definition of "socialism", which is: worker ownership of the means of production

Bzz, false. The dictionary definition of the term is:

a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies

See? No "worker ownership" — government ownership. Schools don't need to be owned by the teachers for public education to be socialist, they need to be owned by the government. And they are!

Same goes for retirement financing, and medicine for retires — with millions clamoring to expand it ("Medicare for all!!") — what GP enumerated. The "single-payer healthcare" — another euphemism — would be exactly that too.

Workers can own shares of their employers — indeed, Anthrophic employees do (and anticipate to profit handsomely). That's not socialism at all — not by the dictionary definition.

I blame the libertarians for making the definitions unclear

I blame you for pulling the definition from under your tail — and the morons upvoting you.

"anything the government does that benefits the people instead of corporations."

That's spelled "KKKorporation$". Make a note of it. Benefits the people, eh? The per-pupil spending nationwide went up (inflation-adjusted) from $9083 in 1989 to $13790 last year. And what did this expense buy us — the barely literate population unable to even define such terms as "socialism" correctly...

And they've adopted the word "democratic socialism"

The term (not "word"!!!) was adopted by "former" Communists, who've proudly elected a Senator some Congresswomen and, most recently, New York mayor. Who immediately proceeded to establish a government-owned supermarket.

some wondering if they were being picked on by President Trump

Seriously? "Some wondering" — and it is on front page... What a contrast to Trump's supporters accusations, his electoral win was stolen in 2020 — no, any time someone mentioned those, a bunch people would jump up to add: "unproven" and "without evidence".

It's also cascading down to the used phone market. I haven't bought a brand new top-line phone in 18 years because I'm not a heavy user. I buy used/refurbed models from 3-4 years ago and use them for 3-5 years. Typically I could get them for $150-$275 by timing a purchase with new-model release cycles, when early-adopters flood the market with castoffs, so the level 2 adopters upgrade to a used level 1, etc. This past Christmas season I considered upgrading, but there was noticeable across-the-board inflation. In 2026, purchasing some 2022/3 models in good condition were the same dollar amount as purchasing a 2021 model in 2022. And that doesn't even include the continuing US government devaluation of the dollar itself via uncontrolled debt spending.

AKA: mass layoffs.

AKA: people doing stuff, that does not need doing, having to find something else to do.

it is relieving workers of tedious old chores but creating new ones

Bot-sitting does not require as much attention as doing it myself requires. While the AI is handling the tedium, I can do something fun — both work-related and otherwise...

A co-worker next to me is doing cross-word puzzles, for example...

Apparently a *lot* of people on Slashdot are completely fooled by the CCP propaganda.

And some of them are CCP propaganda, using multiple "sockpuppets" to both post and moderate.

Decades earlier — during Vietnam war — USSR was financing all of "peace" movements in the West in particular, while attacking the "Capitalist way of life" in general. It'd be quite foolish for China to not be doing the same now. Even more foolish would be for us to not realize, that they do.

You mean like all those US voters that elected Trump in large part because of his "no wars" promises?

I don't know, what voters you're talking about. I voted for exactly the kind of aggressive stance Trump is showing, thank you very much. If anything, I'd like him to be still more aggressive — long years of appeasing foreign assholes have made them too confident, America's "red lines" can be ignored with impunity.

Looks like they lost control pretty quickly.

Do you seriously think, Chinese citizens have better control of their foreign policy? Or are you going to claim, America is "the same" or "just as bad"?..

How many American companies have ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex?

US military is controlled by American voters, such as myself. The rest of the world, make a choice already!

Thanks for the clarification. That was helpful. I now see that the contradiction I perceived was a parsing/wording issue, not an actual conflict over the underlying ideas represented by the wording.

Your first sentence is correct, on average.
I bolded the parts which I do not think are proven. I believe that the real explanation for those portions is a combination of sample bias and reversed correlation-causation error.

I think the only claims we could confidently make about this issue are:
-The mathematical mindset makes it easier to program (ie write procedural instructions which rely heavily on basic algebraic expressions, ie math).
-People who have a mathematical mindset are more likely to enter math/science schools in college.
-People who have a mathematical mindset are more likely to understand and succeed at math/science curriculum.
-People without a mathematical mindset are unlikely to pursue math/science beyond the bare minimum (college algebra), so not only will they lack the mathematical mindset, they also will never have reason to seriously engage with extended formal logic like proofs.
-People with a mathematical mindset will, through their own choices, be exposed to curriculum and situations where their existing mathematical mindset can be honed.

That is-- those with a higher capacity for mathematical reasoning will self-select into and persist to graduation/completion of situations where their capacity has been harnessed into functional skill.

However, the above statement does not at all mean that the mathematical mindset itself is being created/implanted by math/CS departments.

The person makes the degree. The degree doesn't make the person,
But we have to pretend it does, for ideological reasons.

Over the past 50 years we've seen the establishment of a socially-motivated (as opposed to factual/scientifically-informed) belief that "you can be anything you put your mind to" and theoretically every kid could get that CS degree if we give them enough support/funding/nutrition/affirmation/social services/parenting/intervention/accommodation. It's a really clumsy and poorly thought out but well-meaning, egalitarianism.

Unfortunately, being well-meant doesn't make something true. Human beings are NOT simplistic algorithms and do not behave in deterministic ways. Math reasoning is not the same as reading a history book and reasoning through a dialectic narrative. Exclusion runs counter to the modern social belief system, so people get nervous and start backing away if you were to make a statement like: "Mathematical reasoning is a trait possessed by a small subset of the population. We do not understand its origin. Some people have it and some don't. For those that have it, developing their skill through practice can give them access to specific career/salary advantages that are simply inaccessible to 90% of people, the same way no 5'9" man is going to be a starting Center or Forward on a successful NBA team. even if you had a blank check to give him world-class professional sport-specific coaching and general athletic training from age 8 onward. Indeed, it would be gross mismanagement of resources to pour that into him and expect him to succeed." Of course, the reason that statement makes keyboard warriors reach for their "Problematic Post Alert" button is because, unfortunately, it is chiefly brought up by people whose underlying beliefs are in fact problematic.

Not that it can't be believed, but that it should not be taken as definitive reality rather than temporary aberration.

Covid showed the huge fragility of most systems, but perhaps most frail was the process of learning.
We are now at the peak of a time interval during which nearly all college students are people who had their education and experiential development terribly disrupted right when they would be learning must-have foundations in logic, mathematics, and rhetoric. I would bet that even if we made no other changes from what we are doing today, 2022-2028 will turn out to have local minima in a wide variety of education performance metrics.

I have wondered how long until we see people wearing stickers/shirts that say, "NOTICE: You are currently under audio/video surveillance" the same way most retail stores have those posted at the entrances and throughout the store.

That claim does not seem supportable, as written.

1) It is not true that all businesses are private property. That is, the property may be privately owned, but retail businesses and the parking lots which are operating on private property are considered public spaces for all sorts of legal situations. Simply post a "no women allowed" sign in front of your store to find out just how legally private your business property is.

2) What do you mean by "right" in this context? If you pull out your device and start recording someone walking down the aisle at the grocery store, that person can not legally prevent you from doing so. That is, that person does not have a "right" to be free from being recorded there. They may choose to get the store owner involved. And the owner can tell you that they do not allow the use of recording devices on their property (other than their own recording devices), and that you need to stop recording or leave. If you refuse either option, when the police show up, any citation/arrest they enact will be for trespassing. It will not be for using your camera. In other words, you do in fact have a personal right to record your surroundings, including at a private business. However, you don't have a right to physically be on someone else's property if they've told you they do not want you to record while you are there.

The same way you have a right to believe in Allah and talk to people about Allah, but if you're walking around a grocery store preaching to people, the property owner can ask you to leave. If you refuse to leave, the owner can call the police and have you physically removed/barred from the property -- and during the entirety of your removal, citation or arrest, you continue to possess your full legal right to believe in a religion and practice religious speech.