Making better humans, or rather, making less-bad ones

[garbon]

The 21st century will favor the feminine over the masculine.  This is, by and large, a good thing, but the transition will be miserable.

Proof of this assertion? And what sort of timeline are you looking at for such a shift to occur?

Mass-army warfare is gone, so we don't need men for that.  Construction and agriculture are largely mechanized, so we don't need men for that.  Our current society disapproves strongly of violence-based hierarchies, so we don't need men for that.  It still loves status-based hierarchies, but that's where women shine.

Oh so nothing then.

[crazy canuck]

She should be encouraged to make the right choice.  By tall blonde blue-eyed men, obviously, JACOB.

Jacob's wife doesn't need my advice.

[Ideologue]

America's Future Leaders:

Well, sometimes I joke, because I like to have fun.  I am coming to realize that some of my positions are extreme enough that I'm susceptible to Poe's law.  I'll try to make it clear when I'm kidding.  That said, overall, STEM outcomes are better than LA outcomes.  Further, there are underlying reasons that history/English/etc. do not provide ROI at the same rates, and a big one is that they don't provide special skills--reading, writing, and research are not special skills.  I think my classification of them as hobbies for most, careers for few (almost exclusively schoolteachers), is largely accurate.

However, when you talk about the actual arts--graphic design, music, film, dance--you are talking about special skills.  Even if talent is missing, you at least come out with some technical expertise.  And I'd suspect that the ROI on these fields is higher, because they offer something to the market.  They're not going to build bridges or make vaccines, but those programs are in comparison far, far more useful.  They're also more expensive.  English and history--like law--require books and rooms.  That sound you hear of a cash register opening is a metaphor.

Happy People Science:

The impact is on the child themselves.  Even if the state winds up spending a million bucks with no return, the most egregious suffering belongs to the kid.  Since they are not an extant human life from conception till (let's say for simplicity's sake) birth, avoiding that suffering does not in any sense impinge on a non-extant person's rights to exist.  It's a neat trick: the worst you can do to a non-extant person is stop them from being alive; you can do so much worse to a living human being it isn't funny.

Regarding tests for "impulsiveness" and the like--my hypothetical assumed the technological capacity to test for it.  And, of course, it's coming, so it's not just "intellectual masturbation" or whatever you called it.  And yes, "impulsiveness" is way genetic.

I think Peter Dinklage is a pretty good actor.  I have decided it best not to play into this kind of rhetorical gambit: Dinklage is.  He's beyond the ambit of the discussion.  The only person who can decide whether Dinklage should have been aborted or not is him.  This is, however, not the case for people who do not have brains yet--at that point, they are just material, to be molded, shaped, or discarded based on our best knowledge and practices, without sentiment.

So let's posit this: a couple faces the prospect of their new born child having conditions that will likely result in the child being confined to a wheelchair for life, reaching a maximum level of intelligence to that of a 6 year old, and with assorted other problems. What incentives do you possibly think the state - and the rest of society - could possibly provide that compare to the irrevocably life-altering experience of committing to taking care of this child?

Education is the key part: a shift in the values away from the Judeo-Christian "life" to a materialist "quality of life."  Depending upon the amount of pain experienced by the person over the child's lifetime, it's possible it edges into outright abuse.  I don't know if it should be a crime, but it is certainly a sin.

Riddle me this: what is morally different with creating a life that you know will be torturous, and kicking an infant in the head until it has brain damage?

[MadImmortalMan]

Mass-army warfare is gone, so we don't need men for that.  Construction and agriculture are largely mechanized, so we don't need men for that.  Our current society disapproves strongly of violence-based hierarchies, so we don't need men for that.  It still loves status-based hierarchies, but that's where women shine.

We'll still need lots of cops to give out thousand dollar fines and beat up black people.

[Ideologue]

Mass-army warfare is gone, so we don't need men for that.  Construction and agriculture are largely mechanized, so we don't need men for that.  Our current society disapproves strongly of violence-based hierarchies, so we don't need men for that.  It still loves status-based hierarchies, but that's where women shine.

We'll still need lots of cops to give out thousand dollar fines and beat up black people.

Nah.  Robots can already tell the difference between light and dark.

[Ed Anger]

Build your own goddamned ports and ship your own oil, dammit.

We are trying.

Try harder.

[crazy canuck]

Build your own goddamned ports and ship your own oil, dammit.

We are trying.

Try harder.

Agreed.  Ideally the Keystone pipeline will be delayed long enough that it wont be needed any longer and all our oil can go to more profitable markets.  Win win right?

[Ed Anger]

Send us Swiss Chalet. I need a Boston Market replacement. My words are backed with Nuclear Weapons.

[dps]

Education is the key part: a shift in the values away from the Judeo-Christian "life" to a materialist "quality of life." 

That's really the key to your whole socio-political outlook, isn't it--at heart, you want the state to impose your values on everyone else.

[Ideologue]

Of course.  That's true of everybody.

You think libertarians don't?

[CountDeMoney]

Agreed.  Ideally the Keystone pipeline will be delayed long enough that it wont be needed any longer and all our oil can go to more profitable markets.  Win win right?

It springs a leak in Oklahoma, I don't see any of you fuckers coming down with a bottle of Dawn and a roll of paper towels to clean it up. 

[Berkut]

Agreed.  Ideally the Keystone pipeline will be delayed long enough that it wont be needed any longer and all our oil can go to more profitable markets.  Win win right?

It springs a leak in Oklahoma, I don't see any of you fuckers coming down with a bottle of Dawn and a roll of paper towels to clean it up. 

...says the guy driving a gas guzzler. I don't see any of you fuckers giving up driving so that we won't need that oil.

[Ideologue]

I drive a Camry.

[MadImmortalMan]

Agreed.  Ideally the Keystone pipeline will be delayed long enough that it wont be needed any longer and all our oil can go to more profitable markets.  Win win right?

It springs a leak in Oklahoma, I don't see any of you fuckers coming down with a bottle of Dawn and a roll of paper towels to clean it up.

Still safer than hauling it in Warren Buffett's rail cars. You going down with the Dawn for the next derailment?

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Well, there are certain potentially universal things we can say about STEM vs. TLA.  One is that most economies can, in general, only absorb as many degree-holders within any given field as there is demand for the skills conferred, reflected, or signaled by that degree.  Therefore, if the field of history offers 100,000 jobs, producing 200,000 history majors seems like a bad idea, and this can possibly be applied universally.  Even if those skills are valued outside the field, it is still generally better that training be undertaken outside that field, and in the fields that are underserved.  It's like--and this is a reductionist anaology--if you make 200,000 widgets for an order of 100,000, and eventually sell off the surplus in a hundred smaller orders over the course of ten years, you'd still probably have been better off using the same productive resources to make 100,000 nails, which you could've sold immediately.  And the widgets, if they were sentient and valued finding a place where they belonged, would probably feel the same way, and wish they'd been made nails instead.

University education is not vocational education.  You do not get a degree just so you can slot into a job with a similar name as the degree.  The even if the "field of history" is restricted to history degree holders, history degree holders are not.  People are not widgets that are produced and forever frozen in a certain form.  Yes, many companies get anal about what type of degree you have, but many are only interested in you having a degree and the necessary skills.  Skills development is only partially related to university-level studies.

Stop complaining about how all these STEM kids have it so good and do something about it: build some STEM skills yourself.