[–] 4 points 4 months ago

That is not building an alternative though. You are only destroying the current system by shooting the execs and are merely hoping that things improve.

It could be argued that a sustained campaign of murders where the selection criteria was known to be "execs who exhibit this behaviour" would have effects beyond the murders themselves.

Less "hope" and more "a plan".

Not necessarily a good one, but a plan nonetheless.

Building an alternative would be some way of dealing with sewage without dumping it on the beach. The main problem with that are usually combined pipes for rain water and sewage. So when you have heavy rain the sewage plant can no longer deal with all the sewage, as a lot of it is just rain water. The alternative for that is something like a sponge city, where the rain water goes straight into the ground and is not blocked by asphalt or the like. Other then that lowering sewage going to the company using say compost toilets might work or maybe buying up the company and turn it into a cooperative.

That is a well thought out list of potential strategies.

And none of it matters to the companies dumping the sewage, unless it's going to be more profitable for them to adopt one of those strategies.

Alternatives to dumping raw sewage already exist, dumping it is more profitable, even with the added cost of buying the political influence to get laws changed.

I'm absolutely not saying we don't do all or some of these things, it does make a difference , but we need to acknowledge that it's fighting an uphill battle against an entrenched system with goals that are usually diametrically opposed to allowing this kind of thing to succeed.

And make decisions accordingly.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I agree that there is no universally accepted general definition of intelligence , there are some very specific subset that can be somewhat reliably measured but that's not even close to a general score.

    Standardised tests measure the ability to pass the tests, last i checked it was mostly rote memorization more than applications of skills learned. ( my info could be out of date or incorrect on this )

    When scores are lower is doesn’t mean the students are dumber. It means the school system is failing to teach.

    That's not strictly true and it's also not a mutually exclusive scenario.

    For a given metric of "dumbness" it is possible for it to go up and down independent of school teaching standards and approaches. or even a combination of the teachings standards + some other things

    Also if you are going to argue that perceived "dumbness" can only be attributed to failing to teach , that assumes a usable metric for "dumbness" that can be measured.

    I'm mostly agreeing with your points, i'm just not seeing how "can't measure smartness" and "smartness can only be falling due to teaching failures" can be posited simultaneously.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    You can not measure intelligence as it is an abstract concept that doesn’t have a clear definition to begin with. Even if you could, there is zero possibility of it changing in a meaningful way as humans are still humans.

    You are arguing against yourself here, if it's fundamentally not possible to measure it then speculation around what a measured value could and could not be used for is useless, especially in such absolutist terms.

    If it is measurable then variation could and would exist, based on the external interactions with whatever phenomenon would affect this variable.

    With the exception, of course, of it being some fundamental constant, which would be unusual in a scientific sense.

    The rest i mostly agree with, though i might move around the cause and effect a bit on some of those, but it doesn't really change the outcome.

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