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from the einstein-dismisses-india-scientists dept.
BBC:
Some academics at the annual Indian Science Congress dismissed the findings of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
Hindu mythology and religion-based theories have increasingly become part of the Indian Science Congress agenda.
But experts said remarks at this year's summit were especially ludicrous.
[...] The head of a southern Indian university cited an old Hindu text as proof that stem cell research was discovered in India thousands of years ago.
G Nageshwar Rao, vice chancellor of Andhra University, also said a demon king from the Hindu religious epic, Ramayana, had 24 types of aircraft and a network of landing strips in modern day Sri Lanka.
Another scientist from a university in the southern state of Tamil Nadu told conference attendees that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were both wrong and that gravitational waves should be renamed "Narendra Modi Waves" [Narendra Modi is the current Prime Minister of India].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:50AM (3 children)
The game of Monopoly is not real life. It is deliberately designed to be cutthroat. For example:
What's going on is a typical cut-throat game tactic. Play cooperative at first, so you aren't dogpiled by everyone else. Then when you're so far ahead that dogpiling won't work, win the game. That is always going to be pretty cut-throat in the end because nobody wants their game of Monopoly to last all night while stringing along the losers. The research is nonsense and says nothing about actual wealthy people who never stop needing cooperation and real life which is not a zero-sum game like Monopoly.
Because strategy stops working when one side has an advantage? And notice how aggressively they move those playing pieces and eat those pretzels!
Point is that there's a great system for finding and funding a large population of people who have demonstrated success in their area. Sure, there might be others, even many others, who could do the same, but are somehow slighted by the system. But those others have already failed a big test of fitness by not having mustered resources and power in the first place. How are you going to figure out who're the hidden producers in a supposedly better way without throwing too many resources on people who aren't?
Plus, your little Monopoly article just indicates to me that if we ever did find a better way to allocate resources than the already generous present, you would dish out that humble pie anyway. It's almost like you just hate successful people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:49AM (2 children)
>But those others have already failed a big test of fitness by not having mustered resources and power in the first place.
You would have a point, if not for the fact that the most overwhelmingly common source of those resources and power is not your own talents or efforts, but an inheritance from your parents.
That's not a test of fitness, it's a blood dynasty.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 11 2019, @04:37AM (1 child)
Suppose your assertion is true. You still have the matter that just because someone gets money from a relative doesn't mean that they keep the money.
And it's something that could be solved in a few generations by the older generation giving resources to the next generation. Then everyone has that common source of resources and power. Don't hold your breath for the majority of people who just aren't interested in that to start doing it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 11 2019, @03:39PM
>You still have the matter that just because someone gets money from a relative doesn't mean that they keep the money.
Right, they might be spectacularly incompetent and lose it all. Or spectacularly generous and give it all to good causes. It happens. Just like you occasionally get a Bill Gates that climbs from the working class into the wealthy elite.
But that's not the way to bet. If you're wealthy, it's a really good bet that your parents were wealthy. Same thing with poverty. And that means that all the clever minds born at the lower end of the social spectrum will tend to stagnate, while the mediocre ones at the top will tend to bungle on.
And no - I don't think it's an easily solved problem - but it *is* a major problem when capitalism is combined with inheritance - both in terms of social justice, and economic efficiency. The wealth in the hands of those mediocre minds would be leveraged much more effectively by some of the clever minds that will never see it.