Miscellaneous News

dingyibvs said:

To me the answer to why the Europeans industrialized first is rather simple. It's competition. China had no need to do so, it's been the pre-eminent power in its part of the world for millenia. When China was in prolonged period of chaos, plenty of inventions were made. Europe was in perpetual competition between its various nations, and that created the impetus to evolve. Necessity is the mother of all inventions, isn't it?

China saw the need to modernize 100 years or so ago, and it's now the preminent industrial power in the world. In many metrics it's also the preminent scientific power already, but that'll become more obvious within the next 10-20 years IMO. The competitive impetus is there, and the resources are getting there as well. If China does get to the top though, the competitive impetus will diminish, and that'll likely be when the fall of the current iteration of China will begin.

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Iracundus said:

That is the problem. It is the refusal to adjust views to fit reality, and instead a rejection of reality, and this kind of behavior seems to be seen even at an early age as demonstrated by my earlier post in this thread about that Danish student vs Chinese student competition. When the Danish students lost decisively, instead of reflecting on their failures and learning from them and doing better in the future, they (and their principal if I remember correctly) instead shifted the mental goalposts. They instead concluded that they had more fun so they were the "real" winners and that despite losing in the creativity contest, somehow they were still more creative (total denial of the results and reality).

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siegecrossbow said:

What’s up with the tactical vagene exposure?

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Petrolicious88 said:

Tesla sales down quarter after quarter. People are switching to hybrids instead of pure EVs. Tesla is in no position to execute expansion plans.

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vincent said:

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siegecrossbow said:

What’s up with the tactical vagene exposure?

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daifo said:

Some people celebrate too early too often...

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dingyibvs said:

What helps me to clear biases is to play a role reversal game. Say if I think the US is doing something unreasonable, I just try to think what if China did the same, or vice versa.

For this particular instance, one should ask that until the industrial revolution, what did the rest of the world invent that's on the magnitude of gunpowder, paper, etc.? The Europeans were the first to industrialize, and that seems to make some think that not only will they be the first to everything from that point onward, but they were primed to be the first to everything from the beginning of human history. Rather unsound logic, I'd say.

To me the answer to why the Europeans industrialized first is rather simple. It's competition. China had no need to do so, it's been the pre-eminent power in its part of the world for millenia. When China was in prolonged period of chaos, plenty of inventions were made. Europe was in perpetual competition between its various nations, and that created the impetus to evolve. Necessity is the mother of all inventions, isn't it?

China saw the need to modernize 100 years or so ago, and it's now the preminent industrial power in the world. In many metrics it's also the preminent scientific power already, but that'll become more obvious within the next 10-20 years IMO. The competitive impetus is there, and the resources are getting there as well. If China does get to the top though, the competitive impetus will diminish, and that'll likely be when the fall of the current iteration of China will begin.

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nemo said:

China's road to industrialization, technical, and scientific development was interrupted by Mongol and Manchurian Yuan and Qing. Essentially the decimation of elite arrested any scientific development, as anything that does not benefit subsistence will be accorded lower priority in the aftermath of looting and slavery. Industrialization suffered due to massive population and artisan loss. Technical development, especially military, was halted because these tribal minority dynasty wanted to preserve their military dominance. The really bad luck part is they happened sequentially -- technical superiority was lost after Sung, and technical backwardness happened after Ming.

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