This is why education used to start with rote memorization.
Functional intelligence isn't abstract, it is based on useful information you can quickly recall.
They don't mention this, but one major reason for this is to validate claims of family units and prevent trafficking.
This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other then nebulous claims. Yes, DNA is like finger printing someone, which is routinely done for arrests, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of family relations, which is at the heart of many ICE concerns.
They don't mention this, but one major reason for apartheid's Bantustan policy was to recognize distinct homelands and preserve cultural communities. This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other than nebulous claims. Yes, assigning people to ethnic homelands is like any other government record-keeping, which is routinely done, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of separate national identities, which was at the heart of many apartheid concerns.
A sibling comment mentions that playing devils advocate is strongly encouraged on this site, so I want to raise a question: what if a person does not want to establish their family relationship for whatever reason?
You realize that what you're commenting on (playing devil's advocate) is strongly encouraged by this site right? People are constantly "steel manning" stupid shit like this here. It's almost a sport.
Apartheid was bad. Immigration enforcement isn't bad... it's what alot of people want. These people feel as if they are (in part, collective) owners of the country, and owning it they want to exclude people who do not own it.
The same way, I might add, that you or I want to exclude squatters from our homes, and the same way (I assume) most of us don't invite hobos in to sleep in our beds.
If you say that's bad too and that it's much like Apartheid, then all I can conclude is that maybe I need to learn more about Apartheid. Maybe it's not so bad as I have been told.
> These people feel as if they are (in part, collective) owners of the country
But they don't in absolutely any sense (legal, moral, philosophical) own the country. And especially they do not "own" the culture (because that's actually impossible). So all you have is jingoism propping up this entire notion.
Citizens most certainly do own the country. It comes directly from the fact that all government power is granted to it by the people.
>That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
To the extent that the land claimed as part of the United States belongs to and is controlled by the United States, it belongs to the people.
People certainly own an interest in the culture and have a right to keep it from changing too much too quickly and to fight and refuse the changing of certain aspects of that culture.
> Citizens most certainly do own the country.. To the extent that the land claimed as part of the United States belongs to and is controlled by the United States, it belongs to the people.
Citizens are the beneficiaries of a trust. The land is held in a trust. That is not the same thing as ownership. Think about it: in some other countries you can't even outright own land. That should indicate to you that your notion is overly facile.
The underwriters of that trust are all of the current citizens and more importantly all those that came before. In the USA that includes indigeneous peoples, slaves, naturalized immigrants, etc.
> People certainly own an interest in the culture and have a right to keep it from changing too much too quickly and to fight and refuse the changing of certain aspects of that culture.
Lol what does it mean to "own an interest"? I own an interest in blue spotted blue spotted stingrays - what rights does that bestow upon me with respect to the stingrays? None.
>Citizens are the beneficiaries of a trust. The land is held in a trust. That is not the same thing as ownership.
Citizenship is the most absolute (though diluted) ownership possible. I own a car, but if I commit a crime heinous enough I can have that confiscated as a penalty. On the other hand, in the United States there is no crime for which my citizenship can be revoked. What about the other elements of ownership? Participating in the decision-making process of the disposition of the property for instance... that's called voting or representative democracy or whatever you want to call it. At times, the government, acting on behalf and with the consent of people, has bought more territory, or traded it away to other nations. We employ a policy of absolute defense against any belligerent encroachers.
Looks like ownership to me. Calling it a "trust" is just the weasel words.
I don't care what you think - this isn't a creative writing exercise. Trust is the technical term describing the legal framework for much of the land in the United States
I will remember that you don't care what I think or want... so that when I hear you and yours whining after you lose another election, it will be music for me. Since no one owns any country, you will of course be encouraged to move abroad, where you will no doubt be welcomed for the progressive hero that you are.
Alternatively most blog posts could have been paragraphs. Most books could have been single chapters. Most newspaper articles could have been tweets.
That being said, most readers want you to hold your hand step by step. They don't want to the outline: they want you to give them a story. Most people and writers know this already. To me, it was new.
Sometimes pleasure is in the activity, not just the outcome.
A good movie or novel is a generally pleasurable experience from start to finish, where the conclusion on its own might have only been mildly interesting at best.
> Alternatively most blog posts could have been paragraphs. Most books could have been single chapters. Most newspaper articles could have been tweets.
Why even read? Why even live? What's the point of all of this? Churches could be wooden shacks, 5 stars menus could be protein shakes, paintings could be single sentence descriptions, ...
You might as well sign up to be put in an artificial coma, or in a matrix pod
For most everyone else, it is to momentarily feel some sort of way. The difference is what the parent describes as a revelation, to him.
You see, for people who crave to understand, living among people who just want to feel this and that feels like living in an insane asylum where the people inflicting harm upon themselves and others will do nothing but distract themselves long enough to forget and go on to inflict harm on themselves and others again, forever.
As for 'might as well quit' - most everyone I've known who's not an idiot has already done that. Even the idiots aren't having children by the way :) Living in a matrix pod? You mean a modern city? Anyhoo...
I've colloquially coined this as the contentification of everything. The goal isn't to actually engage with something, whether it's the writing style, flavor, or artwork on display. It's purely about consumption, and the most optimal way of consuming something is distilling it down into a short, bland summary.
It's why there are people out there that will use an LLM to summarize a book and pretend that they read the whole thing because they know the general outline.
I keep brooding on the idea that maybe LLMs will never get “good at writing” in some Platonic sense, but they will be progressively trained better to create text that a greater and greater bulk of humans will “enjoy” for reasons that are downstream of inherited patterns of thought and emotional response that the models have learned.
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