Nobody will admit that the housing is overpriced, so they would have to be forced to do so.
This is terrible for normal people, and slightly bad for the investors, but only a crisis or organized government action can reset the damage done by decades of investment in already existing buildings.
There is something very irritating seeing someone dismiss someone else on the internet using condescending therapy speak 'Thats Ok', nevermind the fact that calling him out as some ignorant Chinese guy while China has hundreds of cultures and languages, as if a Chinese person couldn't comprehend... Europe.
The way to respect isn’t through shaming people into it. It’s through demonstration of value, in this case understanding of nuance.
Instead we get an application of external logic and values which can’t be used to properly reason about the entity they’re applied to.
There’s no need for frustration. We take the stoic approach here. It’s OK. You are a product of your environment. Everything you’ve ever experienced told you this is the way to act.
China also has many different cultures, languages and so on for the over 1.4 billion people who live there. Why would the “nuance” of Europe be “lost” on a Chinese person?
China mostly has a single national identity, and provincial differences are way too nuanced to be mapped in the same way that country differences in Europe would be. It would be like trying to get Americans to understand that "Henan man" is a meme similar to the "Florida man" meme.
> The nuance of 40 different cultures on a small continent might be lost on him.
I don’t know about the author in particular, but Americans are generally aware of the “nuanced” European history of near constant war between rival nations, states, factions, and religions.
My best and “longest” memories are from a two year period spent in the university when I had earned some money in internships and could live with few obligations.
That was the happiest I’ve ever been.
Childhood is mostly blocked out (abusive parents, poverty), and adulthood is mostly work.
Maybe we just remember the periods when we’ve been happy. It would make sense evolutionarily.
I didn't mean that Israel doesn't do any crimes, but still the main things that triggers all the rockets, terror attacks etc. is Israel existing. Better defence for Israel will make the region safer, including even for Palestinians
Those were after Germany's defeat, and those put on trial were no longer active combatants.
I'm pretty sure no military in history has ever delayed taking out an active threat in order to conduct legal proceedings. They don't need to, because enemy combatants don't have to be guilty of any crimes to be valid targets under IHL.
I guess I get both effects. Every now and then there is a post about something I'm actually expert in and the standard of the comments sometimes shocks me. It's hard to connect the two experiences.
It’s hard to believe that so recently, “serious” people would fund research of literal mumbo jumbo. By all means, the 90s was a different time epistemologically.
We aren’t immune to this today, far from it, though the hoaxes have become way more believable in my assessment.
It appears this was actually authorized by Congress.
“ In the FY 1991 Defense Authorization Act,
the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was identified as executive
agent for initiating a new program to investigate
parapsychological/ anomalous phenomena. A funding level of $2
million was authorized for DIA to undertake specific research and
other activities relative to this activity. Objectives of this
authorization were to enable a systematic and scientifically
sound approach to the R&D effort, to permit wider and more
systematic review of potential intelligence applications, and to
assess foreign developments in this area.”
It was taken serious enough to be funded for two decades starting in the 70s. Eventually it was terminated when the strategic pressure eased.
AIR was commissioned to look at the research and says in this [1]
“A three-component program involving basic research, operations, and foreign assessment has been in place for some time… beginning in the 1970s, it has conducted a program intended to investigate the application of one paranormal phenomenon — remote viewing, or the ability to describe locations one has not visited.”
“The AIR review found that remote viewing produced occasional hits that were statistically better than chance, but it remains unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to paranormal phenomena, and the laboratory conditions under which effects were seen do not generalize to real intelligence problems. The information provided by remote viewing was judged vague and ambiguous, making it difficult or impossible for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality and accuracy for actionable intelligence.”
Yeah pretty much this unfortunately. Imagine some person tasked and genuinely interested in helping the united states but they do it all with subterfuge which backfires more than it helps anything. Such a person must experience a lot of cognitive dissonance and would generally be susceptible to conspiracy theories such as this which only reinforces the cycle of meddling.
Another element that is ignored in all of this is: How much of this is really intended to be genuine research? The CIA is an intelligence agency, and misdirection is part of counter-intelligence.
Putting legitimate resources into a phony cause could be an effective way of leading an enemy astray, if you know they are intercepting or replicating the same research you're doing (or if you happen to " leak " details to them).
I'm not sure it's changed that much. Look at the work around the em drive. Or fusion power for that matter. I'm not saying we shouldn't be researching fusion, but all the fusion "startups" are essentially jokes, or more charitably, monuments to the unwarranted hubris of investment capital.
Congratulations, you're the new head of the Department of War. It's Day 1 in your new role.
An admiral walks in and sits down and tells you that he'd like some money to research some unidentified aircraft that are buzzing US Navy pilots. Shaped like "tic tacs", that seem to defy physical laws - they accelerate incredibly fast and seem to be able to move between air and water without damaging their structure, even at high-speed. They've been caught on camera multiple times, and pilots don't know what to make of them.
You ask what is this "mumbo jumbo", and whether he is "serious". He points out to you that if these aircraft are Russian or Chinese in origin, given there is no defence against them, they pose a major threat to national security and your refusal to take them seriously will not bode well for you in the annals of time if they do turn out to be a threat.
You agree to funding a small program to research further.
Then an Army General walks in. He wants $2m for a program to research "remote viewing" and "psychokinesis". You sit in awe as he explains: multiple independent laboratories have been able to conduct experiments that show Extra-Sensory Perception, Remote Viewing and Psychokinesis may be real despite not being explained by any current physical model. There is intelligence to suggest that Chinese and Russian militaries are investing in these techniques and the US military is not able to defend against them if they're real and exploited by adversaries, or for the USA to exploit them either, because they have no understanding of them.
You hand wave it away as "mumbo jumbo" and state this is not the work of "serious people". You demand a physical model to explain it before you invest.
You are reminded that there is no single physical model that explains the entirety of how an aircraft wing works, or how anaesthetics work, and that the only way such models are created is through scientific investigation. If after spending the $2m they're able to show such claims are baseless, that is a null result that has value in that it shows the Russians and Chinese are also not a threat to US National Security.
You are reminded that such techniques may pose a major threat to national security and your refusal to take them seriously will not bode well for you in the annals of time if they do turn out to be a threat.
You agree to funding a small program to research further.
And on it goes. It's Occam's razor - if you commit to the scientific method, you have to commit to it. If you are concerned there is a science and technology that others have and you don't, you need to figure out if there is value in you being able to obtain that science or technology, even if it sounds like "mumbo jumbo" today.
These weren't idiots, they weren't corrupt, they were asking for tiny slithers of money to figure out if Western Civilisation was about to collapse into the hands of a few people who asked more questions.
The Tylenol thing is one of the least crazy things he has believed in, at least it had some initial studies suggesting it. There’s no science at all in most of his beliefs.
It's perfectly rational to allocate a bit of money towards investigating unlikely phenomenon. In this case, it started around the 70s and it was believed that the Soviet Union was also doing research into paranormal effects, so even if people were skeptical it seems prudent to allocate funds and research if there's anything there.
This is terrible for normal people, and slightly bad for the investors, but only a crisis or organized government action can reset the damage done by decades of investment in already existing buildings.
The former is much more likely to happen.
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