You can only be cranking out plowshares at low cost and high quality, if your businesses have absolutely no other way to collect the helicopter money other than through building & selling plowshares, in a highly optimal manner In the US, that is simply not the case

math is harder to fake. failure is much more obvious. so, math can work as an okayish filter of intelligence and, more importantly, do it at scale BUT history/philology absolutely can play the same role. in fact, they did, until like 5 min ago just base it on greek/latin

Why does Russia hold elections? My friend has recently asked me an interesting question: Why does Putin even bother with holding elections, again, and again, and again? Like, everyone knows they are farcical, staged, untrue, so what’s the point? Here is my answer:

Of course Although, not so much idiotic as just servile. Overall, Gaza has been a not bad test on a blind obedience to power, revealing that a great deal of managers & administrators are in fact blindly obedient, to whoever is in charge

I have a theory why all kinds of "intellectual" texts are becoming increasingly gross and unreadable. That is because an author is trying to shield himself from all kinds of stupid (or bad faith) objections he is going to get after the publication

1. Men can be only ruled by dogmatic affirmations 2. Dogmatic affirmations do not reflect reality well So, basically, every ruling ideology must be detached from reality - by necessity (otherwise, it can never rule) Over the time, the gap only grows, resulting in a collapse

The problem with Israel is that Israel wants the land (e.g. West Bank), but does not want the people. It aims to occupy, but will not give Israeli passports to the occupied That makes Israel a unique, singular example of a conquest state, denying citizenship to the conquered

How people form their views 1. They feel hurt or humiliated, personally 2. They conclude they could not have been possibly hurt or humiliated by anything less than the eternal force of absolute evil 3. To balance it all out, they imagine an opposing force of absolute good 4. The conflict between these two determines the course of history, from the Big Bang to the present day Voila

German facing How POWs of different nationalities tried to pretend being someone else, to maximise their chances for survival. Looks like: Spanish > German > French/Dutch > Polish Basically, Spaniards & Portuguese got preferential treatment, Poles got the worst of the worst

German facing How POWs of different nationalities tried to pretend being someone else, to maximise their chances for survival. Looks like: Spanish > German > French/Dutch > Polish Basically, Spaniards got preferential treatment, Poles got the worst of the worst