Did you just say he's the bigger troll?

Sometimes, social scientists who are under pressure to publish, anything, no matter what, to increase their publication count, will propose stupid experiments, that don't cost much to do, do not measure any intrinsic behaviour of humanity, and can be modified trivially to generate alternative papers. The trick is to brainstorm and try out a lot of these, until the p-value finally fits.

Can altruism be monetized with youtube advertising revenue? Do Matt's OffRoad Reco ery (doing free off-road recoveries that normally cost thousands) and Matthew Parker (who does mobile repairs for free) point the way to altruistic real economy acts financed by virtual profits?

Sure â" here is the same response rewritten in **plain ASCII only** (no Unicode, no smart quotes, no special punctuation):

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The assumption that other countries are eager to replace the dollar misses a key point: reserve currency status is not a trophy, it is a trap. Switzerland actively resists it. China actively manages the yuan to avoid it. Once your currency globalizes, you lose monetary sovereignty to offshore markets, exactly like the Fed and the Eurodollar system.

So the idea that the world is rooting for a violent U.S. collapse in order to seize dollar dominance misunderstands both reserve currencies and how wary serious states actually are of that so-called "privilege".

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If you'd like, I can also make a shorter Slashdot-style version or a more confrontational one.

Investment is a tricky one.

I'd say that learning how to learn is probably the single-most valuable part of any degree, and anything that has any business calling itself a degree will make this a key aspect. And that, alone, makes a degree a good investment, as most people simply don't know how. They don't know where to look, how to look, how to tell what's useful, how to connect disparate research into something that could be used in a specific application, etc.

The actual specifics tend to be less important, as degree courses are well-behind the cutting edge and are necessarily grossly simplified because it's still really only crude foundational knowledge at this point. Students at undergraduate level simply don't know enough to know the truly interesting stuff.

And this is where it gets tricky. Because an undergraduate 4-year degree is aimed at producing thinkers. Those who want to do just the truly depressingly stupid stuff can get away with the 2 year courses. You do 4 years if you are actually serious about understanding. And, in all honesty, very few companies want entry-level who are competent at the craft, they want people who are fast and mindless. Nobody puts in four years of network theory or (Valhalla forbid) statistics for the purpose of being mindless. Not unless the stats destroyed their brain - which, to be honest, does happen.

Humanities does not make things easier. There would be a LOT of benefit in technical documentation to be written by folk who had some sort of command of the language they were using. Half the time, I'd accept stuff written by people who are merely passing acquaintances of the language. Vague awareness of there being a language would sometimes be an improvement. But that requires that people take a 2x4 to the usual cultural bias that you cannot be good at STEM and arts at the same time. (It's a particularly odd cultural bias, too, given how much Leonardo is held in high esteem and how neoclassical universities are either top or near-top in every country.)

So, yes, I'll agree a lot of degrees are useless for gaining employment and a lot of degrees for actually doing the work, but the overlap between these two is vague at times.

Well, I can see that you never made that experience. I have.

Indeed. People with a good education have _options_. And that means they do not have to take crap. Obviously, quite a few assholes do not like to have that type of person around.

It really depends. As degrees in the US are a big business, there are many worthless degrees and many that you can get easily, making them worthless if you did it the easy way.

Funny thing. The largest private (i.e. for profit) University in Germany currently has problems because many students find the degrees are not valuable and they do not learn a lot. No such problems with the regular ones. I think commercial education is just broken because of perverted incentives.

Getting a degree does not absolve you from really learning and being good at things. I think a significant pert of the people with degrees that have trouble finding jobs did select "easy" ones or took it wayyyy to easy getting them. Commercial "education" will make that easy, but you waste your time and money that way.

I know you are, but what am I?

Because people without degrees are often just envious.

I routinely ask my part-time students why they chose to get that degree after all. It is "need more skills for my job", "no career options without that degree" and sometimes "I really want to know more about things". This mostly students that are interested in IT security though, no idea how representative that is.

The degree isn't about "getting a high-paid job", it's about knowing what the hell you're doing once you get a job. Although, fair enough, it's quite plausible that not many degrees would meet that standard either.

There is a possibility of a short-circuit causing an engine shutdown. Apparently, there is a known fault whereby a short can result in the FADEC "fail-safing" to engine shutdown, and this is one of the competing theories as the wiring apparently runs near a number of points in the aircraft with water (which is a really odd design choice).

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that (a) the wiring actually runs there (the wiring block diagrams are easy to find, but block diagrams don't show actual wiring paths), (b) that there is anything to indicate that water could reach such wiring in a way that could cause a short, or (c) that it actually did so. I don't have that kind of information.

All I can tell you, at this point, is that aviation experts are saying that a short at such a location would cause an engine shutdown and that Boeing was aware of this risk.

I will leave it to the experts to debate why they're using electrical signalling (it's slower than fibre, heavier than fibre, can corrode, and can short) and whether the FADEC fail-safes are all that safe or just plain stupid. For a start, they get paid to shout at each other, and they actually know what specifics to shout at each other about.

But, if the claims are remotely accurate, then there were a number of well-known flaws in the design and I'm sure Boeing will just love to answer questions on why these weren't addressed. The problem being, of course, is that none of us know which of said claims are indeed remotely accurate, and that makes it easy for air crash investigators to go easy on manufacturers.

You don't go far enough. Fighting and control to what end? Much of the fighting is sheer competition to grab more. More land and resources, to support more children. As for fighting, no, most people have the sense not to willingly risk their lives in deadly combat. Most would rather move into empty lands, or failing that, clear out the current occupants through genocide. If easy genocide is not possible either because the occupants can and will fight back, some will choose war, but only if it looks easy.

Religion is rather orthogonal to this. Been used as much or more to justify fighting as to discourage fighting.

Ah, so "stupid" is what you are going for. Gotcha.