So, how confident are you, personally, in the predictions of your favorite climate model?

Confident enough to put, say, fifty bucks on the line?

I get the impression you're confident enough to put the world economy on the line. If that's so, fifty bucks of your own money would seem like a reasonable thing to do.

Paul Ehrlich was willing to do so with a much larger amount. (The first time.)

Not just government central banks.

Ordinary counterfeiters also put money into circulation. And also, extraordinary counterfeiters. Like North Korea.

Perhaps North Korea could update the Fed about its operations, so the Fed could make appropriate adjustments to its own operations.

It would be in NKor's best interest to do this, so the home-made money it spends won't degrade in value on the world market.

(I'm only about 99% joking, here.)

"the measured temperatures are a nice validation that the models are in the right ballpark"

Well, within a factor of two. That's some ballpark.

If someone were trying to base public policy on a set of computer models which predicted changes in, say, IQ scores of black Americans, or academic success of women in STEM fields, and the predictions were off by a factor of two, how seriously would people take those models, or the people who came up with those models?

Their proponents would be laughed at by everyone who wasn't vilifying them.

According to Nat Silver in his book about prediction, it's surprisingly likely that a poker player with a good set of net winnings is mediocre. (I don't recall the numbers, but let's say it was 50-50 on skill, and 30%. Something like that.)

Chess is all skill. Matching pennies is all luck.

Poker is a lot closer to matching pennies than most people think, especially for some versions of the game.

Nope. Nobody in the military can vote. Only military veterans. (And that's hardly a guarantee of a pro-military attitude.)

Also, nope. "Society" and "Government" are not synonyms, despite what people keep assuming, and sometimes explicitly state. Not even in a republic.

Also, people in general were rather dismissive of the military, and choosing to enlist was considered a bad move in most social circles.

There are some good essays on the subject. James Gifford wrote the best, IMO. Don't recall who else. Searching turned up a few.

Heinlein himself wrote on it, but he apparently at times recalled what he meant to write, or thought he wrote, or wished he wrote. His comments don't always jibe with the book. (Gifford has details.)

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nature+of+service+in+heinlein%27s+starship+troopers+ (search that turned up Gifford's, and more)

http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf (Gifford's)

http://www.kentaurus.com/troopers.htm

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/articles/rahrahrah.html (Spider Robinson)

"Heinlein was a strong advocate for a military-based society"

Uh, no. You must be thinking of the movie, not the book.

Not novel. Short story.

So was "By His Bootstraps", a different definitive time-travel story by Heinlein. The sex was rather conventional, there.

Yes. Only theoretical communism. Theoretical communism is *great*.

Theoretical communism beats every other real-world alternative.

"I want to move to Theory. Everything works in theory."

When socialists (of all stripes) give up comparing their ideal version of society with the various real versions of society -- they won't be socialists any more.

If people quit using something as money because its value increases too much, they quit using it. ("The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.")

They quit buying stuff with it. They quit making loans in it. Instead they use something else. (Remember Zimbabwe?) It decreases in usefulness to Holland tulip bulb level.

Unless its use is mandated by a government, that is. But only terrible governments do that sort of thing. East Germany did. It's been common in Latin America for decades, here and there.

And of course, the US government.

This alleged "problem" of a general decrease in the price level, for prices stated in a currency, is a self-correcting problem, to the extent that it even *is* a problem for that currency.