have no dial tone. If you were far from civilization in 1959, you will have no pay phone. Call me a luddite, but I can?t see the ability to email each other snapshots from our phones as being particularly revolutionary, or even desirable. Nor is the expectation that I can be reached at all hours at any location on earth an improvement in things.
Space flight is almost too depressing to contemplate. Sure, it peaked 40 years ago rather than more than 50 years ago, but it is abundantly obvious that we?re not going back to the moon that was so easily reached in 1969. Leaders of the West who allow this to continue resemble Hongxi, the fool emperor who burned the great Chinese Exploratory Armada of Zheng He. Hongxi thought the Chinese exploration program was a waste of money, and decided to invest in social programs. Sure, his reign was seen as a glorious silver age of backsheesh for the people, but he didn?t invest in China?s future, and China began to rot from within from that day until just a few years ago. Oh, I wish those delightful Internet billionaires good fortune in their various hobbies designed to get human beings, rather than government bureaucrats, back into space.
I also hope the Chinese will take up their national honor where Zheng He left off. I?m just not very optimistic about the prospects, because we?ve done so horribly badly at this in the last 40 years. Watching poor Buzz Aldrin, world bestriding colossus of my youth, jet around the world begging people to take an interest in this sort of thing fills me with intense sadness for what we have lost.
We are not living in a time of technical decline exactly, but we are also not living in a time of great progress. As such, I don?t think the world of 50 years hence will look very technologically different from the world now. Our rate of progress is fairly small, and I?m not the only one to notice. This is despite the fact that there are more technologists alive now than ever lived in human history before. Some people argue that this is because prior generations did, ?the easy stuff,? leaving nothing for modern people to do. I think this is untrue. None of it was easy; it only looks that way after it is done. I could come up with all kinds of reasons why modern technologists aren?t as good as they were: rotten educational facilities, modern tort law, endless bureaucracy, the death of the lone inventor. But in the end, a Kipling couplet will suffice:
None too learned, but nobly bold,
Into the fight went our fathers of old.
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/the-myth-of-technological-progress/ (http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/the-myth-of-technological-progress/)
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Rubbish.
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Is this a call for greater investment in pure science?
Or should we just get this guy a subscription to "Scientific American"
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If the author of the article had read something like Scientific American, he might grasp that the F-22 does not fly as fast as the SR-71 because we don't need or want it to. The F-22 is a fighter plane. The SR-71 is a reconnaissance plane. Two very different purposes. It's sort of like complaining that we haven't made a minivan as fast a Formula 1 car. We don't need to, and, unless you're a host on Top Gear, you probably wouldn't want a van that fast anyway.
The author of the article is clueless, which probably why he thinks "The world of 1959 is pretty much the same world we live in today technologically speaking."
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If the author of the article had read something like Scientific American, he might grasp that the F-22 does not fly as fast as the SR-71 because we don't need or want it to. The F-22 is a fighter plane. The SR-71 is a reconnaissance plane. Two very different purposes. It's sort of like complaining that we haven't made a minivan as fast a Formula 1 car. We don't need to, and, unless you're a host on Top Gear, you probably wouldn't want a van that fast anyway.
The author of the article is clueless, which probably why he thinks "The world of 1959 is pretty much the same world we live in today technologically speaking."
Yes !
And the F-22 can travel supersonic without afterburner.
Pretty soon it will travel supersonic on vegetable oil, without afterburner.
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I think the guy was pointing out the surprisingly minimal impact that technological change has had on our lives. Our lifespan has not been vastly extended, the same diseases are major killers now as they were 50 years ago, our energy sources are pretty much the same and still eat up the same approximate percentage of our budgets, and we travel about as much now as we did then, or would do so but for the economy. For all the Scientific American and other articles, our lives have not been significantly affected.
Although 50 years ago, I would not have "met" any of the members of this group and wouldn't be in regular instant communication with family members all over the globe. Computers have revolutionized the way we keep in touch with one another, that's for sure. But I can't think of another life-changing effect of technological development over the past 50 years.
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If the author of the article had read something like Scientific American, he might grasp that the F-22 does not fly as fast as the SR-71 because we don't need or want it to. The F-22 is a fighter plane. The SR-71 is a reconnaissance plane.
The difference in speed has more to do with the density of air at their respective operating altitudes than with "need". The SR-71 flies at such a high altitude that getting enough air into the engines to sustain ignition was more of a problem. The F-22 must actually restrict it's air intake at high speed.
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But I can't think of another life-changing effect of technological development over the past 50 years.
Microwave? Cell phones? Satellite TV?
None of these are life changing?
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But I can't think of another life-changing effect of technological development over the past 50 years.
I wouldn't be alive today, were it not for technological advances over the past 50 years.
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I wouldn't be alive today, were it not for technological advances over the past 50 years.
Chances are I wouldn't be either. The medications that I'm taking for my pulmonary emboli were developed in the last 50 years. The death rate from untreated pulmonary emboli is over 30% (and it's what actually killed General Patton, not the car accident).
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But I can't think of another life-changing effect of technological development over the past 50 years.
Microwave? Cell phones? Satellite TV?
None of these are life changing?
I seem to remember cooking food, making phone calls, and watching TV before any of those things arrived. All of those are incremental improvements on pre-existing technologies. Except for the microwave, none of those are radically new technologies. A cell phone is basically just a radio.
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<<Microwave? Cell phones? Satellite TV?
<<None of these are life changing?>>
I don't see them that way. Maybe for a housewife, the microwave has a large impact than I realize, but life-changing? That's a huge stretch. They still have to prepare the food for the microwave. Cell phones mean I don't have to ensure a supply of quarters for pay phones, how's that life-changing? When I was away from the office I'd check in frequently, now they can get me on my mobile, so maybe a half-hour was shaved off the time lag, but that's not life-changing.
There are big changes in medication that keep some individuals (myself included) alive, but I wonder if there has been any corresponding increase in life expectancy over the past 50 years.
I think the main point the author was making was that we still live our lives pretty much as lives were lived fifty years ago and most of the modern amenities we enjoyed then we are enjoying now, with some bells and whistles attached.
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Well, cell phones mean that people can call YOU when you're away from the home or office.
What were they going to do before that? Call a random pay phone and hoped you answered?
Pagers and cell phones make the current organ transplant networks work. Without them, organ transplants would be a LOT more miss than hit.
Microwaves have also vastly decreased the time that is spent in the kitchen preparing food, increasing free time and hence quality of life.
Satellite TV has the ability to bring news from the far corners of the world to you nearly instantly. Increasing the common person's knowledge of world events also increases the quality of life. Also, it brings information about foreign lands into your home. 50 years ago, most people vacationed near their homes, or near some famous landmark in their own country. Nowadays, because of improvements to air travel and the globe spanning TV networks, people vacation in foreign lands and soak in cultures vastly different from their own - again, better quality of life.
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A cell phone may be "basically a radio", but 50 years ago, such a radio was useless, because there were no cellphone towers, and there were no satellites to link them to, either. I remember in the 1950's we would call my uncle Wyatt in California (from Missouri)once every two months. We had to wait until it was 10:00 PM for the lower rate, then you had to tell the Central office to place the call, and they would call back when the call was connected. A lot of the time, it would take over half an hour to get the connection.
A microwave can do in four minutes what it takes an oven to do in 30. 50 years ago, they had few non-invasive heart operation techniques, 50 years ago a luxury car had no ABS brakes or stability control, and needed 5 litres displacement to deliver the power a modern inexpensive car can deliver with 2.0 litres, and around half the gasoline.
I really do not think the author of this article was thinking too hard.
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The difference in speed has more to do with the density of air at their respective operating altitudes than with "need". The SR-71 flies at such a high altitude that getting enough air into the engines to sustain ignition was more of a problem. The F-22 must actually restrict it's air intake at high speed.
Good point. But there is a tactical reason why after the SR-71 came out, we didn't rush to try to create fighter jets that fly at Mach 3. No one was doing aerial dog fights at that speed. A fighter jet traveling at Mach 3 would be, and probably would still be, overpowered to say the least, and traveling too fast to properly engage in combat. I have little doubt that a fighter jet that travels at Mach 3 could be designed and produced, if the military said it needed one. As best I can tell, the military has not said it needed one. The F-35, which has (I believe) already replaced the F-22, doesn't even reach Mach 2.
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<<Well, cell phones mean that people can call YOU when you're away from the home or office.
<<What were they going to do before that? Call a random pay phone and hoped you answered?>>
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Are you kidding me? They'd call the office and if it was urgent the office would try to get in touch with me if they knew where I was gonna be, as they almost always did; if that didn't work, then when I called to check in, the office would tell me that Mr. Weinstein had called. My secretaries were trained to take call-back numbers, and times for which those numbers would be good. If we didn't connect that day, the earth remained in its orbit and we connected the next day.
<<Pagers and cell phones make the current organ transplant networks work. Without them, organ transplants would be a LOT more miss than hit.>>
And exactly what percentage of our general population do you think are organ transplant recipients?
<<Microwaves have also vastly decreased the time that is spent in the kitchen preparing food, increasing free time and hence quality of life.>>
Well, that is a point that I will have to concede. Since I never prepared a meal in my life, apart from scrambled eggs and barbeque'd pork chops, I didn't fully appreciate the life-changing effect this particular innovation had on housewives and others.
<<Satellite TV has the ability to bring news from the far corners of the world to you nearly instantly. Increasing the common person's knowledge of world events also increases the quality of life.>>
"News" is it? As in "CNN News" and "Fox News?" LMFAO if there is anyone left on this planet who still thinks those crapfests convey "news." If "the common person's knowledge of world events" is anything like what I see displayed here in this group on a daily basis, it would appear that satellite TV represents a major setback to common understanding of world events. The only people who still believe in the newsbearing potential of satellite TV are die-hard Marshall McLuhan fans who believe "the medium is the message."
<<Also, it brings information about foreign lands into your home.>>
As did Viewmaster, LIFE Magazine and National Geographic for way more than 50 years. TV of any kind, satellite included, brings coverage that is best described as "a mile wide and an inch deep." Any good magazine writer can do a better job of bringing information about foreign lands into your home than any TV documentary.
<<50 years ago, most people vacationed near their homes, or near some famous landmark in their own country. Nowadays, because of improvements to air travel and the globe spanning TV networks, people vacation in foreign lands and soak in cultures vastly different from their own - again, better quality of life.>>
There's no doubt that the development of long-range bombers in WWII ultimately contributed to the post-war expansion of affordable travel for the masses, but technical improvements in aircraft and guidance systems is only part of the explanation. Other equally important factors were the wartime construction of airfields all over the world, the development of the hospitality industry overall and the immediate post-war strength of the dollar.
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"News" is it? As in "CNN News" and "Fox News?" LMFAO if there is anyone left on this planet who still thinks those crapfests convey "news." If "the common person's knowledge of world events" is anything like what I see displayed here in this group on a daily basis, it would appear that satellite TV represents a major setback to common understanding of world events. The only people who still believe in the newsbearing potential of satellite TV are die-hard Marshall McLuhan fans who believe "the medium is the message."
You just don't get it. Satellite (and cable) broke the monopoly of the big three broadcasters and their counterparts across the globe. The internet opened the flood gates. Anyone with a cell phone and a camera can be first on the scene. Why is it revolutionaries always turn into reactionaries?
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<<You just don't get it. Satellite (and cable) broke the monopoly of the big three broadcasters and their counterparts across the globe. The internet opened the flood gates. Anyone with a cell phone and a camera can be first on the scene. Why is it revolutionaries always turn into reactionaries?>>
O ye of little faith!!!
I get it all right. Cable news, or any medium driven by advertising revenue, is co-opted by Corporate America in a heartbeat. I watched a Candy Crowley interview of Sen. Lindsay Graham on Sunday on CNN, and it was a softball masterpiece. Network MSM couldn't have done it better. Cable and satellite just give the establishment a wider net. The internet is a Liberated Information Zone for the moment, but you are just kidding yourself if you don't think corporate America can bring it to heel.
The interesting question for the moment, IMHO, is how does corporate America retain control over the sheeple at this point in time, when it clearly does not have the monopoly on the flow of information that it used to enjoy before the internet?
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The interesting question for the moment, IMHO, is how does corporate America retain control over the sheeple at this point in time, when it clearly does not have the monopoly on the flow of information that it used to enjoy before the internet?
Thus the issue of net neutrality.
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Exactly. Thus the "O ye of little faith!" It's inevitable that the state will assert its control over the free flow of information in cyberspace, it's only a matter of time.
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The state has been defending the free flow of information on the net. The issue is a bttle between providers of bandwidth and users of bandwidth and ultimately who will pay, and by implementation of tier pricing dependent on type of date, limiting transmission of that data to only those that can afford it. Right now a video transmission costs the same as an email.
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And exactly what percentage of our general population do you think are organ transplant recipients?
As of 10am this morning, there was a little over 100,000 people on the UNOS list waiting for transplants in the US.
For heart, liver, and kidney transplants, there are approximately 26,000 per year in the US. This obviously does not include other transplants, like lung, skin, etc. Unfortunately accurate numbers are not being kept, but we're looking at millions per decade for the US alone.
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I guess it boils down to how you define "life-changing." If you're one of the transplant recipients, their family or friends, the technology was indeed life-changing, for the other 99% of the world, meh.
Net neutrality is a lost cause. Sooner or later the big commercial interests will get their way, as they always do. Sooner or later, the same corporate control of the information flow will be felt in the online world, as it is felt everywhere else. There's too much at stake for that not to happen.
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Exactly. Thus the "O ye of little faith!" It's inevitable that the state will assert its control over the free flow of information in cyberspace, it's only a matter of time.
That time is now in China , where the government is strangling Google there are too many things that the people should remain ignorant of.
That time is now in Europe where several countries are about to ban '"blackberry apps" that allow conversations to be incripted too many things that the government must know.
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<<That time is now in China , where the government is strangling Google there are too many things that the people should remain ignorant of.>>
Don't worry, the folks who really control the USA will catch up to the Chinese in control of the new media as they already have in control of the old media. The Chinese, in their turn, could learn a little from North Americans in the art of "repressive tolerance," i.e. tolerating the anti-establishment POV in very small doses so as to maintain the illusion that the flow of information in the mass media is really free.
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<<That time is now in China , where the government is strangling Google there are too many things that the people should remain ignorant of.>>
Don't worry, the folks who really control the USA will catch up to the Chinese in control of the new media as they already have in control of the old media. The Chinese, in their turn, could learn a little from North Americans in the art of "repressive tolerance," i.e. tolerating the anti-establishment POV in very small doses so as to maintain the illusion that the flow of information in the mass media is really free.
Little doses come from little clubs of crackpots.
Should American Communists get equal time with Democrats or Libertarians even though they amount to a very small fraction of the size of these others?
WE hear from Communists and Natzis now and then , about in purportion to their size and appeal.
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The Chinese government believes that it has an obligation to protect the people from subversion. It is likely that a majority of the Chinese people agree with this, in the same way that ratbag rightwingers want the government to ban a mosque near "Ground Zero", and guys like Kramer want the death penalty for people trying to get 7 year old girls to have health inspections of heir lemonade stands.
The US government has an immense amount of snooping and control over what the average American sees and does. But it is far better at doing all this with maximum stealth. The same is true with the economy. Perhaps an authoritarian government would raise rents, electric rates or water fees in order to get more out of each worker. Even the PRC would not dare cut wages. In the US, interest rates can be raised, production slowed, and workers are laid off. After a few months spending their savings, they are happy to take another job at lower wages. And everyone can say that no one is to blame.
It reminds me that back in the 1950's, Khrushev wanted to visit Disneyland, and was denied permission. The newspapers made fun of him wanting to do such a frivolous thing. Eventually, the real reason was revealed: Khruschev wanted to see how Disney managed to keep huge numbers of people waiting in line willingly and liking it. The US system controls a huge number of people with credit cards, home mortgages, casinos, installment plans and all sorts of fees better than the Soviets ever did, and a majority of Americans are unaware that they are actually even being controlled.
To he Soviets, getting 500 people to pay for the privilege of waiting an hour in 90 degree heat to ride four minutes on Space Mountain or in a teacup must have seemed like an impossible miracle. And in reality, it was.
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To he Soviets, getting 500 people to pay for the privilege of waiting an hour in 90 degree heat to ride four minutes on Space Mountain or in a teacup must have seemed like an impossible miracle. And in reality, it was.
Nah, it's because we got our culture from the Brits.
"An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one." George Mikes
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To he Soviets, getting 500 people to pay for the privilege of waiting an hour in 90 degree heat to ride four minutes on Space Mountain or in a teacup must have seemed like an impossible miracle. And in reality, it was.
That is well said , been there to see it.
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<<Little doses come from little clubs of crackpots.>>
That's a plausible explanation. Who gets to define which ideas come from "little clubs of crackpots?" Actually, the ideas that are assigned to a few easily-labeled "crackpots" are much more popular than the establishment would have you believe. Part of the mechanism of repressive tolerance is, in addition to giving the ideas minimum public exposure (just enough to avoid the accusation of a class-controlled MSM) is to portray them as fringe ideas, crackpot ideas, something the establishment mouthpieces who are given pride of place know very well how to do.
<<Should American Communists get equal time with Democrats or Libertarians even though they amount to a very small fraction of the size of these others?>>
Yes, of course. In the "marketplace of ideas," the popularity of any idea is no measure of its worth. Why shouldn't every Democrat or Libertarian be forced to defend his or her ideas publicly against people who are neither Democrats nor Libertarians? And why should this happen only at certain long, long intervals, and in a format where the time is so chopped up for commercials that the issues are never thoroughly debated and neither side gets a chance to sum up?
<<WE hear from Communists and Natzis now and then , about in purportion to their size and appeal.>>
What you don't seem to get is that their "size and appeal" is in direct proportion to the "now and then" intervals allowed to them by the tiny handful of giant corporations that control the MSM. Nor do you get that those corporations themselves have huge interests that are directly threatened by the spread of particular political and even religious POVs, so that the size and above all the "appeal" of certain ideas are judged with a not exactly disinterested eye.
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I agree that orderly waiting in line is a British trait, I recall once several friends and I went to a theatre i Vancouver BC. When some guy who was not in line started a conversation with a couple that was in line, at least ten people told him to go to the back of the line. In Canada and England, people lined up in clear single file. In the US Midwest, people line up in couples and singles.Here in Miami, people line up in clusters, and cuting in line is rampant.
Disney uses a sort of winding stockade of pipes, as they use for cattle boarding trains or waiting to be slaughtered. No more than two fat people or three skinny ones can stand abreast in a Disney queue. Sometimes, Disney has TV monitors for the people waiting in line to watch, usually nothing of great interest, on a tree minute loop.
I would say that Disney and other theme parks that have copied their style are experts at controlling crowds and getting people to pay to do boring tasks, like waiting eternally for a five-minute thrill.
Long ago, I worked as a sort of accountant for a Disney wannabee, King's Dominion, a theme park near Ashland, VA just off I-95. There were two of these, and they belonged to the Taft family of Ohio, a bunch of real bloodsuckers. They would promise a 15 cent an hour bonus over the minimum wage to any of the HS kids who stayed on until the end of summer, then two weeks before the summer's end if attendance dropped. they would fire over half these kids: sorry, kid, no bonus for you. They advertised the bonus right up to firing day.
By law, they had to have water fountains, but they hid them in the architecture around the restrooms so you could not find them. If you asked for water at one of the concessions, they would charge the same price as a soda for it, but if anyone complained, they would refund the money.
They really raked in the money. Over $1 million a day, and that was back in the early '70's. Their newsletter claimed that the entire cost of the park was covered after a year and a half-- really a summer and a half: they were open from May through Labor Day.
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That's a plausible explanation. Who gets to define which ideas come from "little clubs of crackpots?"
The people who join , or don't.
Yes, of course. In the "marketplace of ideas," the popularity of any idea is no measure of its worth.
Totally reverse this statement and it becomes true. It is the nature of a marketplace to reward most the most appealing . Ideas that appeal to people best appeal to the greater number. What is proven when the greatest number of people reject an idea? This does not prove that is necessacerily a bad idea but it does prove that implementing this unpopular idea will be a bad idea.
It isn't impossible to present good ideas and justify them just as well as bad ideas, but the wisdom of the masses sifts .
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Sifts or shifts?
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Sifts or shifts?
That is an interesting question.
The presence of that single letter creates an entire alternate possible meaning.
But would shifts make any sense?