Conservapedia: The funniest site in the world
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He's a neoreactionary, if that makes more sense.
Oh, yeah. Didn't realize this was Mencius Moldbug's blog. I've come across him before.
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neoreactionary
Oh, a “I want to turn the clock back to how I imagine things were and with me in charge this time” type person?
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Oh, a “I want to turn the clock back to how I imagine things were and with me in charge this time” type person?
That would be a conservative. Moldbug has some unorthodox proposals, but he appears to have actually studied some history, and not just the usual sources.
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That would be a conservative. Moldbug has some unorthodox proposals, but he appears to have actually studied some history, and not just the usual sources.
Maybe he does, but @dkf's description seems to fit the neoreactionary descriptions I found. Not unfiting for the original Jacobites, too.
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Interestingly enough, a key part of his proposal, namely decentralize and let people vote with their feet, was suggested by Robert Nozick back in the 70's.
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Maybe he does, but @dkf's description seems to fit the neoreactionary descriptions I found. Not unfiting for the original Jacobites, too.
If you really want to characterise progressives in a cruel way, accuse them of pursuing change for change's sake. That'll irritate them far more than waving around the term “socialist” or “liberal” because it's a lot closer to the truth.
(I mostly prefer that stuff that needs fixing get fixed, stuff that doesn't need fixing gets left alone, and that vigilance is maintained in case circumstances change. Which isn't really a conservative or progressive stance.)
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If you really want to characterise progressives in a cruel way, accuse them of pursuing change for change's sake. That'll irritate them far more than waving around the term “socialist” or “liberal” because it's a lot closer to the truth.
(I mostly prefer that stuff that needs fixing get fixed, stuff that doesn't need fixing gets left alone, and that vigilance is maintained in case circumstances change. Which isn't really a conservative or progressive stance.)
Yeah, politicos apparently cannot stand to wait for actual data to turn up, and instead change things at the slightest hint of "OMG SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED" without any understanding of why things actually went wrong, or what would actually fix the underlying problem(s). Bonus points if unreasonable-to-arbitrary deadlines are attached. Double bonus points if they make strict liability (i.e. no mens rea requirement) felonies in the process. Triple bonus points if said felony covers ordinary activity.
P.S. progressive = change for change's sake (no matter if it needed fixing or not, or if the proposed changes will fix anything or not), with an optional a side dish of neoliberal political-correctness-gone-wild. conservative = don't change what's clearly broken (unless its some "regulatory impediment" to their favorite megacorp, then party all over it), with an optional side dish of moral/religious (& governmental) authoritarianism gone wild.
P.P.S. just wait until a moneyed industry gets its tentacles deep within both sides.
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Yeah, politicos apparently cannot stand to wait for actual data to turn up, and instead change things at the slightest hint of "OMG SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED" without any understanding of why things actually went wrong, or what would actually fix the underlying problem(s).
It's the politician's fallacy:
We must do something. A is something. Therefore, we must do A.
@tarunik said:progressive = change for change's sake (no matter if it needed fixing or not, or if the proposed changes will fix anything or not), with an optional a side dish of neoliberal political-correctness-gone-wild. conservative = don't change what's clearly broken (unless its some "regulatory impediment" to their favorite megacorp, then party all over it), with an optional side dish of moral/religious (& governmental) authoritarianism gone wild.
I tend to regard the right as not being wholly conservative as such, nor the left as being wholly progressive. It's like they're also not strict on the authoritarian/liberal axis or the centralized/distributed axis. There's a great many different ways of evaluating politics, and that's why it can crop up in so many interesting ways. (It's why “left” and “right” are useful labels, right up there with “us” and “them”; it gets you more away from worrying about the exact brand of -ism they're banging on about now.)
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I tend to regard the right as not being wholly conservative as such, nor the left as being wholly progressive. It's like they're also not strict on the authoritarian/liberal axis or the centralized/distributed axis.
Yeah, people and the real world tend to defy simple categorizations.
It's why “left” and “right” are useful labels, right up there with “us” and “them”; it gets you more away from worrying about the exact brand of -ism they're banging on about now.
The important thing to remember is that "them" should be the first ones put up against the wall...
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You may like this one better:
I can't stand this stuff.
I get his point, but he is very contradictory.
At once saying liberalism is just as bad as conservatism, then turning around and saying conservatism is the result of uneducated and liberalism is the result of educated.
Liberalism is the result of people who share and communicate a single view of education in a scholaristic environment. It is not the only form of intellectualism and I'd even go so far to say that it is self-deluding.
Just because the ideas are shared on campus, doesn't mean the ideology is intellectually superior, and I think it's a major case of arrogance.
From my experience, the campus liberals can be just a plebeian as the small town red-neck hick who can't count. Often times they simply just regurgitate the information passed to them, only taking in from sources that do not challenge them to think differently.
I make it a point to challenge myself. To get the historical perspective. There's so much misinformation in liberal 'history', I don't see it as any better.
You often hear things like, "The UN formed Israel." when the truth is right there on liberal Wikipedia. If Israel is occupying Palestine, the US New England is occupying the US South.
The truth of the matter is far stranger than any single group would admit, and that's exactly why the federal government has so FEW enumerated powers. Differences in ideology should be resolved by the distinct autonomy of the states. We are a confederation of states, first and foremost. It's Lincoln's re-education that has us believing otherwise. The liberal 'history' even has Lincoln 'freeing' the slaves, when he's quoted as not caring about slaves or not. If slaves or not slaves keeps the union together, then so be it (paraphrased).
People need to get off their high horse and try to understand why people think differently, and suppose maybe, just maybe, we can create an environment through state autonomy where different concepts are shared.
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I get his point, but he is very contradictory.
At once saying liberalism is just as bad as conservatism, then turning around and saying conservatism is the result of uneducated and liberalism is the result of educated.
Just curious: how far did you get in the series before stopping? Most of the rest of your post actually agrees with Moldbug. One thing you may have missed from the series: the official term for what goes on in US colleges and universities is education, but that's not the most accurate term. The most accurate term is [spoiler]indoctrination[/spoiler]. So more of it is not necessarily a good thing and there's really no contradiction.
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If Israel is occupying Palestine, the US New England is occupying the US South.
Damn right it is!
But we won't be held down forever!
The South will rise again!
http://kiaspeaksalso.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ConfederateFlag.jpg
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the official term for what goes on in US colleges and universities is education, but that's not the most accurate term. The most accurate term is indoctrination. So more of it is not necessarily a good thing and there's really no contradiction.
you people went to some pretty effed up universities then.... I don't recall anything that leaned one way or the other in any of my classes. Granted, I went to an engineering school, there were barely any classes that involved things other than math, physics, or compsci theory. There was no time for political brainwashing. The friends I had seemed split pretty evenly between hardcore conservatives, liberals, and of course the one crazy retard anarchist.
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My comp sci and physics classes were pretty straightforward, but most of the general education classes were pure BS. I had a sociology class where the professor ranted day after day about how all President Bush did was snort cocaine in the White House. These were interspersed with his rants about how drugs should be legalized (wait, I thought cocaine was bad?) and he should know because he used to be a cop. To this day I still don't know what sociology is. I now associate the term with cocaine.
Also had a history class where the professor had some kind of anti-Bush Tourette's syndrome. He was literally (no, I'm not abusing literally here) unable to complete more than two or three sentences at a time without obligatory out-of-context Bush-bashing. It's fine that he has a political opinion and all that, but Bush had absolutely zero relevance to the French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, or War of 1812.
I won't even get into the literature class...I think I blocked most of that from my memory. Ugh. Can't believe I had to pay money for that one.
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STEM majors are granted an automatic immunity to the indoctrination because the stuff they do has to actually work. Where you'll see it is in the humanities, and it's not only the shitty schools, but even in the Ivies.
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STEM majors are granted an automatic immunity to the indoctrination because the stuff they do has to actually work.
For now. Don't think the idiot liberals don't wish they could indoctrinate STEM. If they could figure out a way to do it without making bridges fall down, they'd do it.
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For now. Don't think the idiot liberals don't wish they could indoctrinate STEM. If they could figure out a way to do it without making bridges fall down, they'd do it.
I think that's already in the works, but it's a long-term plan. When today's Common Core math students grow up and become engineers, that's when the bridges will start falling down.
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When today's Common Core math students grow up and become engineers, that's when the bridges will start falling down.
Common Core. Ugh. One of my cow-orkers was voxsplaining one of the new stupid things--it's a bizarro-style of division--and it enraged me.
For those who haven't seen it, it involves working more or less like regular long division, but you grab a random bunch of digits from the divisor and then try to come up with any old multiple of the dividend that's smaller than what you just picked. It's division for underachievers. At best, if you guess the best number at every step, it's no worse than regular long division, but it can easily involve twice as many steps...not counting that you have to add up all the intermediate results at the end. I told her that was outright stupid.
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For now. Don't think the idiot liberals don't wish they could indoctrinate STEM. If they could figure out a way to do it without making bridges fall down, they'd do it.
I'm sure it's only the "idiot liberals"
Sounds like the "genius conservatives" already got your school.
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I've no idea about this "common core" thing at all, but what you're describing sounds sort of like one of the division teaching methods I've seen, except your coworker appears to be retarded and doesn't know how it works at all. Maybe you should ask their kid how it works instead.
If it's anything like what I remember, the point of picking the "smaller random digits" is not to pick "random digits", but to cut multiples off your number for doing larger division, like say 420 / 3. You can do 42/3 = 10, so 420/3 = 100. You're not picking "random digits" unless you're a retard, you're picking the easy multiple of 10 out in order to do the division in your head instead of having to write it down as 3)420 and do manual long division.
That's an easy one, but try 25)800. Long division style, you would do 80/25 = 3, carry remainder and append the zero for 50/25 = 2 => 32
Or you could break it down to 8* (100 / 25) = 32 (which is actually what I would have done naturally in order to solve it in my head quickly).
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The way she explained it--which I backed up by a couple of Youtube videos, was more or less "think of a number fairly close to the dividend that you know is smaller." That sort of fits with what you're saying but it's a dumb way to teach kids. The standard method, to grab the smallest number of digits from the dividend that will yield a number larger than the divisor, and then calculating the largest multiple of the divisor smaller than the intermediate term, is the most efficient, because it requires the fewest amount of steps, and no addition afterwards of partial sums, and no half-assing around trying to estimate an intermediate number.
Remember, you're trying to teach kids the basics. You can teach them embellishments and shortcuts later, after they understand the concept. Determining the shortcuts the smartest kids derive, and then teaching those as the basic way to do it is a fool's errand.
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Remember, you're trying to teach kids the basics. You can teach them embellishments and shortcuts later, after they understand the concept. Determining the shortcuts the smartest kids derive, and then teaching those as the basic way to do it is a fool's errand.
QFT. Some of the Common Core stuff I've seen looks like quick shortcuts I've done in mental math for years to get approximate answers, but it's so bloated it's no longer quick or a shortcut. Young students need to memorize their times-tables before learning these ridiculously convoluted methods that take 20x as long.
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Young students need to memorize their times-tables before learning these ridiculously convoluted methods that take 20x as long.
I can't take anybody who says "times-tables" instead of "multiplication-tables" seriously. Where do you people come from? The deep South I guess? Is Geography class just banjo practice?
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I can't take anybody who says "times-tables" instead of "multiplication-tables" seriously. Where do you people come from? The deep South I guess? Is Geography class just banjo practice?
Well, I did live in South Carolina for most of third grade which is the first time I encountered multiplication.
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I can't take anybody who says "times-tables" instead of "multiplication-tables" seriously. Where do you people come from? The deep South I guess? Is Geography class just banjo practice?
It's still referred to as times-tables in the UK, @blakeyrat. The alliteration makes it stick in the brain more when referencing it. Though the amount of dumbing down of the curriculum here in recent years... shit.
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still
What do you mean "still"? It's ALWAYS been a multiplication table. We already have something called a "timetable", so a "times-table" is just fucking confusing.
Also, we all know British people only sound smart.
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I've no idea about this "common core" thing at all, but what you're describing sounds sort of like one of the division teaching methods I've seen, except your coworker appears to be retarded and doesn't know how it works at all.
The gist of the common core math stuff is that they seem to try to teach the shortcuts that people come up with for doing arithmetic. The problem is that the kids don't get the basics first, so the shortcuts don't make any sense. Even for people with the basics, the shortcuts don't necessarily make a lot of sense, since we all think a bit differently.
It's basically a big con to justify Ed schools, like so much that's gone on for the last 40 or 50 years.
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What do you mean "still"? It's ALWAYS been a multiplication table. We already have something called a "timetable", so a "times-table" is just fucking confusing.
Goddamnit people. Stop with the homophones already. The man can't handle words used in multiple ways. This is just becoming cruel now.
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Well, I did live in South Carolina for most of third grade which is the first time I encountered multiplication
starting multiplication in the 3rd grade in south carolina explains a lot about south carolina
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Better question: where did he live for second grade?
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The way she explained it--which I backed up by a couple of Youtube videos, was more or less "think of a number fairly close to the dividend that you know is smaller."
Well that way is flat wrong, and not the way I've seen it done. There should be no guessing involved. Either you knew an easy multiple off the top of your head, or you're supposed to do it the regular way because the shortcut isn't shorter if you didn't know it at first sight.
But then again, "guess and check" was a certain type of problem solving taught in the 4th - 6th grade here... I derived the algebraic equation to flat out solve "guess and check" problems and my 6th grade teacher had never even encountered such logic... so she had me try to teach the class the algebra.
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What do you mean "still"? It's ALWAYS been a multiplication table. We already have something called a "timetable", so a "times-table" is just fucking confusing.
Also, we all know British people only sound smart.
Yes, @blakeyrat I do indeed sound smart, you're right. The difference is, I can also back my shit up.
It's been called times-tables here since before I went to school and is still called that by people like the minister for education, though he's one of the people that I would classify in the 'only sounds smart' category since he wants to do bullshit like teach programming to under 10s to help boost STEM.
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I can't take anybody who says "times-tables" instead of "multiplication-tables" seriously.
Cry us a river.
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BTW, grew up in New England, went to Catholic school through 8th grade, still heard it called that.
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Better question: where did he live for second grade?
Nebraska. Is third grade late to start multiplication or something? Or are all y'all (<-- there, proof I lived in South Carolina for a bit
) trolling me?
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It's ALWAYS been a multiplication table. We already have something called a "timetable", so a "times-table" is just fucking confusing.
It's always been a multiplication table, and it's always been a times-table. AFAICR, the terms have always been used interchangeably, although I would consider "times-table" rather informal.
Blakey, if you understood what he meant, get over yourself. If not, congratulations, you learned something today.
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Is third grade late to start multiplication or something?
Multiplication started in 2nd grade for me, learning the 2x2 up to 12x12 multiplication table.
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Multiplication started in 2nd grade for me
Well, at home my parents started teaching it a year earlier, but school didn't start multiplying until grade 2.
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Hey, did anyone else play the multiplying game with their parents? One of us would state a pair of 2 digit numbers and then we'd race to see who could multiply the 2 numbers and get the answer quickest (this between ~4th to 6th grade).
Or maybe my family was just nerdy as all hell.
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Multiplication started in 2nd grade for me, learning the 2x2 up to 12x12 multiplication table.
Me, too (in school). That was in Southern California.
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What's 11×10?
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One short of eleventy-one.
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QFT. Some of the Common Core stuff I've seen looks like quick shortcuts I've done in mental math for years to get approximate answers, but it's so bloated it's no longer quick or a shortcut. Young students need to memorize their times-tables before learning these ridiculously convoluted methods that take 20x as long.
Ace has had a few good posts about common core math. Here's one prompted by Louis CK's anti-common core twitter rant:
http://minx.cc:1080/?post=348850
Sample:
@ace said:
Common Core needlessly complicates the simple. They complicate the simple, supposedly, to impart "number sense" to kids, to get them to understand not just that 9 +3 = 12, but why 9 + 3 =12.
That's a very ambitious goal.
I suppose we should ask this question, however: Given that teachers are currently failing in the less-ambitious goal of simply teaching that 9+3= 12, why do we believe they'll be better at the more-ambitious goal of teaching why 9+3 =12.
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Ace has had a few good posts about common core math.
Since you read Ace, you know where I got the idea that Common Core represents an inversion of teaching concepts, that they're trying to teach advanced techniques to kids instead of the basics.
These people keep thinking they can invent the New Soviet Man, I guess. Or else they just want a population of people who know just enough to work in a factory.
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I am sure enough since 11x10 = 110 in base 10 and 11x10 in base 2 = 3x2 = 6 = 110 after back and forth.
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I am sure enough
I believe you. You were much more assertive. Maybe @darkmatter thought @ben_lubar was playing Jeopardy. @aliceif probably knows.
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