Posts Tagged ‘not the cognitive elite’

Technological decline

Friday, July 6th, 2018

As societies enter a dark age, military technologies are apt to be the last to be lost, and in the recovery from a dark age, the first to advance.

In dark ages, art declines, great buildings decline, ordinary people’s living standards decline, people harrow the ground with stones tied to bits of wood instead of iron plows, but weapons technology usually goes right on improving.

Our art is crap, we no longer build Cathedrals, but until recently, weapons were good and improving.

The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review has recently appeared, revealing that we have lost all nuclear military technology:

U.S. production of tritium, a critical strategic material for nuclear weapons, is now insufficient to meet the forthcoming U.S. nuclear force sustainment demands, or to hedge against unforeseen developments. Programs are planned, but not yet fully funded, to ease these critical production shortfalls.

This is euphemistic.  Recent attempts to produce tritium were fully funded, but failed, which failure resulted in new plans for new attempts to produce tritium, which have not yet been fully funded.

I have regularly remarked on America’s inability to produce tritium.  All existing nuclear weapons require tritium to juice their detonation, and without tritium, would produce a low yield explosion.  Tritium decays over time, and so fresh tritium continually needs to be added.  The US is out of tritium, has repeatedly attempted to produce more, and repeatedly failed.

Fully funding the Obamacare website did not produce an Obamacare website, and I doubt that fully funding proposed new tritium production facilities will produce tritium.

In the absence of sustained support for these programs, including a marked increase in the planned production of tritium in the next few years, our nuclear capabilities will inevitably atrophy and degrade below requirements.

The U.S. is also unable to produce or process a number of other critical materials, including lithium and enriched uranium. For instance, the United States largely relies on dismantling retired warheads to recover lithium to sustain and produce deployable warheads. This may be inadequate to support the nuclear force replacement program and any supplements to it.

So, our enrichment facilities have ceased to function across the board.

And, recapping my previous remarks on technological decline:

Fighter planes are getting slower, and can no longer fly as high or as far.

We need Pu238 for nuclear batteries. The 2006 New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt was launched without enough Pu238 to keep all its equipment live during the Pluto flyby, and without enough Pu238 to do its Kuiper belt mission,

Existing nuclear weapons have not received maintenance for a very long time, and it is unclear whether there is anyone with the relevant skills to perform maintenance and adequately test them for readiness.

Fusion weapons require lithium enriched in lithium six to juice them.  Enriched lithium does not decay, but the US has lost the capability to make more of it.

Attempts to build new nuclear reactors in the US keep running into indefinite delays.  To make significant amounts of plutonium 239  will need new reactors.

Plutonium 239 is the stuff used in nuclear weapons, plutonium 238 the stuff used in nuclear batteries, plutonium 240 is the stuff you don’t want because it spontaneously fissions.  You want to produce your plutonium using enriched uranium in a sodium cooled fast neutron reactor because then you get considerably more of the plutonium you want, and considerably less of the plutonium you do not want.  The US used to build fast neutron reactors, but all recent attempts to build a fast neutron reactor in the west have failed, and all existing fast neutron reactors in the West have stopped working.  The only existing fast neutron reactors that are working well enough to produce significant amounts of plutonium are in Russia and China.

If all existing fast neutron reactors have ceased to work, if all our existing isotopic enrichment plants have ceased to work, should we really believe that our existing nuclear weapons will work?

Money, “full funding”, is unlikely to be the issue.  Obama threw stupendous amounts of money at the Obamacare website, and the site did not come up.   It only came up when a conspicuously undiverse team of white and east Asian heterosexual males led by white heterosexual males took over the job.

Nuclear weapons were produced by western civilization, and since 1972 the core project of our universities has been “Western Civilization has got to go.”

Science requires a level of trust and trustworthiness that a diverse society is incapable of, and a level of truth speaking that a progressive post christian society is incapable of.

 

Technological decay

Sunday, December 6th, 2015

I have long argued, and commenters on this blog have long been disputed, that science died shortly after World War II, replaced by official state religion wearing lab coats as priestly robes, and using test tubes as aspersoria for holy water.

The age of science began with the Restoration and the Royal Society.  The Royal Society’s motto was “Take no one’s word for it”.   Feynman, in his address “What is Science?”, rephrased this as “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” Now, however science consists of taking the word of secret anonymous committees meeting behind closed doors, committees that refuse to show their evidence, data, calculations, and method of calculation even while demanding trillion dollar programs, gigantic human sacrifice, and challenged by freedom of information requests.

I have long argued, and commenters on this blog have long been disputed, that since 1972, the west has been in technological stagnation or outright decline in most everyday fields, in an ever increasing number of fields. Yes, DNA reading and computer disk drives keep improving, but clothes washing machines have gone to $#!&, and there is a reason why people are nostalgic for the old muscle cars.

Observe our ability to build and operate tall buildings has been diminishing since 1972.

The highest level of technology is found in war. Soldiers are to take control of or destroy men and assets. Tanks, artillery, mortars and Armored Personnel carriers are to destroy soldiers. Ground attack planes and helicopters are to destroy tanks and armored personnel carriers, and air to air fighters are to destroy ground attack planes, and other air to air fighters.

So the highest level of technology, and the greatest expense, is found in the air to air fighter. A people’s capability to build and operate air to air fighters is the most sensitive barometer of its technological level, and a vital factor in that people’s capacity to win wars. You get air superiority, so the other side cannot use tanks against your soldiers, and you can use tanks against their soldiers, and artillery against their population centers and assets. You flatten their population centers and destroy their assets so that they cannot feed and equip their soldiers, and then your soldiers take charge.

And as you know, American air to air fighters have been getting slower and slower, more and more expensive, less and less maneuverable, flying less and less high, and carrying less and less ordinance. But now they are stealthed, right?  And Russian fighters are not stealthed.

Stealth can be beaten by sufficiently advanced electronics – you need two radars in substantially different locations whose radar is coordinated – one paints the target with a radar beam, and the other views the scatter from a substantially different angle. In response to the Turkish attack Russia now has part of the technology to beat stealth deployed in Syria: AEASA radars that can spray beams out in several thousand completely different directions per second. Does it have all of the technology deployed? Does it have the capability to coordinate two AEASA radars so as to see through stealth? Maybe. Probably. Though we will not really know until we see a major air battle between Russia and another advanced power.

Further Russian air to air fighters can fly faster, fly higher, are more maneuverable, and carry more ordinance than American air to air fighters. The recent display of Russian capability in Syria seems to be giving the Pentagon a nervous breakdown.  The Su-34 is every way superior, except for the very important defect that it lacks stealth.

When Dubai wants to build a tall building, it hires western experts. But those western experts are expatriates, semi permanent exiles from the west. They have foreign wives, girlfriends, and concubines. They don’t build tall buildings in the West because a horde of bureaucrats would shake them down for bribes (politely laundered through “consultants”, aka bagmen) and because they could not get any decent pussy in the west.

Our increasingly diverse ruling elite loses cohesion, in part through diversity, in part through selecting for cowards and liars. Because of this loss of cohesion, if you want to build a tall building in the west, you have to bribe a thousand priestly bureaucrats (whose self justifications are increasingly priestly – mostly they are protecting Gaia) and each of these thousand bureaucrats wants his pet consultant to collect ten percent of the surplus value that would be created by the building, adding up to a demand for one hundred times the value, while the King of Dubai is likely to content himself with a mere fifty percent of the value.

Hillary and the decline of the elite.

Friday, September 11th, 2015

Bill Clinton was a truly great politician. He could embrace you and steal your wallet, embrace your wife and fuck your wife, and you would still somehow like him.

Hillary Clinton is the drunken dumb heiress bitch Bill Clinton married to fund his initial entry into politics. She is now big fat drunken carpet munching dumb bitch. Bill Clinton is a very good liar, an extraordinarily good liar. Hillary Clinton is a terrible liar. Whenever something bad happens in her vicinity, she goes into damage control mode which immediately leads everyone to assume that she deliberately caused that bad thing. Nothing stuck to Bill. Everything sticks to Hillary.

Bill Clinton was a very good politician. Hillary Clinton is hopelessly incompetent, and particularly bad at politics.

So why is the Cathedral preparing to enthrone Clinton the Second?

Answer: The Cathedral is stupid and getting stupider, in part because everyone is required to believe ever sillier things with ever greater sincerity.

Firing Kathleen Sebelius

Sunday, April 13th, 2014

Everyone involved in the disastrous rollout of the disastrous Obamacare website has been fired or has had something horribly bad happen to their careers, from Human Health and Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius downwards. It turns out that people working for the government, like people with tenure, can be punished by the left, though not by the right.

If ever the right should try to fire people, see my post on how to fire big bird.

The website was fixed by “the tech surge” – fixed by white males organized in teams that showed very little interest in providing a supportive environment for women and people of color. The screw up was primarily female. Being PC, they had women work on a website and of course the website did not work. Men had to come in and take over.  (more…)

mens rea

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

I have been arguing that social decay is ending technological and scientific progress.  In most areas it has strikingly slowed, in some areas, going backwards in the west, as we forget how to do what once we could do.  Others, however, argue that technological and scientific progress is still running hot, or that if it has slowed, it is that we ran out of low hanging fruit.

But a big tell is that people are lying about it. The lie indicates not only failure, but that the failure is shameful – that the failure is in us, not in external circumstances.  That we are lying about it shows the failure is social decay. (more…)

Not the cognitive elite

Sunday, July 29th, 2012

Government has accomplished some mighty impressive things, the most impressive being the Manhattan project (nuclear bombs and nuclear energy), and the second most impressive being the landing on the moon.

After Hiroshima, and before the moon landing, people said “Why don’t we (meaning government) have a Manhattan project to do X”

After the landing on the moon, people said “If we (meaning government) can put a man on the moon, why cannot we do X”

Well guess what, boys and girls.  Today we can’t put a man on the moon. (more…)

Not the cognitive elite

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

The immensely well paid staff of the World Bank issued a pile of nonsense about European financial problems in which they kept calling a positive feedback loop a negative feedback loop. Obama’s speechwriters issued an equally stupid speech to their black mascot in which they called the Falkland Islands the Maldives. (more…)

Why the elite is dumb and getting dumber

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

When recruiting people for administration, administrators very reasonably look for past experience on the administration track. To him that has shall be given, to him that has not, even what little he has shall be taken away. However success at the lowest levels of the administration track is at best a poor indicator of intelligence, and in government, and in large schlerotic organizations choked on red tape, is a strong negative indicator of intelligence. Dumb people thrive in an environment where there are lots of committees, and lots of time is spent attending meetings.

This is a big problem with businesses that are immune from market pressures, businesses that like General Motors are too big to fail, with universities, and of course, with the biggest business of them all:  Government.  Professors of resentment studies are stupid.  Government employees in management positions in the governing apparatus are really stupid, and are even more fireproof than professors of resentment studies.

Three cases that should be studied: The Challenger disaster, Washington Mutual, and Countrywide, where demonstrably stupid people were given power, catastrophically fouled up, and got into trouble for so doing.  These are not the most stupid people of course, they are just the most stupid people doing stuff where stupidity can get you into trouble.  In most areas of government, stupidity, such as letting the 9/11 hijackers do obviously suspicious stuff, will get you promoted.  And no one can foul up resentment studies, even when resentment coursework leads to race hate gang rapes on campus.  Recall that the Major Hasan case was supposedly not a tragedy because Hasan murdered a bunch of people.  It was supposedly a tragedy because it might cause people to doubt that affirmative actioning Muslims into militarily sensitive positions of power was a good idea. (more…)

What the DenialGate fake reveals about warmists

Friday, February 24th, 2012

Peter Gleik phished some genuine files from the Heartland Institute.  The files revealed what everyone knows,  what no one has ever denied, and what the Heartland Institute has frequently announced:  That the Heartland Institute is funding science that is skeptical of global warming, though its funding is ludicrously tiny, while Peter Gleik received half a million dollars to attack skeptics and help the warming cause.

He then created what he probably considered to be a truthful  summary of these files and fraudulently attributed his summary to the Heartland Institute.  Doubtless he thought of the summary as fake but accurate. The summary, however, is written from within the left worldview, not from the Heartland Institute worldview. It contained numerous tells, lines that gave away its true authorship, among them its description of Gleik as a climate scientist, rather than a political activist, and gave away much about the minds of leftists. (more…)

Murray refuted

Monday, February 13th, 2012

I found Murray’s major theses in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, hard to believe, in particular, that the elite is sexually well behaved. (more…)