This is a pleasant fiction.

You know, that actually makes sense. 14-year-olds. It would explain a lot about hexbears.

There’s nothing ironic about it at all.

Yes, you are basically describing Hobbes’ “Leviathan.”

Good. I appreciate the lack of condescension. I still think you are wrongheaded in your analysis, but I am happy to cordially disagree with you while not infantilizing your arguments.

As for China, I think what’s notable is that it was able to use command capitalism to achieve its admittedly phenomenal economic success specifically on the back of capitalism.

But now China is facing demographic collapse together with a collapse of its real estate market.

It’s in the rest of the world’s interest to mitigate China’s coming economic difficulties as much as we can, but there’s only so much we can do for an economy built on a house of cards.

Mark my words; China is in deep shit economically, and it will be a huge deal in the coming years.

And your point is?

Unpopular opinion time; the US already uses metric/Celsius where it matters; in science, engineering and the military. Where it doesn’t matter, we use a weird hybrid system that makes intuitive sense to us and is accordingly perfectly functional and doesn’t need to be changed.

Yeah, sure I did. You are a liar and an intellectual coward.

We understand perfectly, we just think it’s bullshit. All of the countries that are consistently ranked as providing the best quality of life for their citizens share a suite of features, none of which are communism. No amount of condescension on your part will change this.

With very few exceptions this entire thread is pure amateur hour bullshit.

It was good when it had only a few hundred thousand users, but obviously you weren’t there.

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that the US is a good example of a well balanced economy.

You won’t be prepared for the exam unless you actually do the work ahead of time. That may not be immediately true in middle school, but it’s definitely true by the time you get to upper division undergrad coursework, at least if you’re in a competitive program. You really are only selling yourself short in terms of being competitive at the next level.

This is even more true in grad school where you are expected to produce twice as much in half the time.

Ok, so hand copy all your assignments from ChatGPT all semester and I, the instructor, will count them as 50 percent of your final grade. The other 50 percent is based on a hand-written final essay written in class. How do you think you will do?

I am old so all of my formal university education was completed decades ago, but people cheated back then too and in my experience it’s usually way more effort than it’s worth as opposed to just doing the work and coming out with the skills you’ll need to be successful at the next level.

That’s my dreary little bit of moralizing for the day.

They would almost certainly make accommodations. I saw many such examples throughout my years of schooling.

You aren’t wrong, in part at least, but I guarantee you that the person who doesn’t have to set this thing up because they can quickly process information and produce compelling content on their own, without the aid of an LLM, will have a cognitive and competitive advantage in life. This may not be obvious when you are young and still in school.

I didn’t get “convinced there are so many bots around,” you absolute idiot. My point was only that if and when idiots like you use talking points that are identical to those coming out of Putin’s Kremlin, people can be forgiven for mistaking you for a bot.

What part about this do you not understand? How can I dumb it down enough for you?

OK, and your point is? I still don’t get it.

Yes, your tastebuds become “jaded.” It’s part of why little kids don’t tend to like any spiciness at all.

Peppers actually originated in the new world. They do not grow well at higher latitudes and are an excellent way of disguising the taste of slightly spoiled food, which is much more of a problem in the tropics.