And a sample of 404 people, (nearly all taken from internet sources, I might add), for such a squishy study is, while interesting, hardly damning proof of anything. --I mean, just the definition, 'terrorist' is a bullshit one these days. Every time a military bomb wipes out a village, it is usually reported that most of the people killed were conveniently, "Terrorists". I had no idea the world had so many engineers! And frankly, based on everything I've read, (and I've read a truckload on this), I happen to believe that a lot of high-profile 'terrorism' is performed for false-flag purposes by mind-control patsies of one sort or another. Heck, the kid who set his pants on fire just a few days ago aboard an international flight, when you dig into that highly suspicious story, appears to have been in zombie-mode and to have had several handlers who put him on the flight, by-passing security.
I would be VERY cautious about taking a study like this one at face value. I mean, yes, engineers do tend to carry certain social characteristics, and as I've always said, they are one of the most powerful groups on the planet because they make everything work. They define reality. And as such, the military industrial complex has a vested interest in making damned sure all the Pavlovian programming has well and truly taken hold in that group, with regular inoculations, so that they are easily controlled. Top priority slaves, as it were, making slavery as a way of life possible.
You do realize how crazy you sound, right? You sound like you're supposing that the Dollhouse sends out incompetent terrorists to scare the public into supporting restrictive government policies and persecuting "geeks", "misfits" and engineers. Note that this requires presupposing the existence of a Dollhouse or similar organization.
Do you have any idea how many engineers, scientists, and other "geeks" are just normal people with some more intelligence and curiosity added on?
Geeks have been punished and programmed and used by society their whole lives exactly because of their social traits. But that doesn't make them prone to becoming systematic killers.
If your bizzaro worldview was correct, I'd have to ask why the bloody hell geeks aren't systematic killers. In your world we've certainly got the right to liberation and retribution for the "Pavlovian programming" and "mind-control patsies".
What I am saying is this: be VERY careful with this kind of thing. Everybody can look suspicious when state paranoia turns its many cameras inward upon its own population. This is actually the typical trend with fascism; first its the evil out there, then it's the evil within. Next thing you know, engineers will be encouraged to self-police their ranks and inform on their friends. Fuck. That.
Except that we're not dealing with a fascist system. It was in danger of going fascist for a while, but now society has managed to get itself back onto track: a technologically-advanced material-rich capitalist society collapsing into corporate feudalism.
I know several engineers, as I'm sure many of you do as well. Seriously; how many of them would ever go out of their way to harm somebody?
Do computer science majors count as engineers? Every time I read another stupid rant someone so profoundly ignorant of people and of good sense as you, I get the urge to punish the offender with several broken ribs.
I think he's utterly wrong and just acting like a jerk Randian, but I have noticed that the politics of pity defines the modern Left (very, very, very unfortunately). This leaves left-wing professors (including self-proclaimed "socialists") too shy to criticize destructive, anti-progress, nihilistic philosophies like Islamism as long as they can ground themselves in some cliche like "liberating the oppressed". It becomes easier to recruit from such classes because the professors would rather behave "tolerantly" than take a moral stand.
Quite to the contrary, about a century ago the Middle East was a rather cosmopolitan place getting ready to industrialize. Then World War 1 occurred, bringing in its aftermath colonialism, pan-Arab jihadism, and early Islamism. When the colonialists left, they put tyrants in their place to keep the oil flowing, and the tyrants have been and remain all too happy to blame poverty or oppression on imagined imperialism or on Zionism rather than actually develop their nations or face their peoples' wrath in open revolt.
And keep in mind that if the United States really wants to know how to really deal with a genuine, constant threat of terrorist attacks, it has a friend and ally who knows all about such things due to dealing with terrorism as a daily reality. Seriously, after having the IDF around I laugh in the face of American security theater.
Tell me, do you assume that the laws of physics will continue to operate the same way tomorrow as they have today? I assume the existence of God and His laws in the same way.
Lehitraot, Computer Science major and semi-practicing Jew
Actually, it says that Rationals tend to see moral good and bad as ambiguous and relative -- the opposite of what you want in a terrorist, soldier, leader, etc.
Evidence has nothing to do with it, no matter how much you wish to insult religion. Ideological terrorism by definition requires an ideology, a strongly-held belief, on the part of the terrorist who actually carries out the killing act. Will you now propose that we eliminate all strongly-held beliefs?
If selfishness is the only virtue, then how can a compromise made for one's own convenience, gratification, or benefit do anything but uphold that virtue?
Bigger problem with the "everyone turns into managers" theory: any given organization only requires and can only sustainably support so many managers per productive workers. After a certain number of managers, consultants, and other corporate middlemen adding another just means adding a parasite.
The USA represents around 25% of the global economy.
Yes, that's right: 25% of the market in one country with either one or a handful (California, New York, Delaware, etc. being special cases) of regulations on each industry. In contrast, nobody can treat "outside the United States" as one market; it consists of more than a hundred separate legal domains -- the vast majority of which have their own rule-sets for doing business and therefore impose the expense of creating separate operations that fit those rule-sets. Where will a company find 25% of the world's economy in one market with one set of rules outside of the USA?
Well wait a minute, you already kill Christians and Muslims all over the damn place in that game, why not some Jews too? Even the ADL can't object to the use of Jewish characters in a historical context where we would naturally occur. And if they do try to object, someone should shut them the hell up. I don't even know who the hell in the Jewish world gets scared into donating to those con-men anymore.
Take note of Assassin's Creed's disclaimer though. When you run the game they state it was created by a multinational team of various faiths and beliefs.
A multinational team of various faiths and beliefs who apparently decided that they had no room in their multi-faith game for Jews. No Jews in Jerusalem except for one synagogue, a cross on the Ark of the Covenant, a cross as the map-symbol of Jerusalem despite its being a Jewish city held by the Muslims... One synagogue was their entire acknowledgment of the people and religion whose freaking city and country they set the game in!
I've heard it advised to write about what you know. And what do [musicians|writers|actors] know? [Music|writing|acting]. I suppose everybody values their own profession/interest especially highly; with the entertainment industry, in addition to that factor, they must also figure that they come up with better/easier-to-write stories by discussing their own experience.
Well sure, this is what I'm alluding to. However, I think that the people who essentially manufacture American pop culture should still have the sense of social responsibility to do something other than pat themselves on the back all the time. I mean, don't they have friends or family outside their industry whose stories could use telling?
Of course, this could just be my bitching about things I don't like. Take my speculations with a grain of salt.
I didn't mean "for the purpose of music and dance". I meant that their subject material, in the lyrics, when it isn't sex (as you noted), is music and dance. You wind up with people singing about dancing and then having interpretive dancers do a dance that represents a song.
And that's not even getting into the stuff about sex.
Do you have any actual data on this supposed sense of entitlement? Because us laborites have real data on the 30-year drop in real, after-inflation wages across the board for all Americans.
I think some of us do think about what the janitor or the loading-dock worker makes. He's getting screwed too (and those jobs are almost universally "he", though you see nobody complaining about the lack of female janitors). My question is why so many in STEM kvetch about the degradation of STEM jobs while actively insulting the labor movements run by janitors and loading-dock workers.
OK, I wouldn't expect a guy calling himself "Tikun" to know it, but those are hipsters you're thinking of. Everyone hates those nihilistic, aimless douchebags with their angry-young-man complexes. They don't define cool for the rest of us.
I'm not actually trolling; it really is a problem of values. Kids want the ugly singer-in-a-garage-band more than they want the ugly computer nerd, and the economy values each manufactured pop singer far more than they value the software and audio engineers who invented ways to make her voice sound like something other than crap. Do you not see the problem here?
Slashdot Mirror
Fear is the mind killer. Good song, btw.
That's not a song, damnit, it's the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.
And a sample of 404 people, (nearly all taken from internet sources, I might add), for such a squishy study is, while interesting, hardly damning proof of anything. --I mean, just the definition, 'terrorist' is a bullshit one these days. Every time a military bomb wipes out a village, it is usually reported that most of the people killed were conveniently, "Terrorists". I had no idea the world had so many engineers! And frankly, based on everything I've read, (and I've read a truckload on this), I happen to believe that a lot of high-profile 'terrorism' is performed for false-flag purposes by mind-control patsies of one sort or another. Heck, the kid who set his pants on fire just a few days ago aboard an international flight, when you dig into that highly suspicious story, appears to have been in zombie-mode and to have had several handlers who put him on the flight, by-passing security.
I would be VERY cautious about taking a study like this one at face value. I mean, yes, engineers do tend to carry certain social characteristics, and as I've always said, they are one of the most powerful groups on the planet because they make everything work. They define reality. And as such, the military industrial complex has a vested interest in making damned sure all the Pavlovian programming has well and truly taken hold in that group, with regular inoculations, so that they are easily controlled. Top priority slaves, as it were, making slavery as a way of life possible.
You do realize how crazy you sound, right? You sound like you're supposing that the Dollhouse sends out incompetent terrorists to scare the public into supporting restrictive government policies and persecuting "geeks", "misfits" and engineers. Note that this requires presupposing the existence of a Dollhouse or similar organization.
Do you have any idea how many engineers, scientists, and other "geeks" are just normal people with some more intelligence and curiosity added on?
Geeks have been punished and programmed and used by society their whole lives exactly because of their social traits. But that doesn't make them prone to becoming systematic killers.
If your bizzaro worldview was correct, I'd have to ask why the bloody hell geeks aren't systematic killers. In your world we've certainly got the right to liberation and retribution for the "Pavlovian programming" and "mind-control patsies".
What I am saying is this: be VERY careful with this kind of thing. Everybody can look suspicious when state paranoia turns its many cameras inward upon its own population. This is actually the typical trend with fascism; first its the evil out there, then it's the evil within. Next thing you know, engineers will be encouraged to self-police their ranks and inform on their friends. Fuck. That.
Except that we're not dealing with a fascist system. It was in danger of going fascist for a while, but now society has managed to get itself back onto track: a technologically-advanced material-rich capitalist society collapsing into corporate feudalism.
I know several engineers, as I'm sure many of you do as well. Seriously; how many of them would ever go out of their way to harm somebody?
Do computer science majors count as engineers? Every time I read another stupid rant someone so profoundly ignorant of people and of good sense as you, I get the urge to punish the offender with several broken ribs.
And.... I just gained a whole load of respect for Arabs. Kol ha'kavod!
I think he's utterly wrong and just acting like a jerk Randian, but I have noticed that the politics of pity defines the modern Left (very, very, very unfortunately). This leaves left-wing professors (including self-proclaimed "socialists") too shy to criticize destructive, anti-progress, nihilistic philosophies like Islamism as long as they can ground themselves in some cliche like "liberating the oppressed". It becomes easier to recruit from such classes because the professors would rather behave "tolerantly" than take a moral stand.
Quite to the contrary, about a century ago the Middle East was a rather cosmopolitan place getting ready to industrialize. Then World War 1 occurred, bringing in its aftermath colonialism, pan-Arab jihadism, and early Islamism. When the colonialists left, they put tyrants in their place to keep the oil flowing, and the tyrants have been and remain all too happy to blame poverty or oppression on imagined imperialism or on Zionism rather than actually develop their nations or face their peoples' wrath in open revolt.
And keep in mind that if the United States really wants to know how to really deal with a genuine, constant threat of terrorist attacks, it has a friend and ally who knows all about such things due to dealing with terrorism as a daily reality. Seriously, after having the IDF around I laugh in the face of American security theater.
Tell me, do you assume that the laws of physics will continue to operate the same way tomorrow as they have today? I assume the existence of God and His laws in the same way.
Lehitraot,
Computer Science major and semi-practicing Jew
Actually, it says that Rationals tend to see moral good and bad as ambiguous and relative -- the opposite of what you want in a terrorist, soldier, leader, etc.
Actually, analysis of most terrorist ideologies does lead to the conclusion that they are Muslim nihilists.
Evidence has nothing to do with it, no matter how much you wish to insult religion. Ideological terrorism by definition requires an ideology, a strongly-held belief, on the part of the terrorist who actually carries out the killing act. Will you now propose that we eliminate all strongly-held beliefs?
If selfishness is the only virtue, then how can a compromise made for one's own convenience, gratification, or benefit do anything but uphold that virtue?
Bigger problem with the "everyone turns into managers" theory: any given organization only requires and can only sustainably support so many managers per productive workers. After a certain number of managers, consultants, and other corporate middlemen adding another just means adding a parasite.
The USA represents around 25% of the global economy.
Yes, that's right: 25% of the market in one country with either one or a handful (California, New York, Delaware, etc. being special cases) of regulations on each industry. In contrast, nobody can treat "outside the United States" as one market; it consists of more than a hundred separate legal domains -- the vast majority of which have their own rule-sets for doing business and therefore impose the expense of creating separate operations that fit those rule-sets. Where will a company find 25% of the world's economy in one market with one set of rules outside of the USA?
This isn't capitalism. It's high-tech corporate neo-feudalism. Welcome to America, bow before your lord.
Well wait a minute, you already kill Christians and Muslims all over the damn place in that game, why not some Jews too? Even the ADL can't object to the use of Jewish characters in a historical context where we would naturally occur. And if they do try to object, someone should shut them the hell up. I don't even know who the hell in the Jewish world gets scared into donating to those con-men anymore.
Feh.
Take note of Assassin's Creed's disclaimer though. When you run the game they state it was created by a multinational team of various faiths and beliefs.
A multinational team of various faiths and beliefs who apparently decided that they had no room in their multi-faith game for Jews. No Jews in Jerusalem except for one synagogue, a cross on the Ark of the Covenant, a cross as the map-symbol of Jerusalem despite its being a Jewish city held by the Muslims... One synagogue was their entire acknowledgment of the people and religion whose freaking city and country they set the game in!
What, resentful? Me? Never!
You are a sick, sick person and Chanukah ended a week and a bit ago.
I've heard it advised to write about what you know. And what do [musicians|writers|actors] know? [Music|writing|acting].
I suppose everybody values their own profession/interest especially highly; with the entertainment industry, in addition to that factor, they must also figure that they come up with better/easier-to-write stories by discussing their own experience.
Well sure, this is what I'm alluding to. However, I think that the people who essentially manufacture American pop culture should still have the sense of social responsibility to do something other than pat themselves on the back all the time. I mean, don't they have friends or family outside their industry whose stories could use telling?
Of course, this could just be my bitching about things I don't like. Take my speculations with a grain of salt.
I didn't mean "for the purpose of music and dance". I meant that their subject material, in the lyrics, when it isn't sex (as you noted), is music and dance. You wind up with people singing about dancing and then having interpretive dancers do a dance that represents a song.
And that's not even getting into the stuff about sex.
Do you have any actual data on this supposed sense of entitlement? Because us laborites have real data on the 30-year drop in real, after-inflation wages across the board for all Americans.
I think some of us do think about what the janitor or the loading-dock worker makes. He's getting screwed too (and those jobs are almost universally "he", though you see nobody complaining about the lack of female janitors). My question is why so many in STEM kvetch about the degradation of STEM jobs while actively insulting the labor movements run by janitors and loading-dock workers.
OK, I wouldn't expect a guy calling himself "Tikun" to know it, but those are hipsters you're thinking of. Everyone hates those nihilistic, aimless douchebags with their angry-young-man complexes. They don't define cool for the rest of us.
I disagree with you on one thing. I think computing is a part of basic mathematics. Or rather, mathematics is a part of basic computing ;-).
Admittedly, he might just have come from a school district that didn't take the modern, entirely too popular "more is better" approach to homework.
I'm not actually trolling; it really is a problem of values. Kids want the ugly singer-in-a-garage-band more than they want the ugly computer nerd, and the economy values each manufactured pop singer far more than they value the software and audio engineers who invented ways to make her voice sound like something other than crap. Do you not see the problem here?