Collapse of Civilization

[Peter McKillop]

......

Thanks for the link to the Dean article, Pargat.

[Dilip Panjwani]

If you were a farmer in Croatia, the Yugoslav state stole your kitchen table, your cow, your horse, your underwear, your clothes, anything that wasn't nailed down. Later they stole your farm and if you didn't get away fast enough they wanted to kill you. Sometimes they chased you all the way to Canada or the U.S. or Germany to kill you. They gave your farm to people who had no idea how to run your farm. They later threw them into prison because they couldn't pay the taxes demanded by the socialist paradise.

One billion dollars is not enough to launch SpaceX, or Tesla or Intel or Apple (in today's environment). It is best not covet thy neighbor's goods. There is a reason that it is right there in the ten commandments. If we are ever going to attract sponsorship for chess it will come from the billionaires or the companies they built. Lets tone down the Bernie Sanders and AOC silliness.

Hi Vlad,
Your thoughtful comments will someday raise the IQ level of postings here on chesstalk... hopefully before it collapses...

[Bob Armstrong]

Like.........what am I guys.........chopped liver?

Bob A

[Bob Gillanders]

Baaaaaaahahahaha. Good one, Bob!

Thanks Peter.
You are right, my first instinct that a thoughtful conversation on chesstalk was a pipe dream was correct.

In fact, if I stay away from posting I may even experience a jump in IQ.
I think I will try that for a while. Wish me luck.

[Peter McKillop]

.... I was wondering if we could have a thoughtful conversation / debate on chesstalk. ....

Bob G

Baaaaaaahahahaha. Good one, Bob! But seriously, if dreams come true maybe the collapse of civilization could be deferred for a while.

[Bob Armstrong]

Thanks Peter........

Good News - Pacemaker is fine!

Bad News - something else is causing my light-headedness and almost feinting (sigh)

Back to my personal physician on Tuesday!

Bob A

[Peter McKillop]

Fun, fun - I go into the hospital tomorrow for a test whether my pacemaker is defective...........sigh..........sucks when the body parts are wearing out!

Bob A

Hope everything goes well, Bob.

[Bob Armstrong]

Libertarianism & Governing

"Argentina’s Libertarian President-Elect Confronts a Quiet Buzzsaw of Russian-Funded, Anti-American Disinformation on Latin American Social Media."

https://www.nysun.com/article/argent...0%202023-11-21

Bob A

[Bob Armstrong]

Collapse of Civilization

(Started: 23/10/30)

Weekly Overview

Notes:

1. The “Weekly Overview” of the topic is posted for the benefit of new members who may have come in between the “Weekly Overviews”. It provides an executive summary of the issue for new viewers.

2. The Stats of participation are important to allow all to determine the extent of continuing interest. For thread originators//responders they are important to see if the interest no longer warrants the labour.



A. Statistics

Week # 3 (23/11/13 –19, 2023 [7 days])

(Sometimes Adjusted for no. of days)

Weekly Stats:
.....................................................2023 Average..........................................................2023 Average
Last Week's......Prior Week's........Views/Day..........Last Week's.....Prior Week's......Responses/Day
Views/Day........Views/Day.............(1 wk.)............Responses/Day....Resp./Day.......(1 wk.).

…55........................38.......................27.........................5........................4........................4

Analysis of Last Week's Stats

Last week's stats are running ahead of those of the prior week, and the 2023 year to date. It seems that this new non-chess topic has hit an interest point.......good on the initiator, Bob Gillanders (I started the thread for him).

Civilizations do not collapse overnight........there is a long, steady, continuous deterioration before hand. Then, all of a sudden, the tipping point has been reached, and we get metamorphosis (Like caterpillar to butterfly, only in reverse!). Either Dystopia, or a new empire rising like the Sphinx from the ashes, sometimes worse than the one it replaces.

Do we care who is going to be in control, as humans battle to survive in an environment more and more hostile to their continued existence (Negative Climate Change; Possible Nuclear War; Pandemics; etc.) and the very collapse of our civilization is on the horizon?

B. Indicia of a Collapsing Civilization

Comment below on what the current evidence is that our world's civilization is now collapsing......we'll add some of your ideas here!

Additional Notes:

1. The goal of this thread is not to woodshed an opposing view into submission. Every position is entitled to post as it sees fit, regardless of the kind of, and amount of, postings by other positions. What is wanted is serious consideration of all posts........then you decide.

2. I personally, as the thread originator (After an initiative by Bob Gillanders), am trying to post a new response at least twice per week, but admit my busy schedule means I am sometimes falling short on this. So it is going to be necessary that a number of other CT'ers are posting responses here somewhat regularly.

Bob A

[Bob Armstrong]

Fun, fun - I go into the hospital tomorrow for a test whether my pacemaker is defective...........sigh..........sucks when the body parts are wearing out!

Bob A

[Bob Gillanders]

Hi Bob G:

Do you rue the day you raised the topic of this thread (And then I got involved)??

Bob A

I must be getting old. I keep forgetting how pointless these arguments eventually get.

If you can't agree on the problem, how can you ever agree on the solution?

Oh well, lots of CFC work to keep me busy.
A dental emergency including lots of pain since Thursday has kept me at half speed.
The pain is beginning to subside.

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Bob G:

Do you rue the day you raised the topic of this thread (And then I got involved)??

Bob A

[Vlad Drkulec]

Vlad, that’s a bit creepy. You want to give my underwear to the homeless?

If you were a farmer in Croatia, the Yugoslav state stole your kitchen table, your cow, your horse, your underwear, your clothes, anything that wasn't nailed down. Later they stole your farm and if you didn't get away fast enough they wanted to kill you. Sometimes they chased you all the way to Canada or the U.S. or Germany to kill you. They gave your farm to people who had no idea how to run your farm. They later threw them into prison because they couldn't pay the taxes demanded by the socialist paradise.

One billion dollars is not enough to launch SpaceX, or Tesla or Intel or Apple (in today's environment). It is best not covet thy neighbor's goods. There is a reason that it is right there in the ten commandments. If we are ever going to attract sponsorship for chess it will come from the billionaires or the companies they built. Lets tone down the Bernie Sanders and AOC silliness.

[Bob Gillanders]

Lets take Bob's underwear and distribute them to the homeless.

Vlad, that’s a bit creepy. You want to give my underwear to the homeless?

There are approximately 3 thousand billionaires globally. I don’t believe any of them are in my family or circle of friends, but I am sure many of them are warm and generous people. Research shows that most people are by nature generous, and that greed is more of a learned trait. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.

Ever since Reagan’s “government is the enemy” and “trickle-down economics”, bankers, lawyers, and accountants have been busy reducing taxes for the wealthy. Then globalization tipped the scales against government tax authorities, easy movement of wealth to more friendly tax jurisdictions, all legal and applauded by Wall Street. “Greed is good” I believe was the catch phrase. Who could resist?

So yes Vlad, at this time my billionaire tax is not feasible. I have acknowledged that in previous posts (in other threads). Perhaps it could be phased-in, but I wanted to introduce the concept of “enough is enough”, that there should be a point at which you focus on something other than just more money. Helping others, or just enjoying your wealth.

Taxation is not theft. This is a silly thing to say. Unless you want government to just print the money required, we should all acknowledge taxation is necessary to pay for government services. What is needed or desired is a different debate.

Let’s look more closely at my billionaire tax. It is literally “a billion $’s” from the socialist scheme you assign it. The tax is above and beyond all other taxes, but only affects those who have wealth exceeding $1,000,000,000.

If your wealth is $ 999,000,000 you pay zero.
If your wealth is $ 1,000,000,001 you pay $1.

So, billionaires can keep a billion dollars forever.
Earning say 5%, they have $ 50,000,000 spending money per year.
Now if they spend only $ 49,999,900, there will be a tax bill of $100.
But here is the genius part: buy underwear for that homeless guy and pay no tax.

[Pargat Perrer]

Originally posted by Peter McKillop
Because of you, Dilip, I started some months ago to do a bit of reading on libertarianism. I'm not claiming to be educated; still a beginner. One thing that is clear to me is that Libertarianism, like any other political / socioeconomic 'ism' has many variants. Based on the above quote, you apparently support a variant where intellectual property rights aren't recognized. Am I interpreting your remarks correctly? A practical question: in your libertarian world, how would you raise the massive amounts of money required for drug research and development if you can't provide prospective investors with the confidence that any successful outcomes will be protected by patents/etc long enough for them to recoup and profit from their investment?

Very good question, Peter. In reality almost all useful research is done by intellectuals at Universities, and that should be available to everyone, not just a few who manage to purchase it for a paltry amount of money. And the real researchers should be rewarded by public taxation...

Oh, this is a very good question, but asking for the definition of "fair competition" in the interpretation of Natural Law is a "stupid question". LOL

But Peter, don't be fooled by Dilip's oversimplifications. He is rather famous for them here in this thread and the other threads where he trolls for Libertarianism.

Peter, let me tell you something, just to give you some credentials. During the year of 2017, I worked as a contractor at Eli Lilly drug research offices in downtown Indianapolis, IN. I worked under their longtime PhD drug discovery Research Advisor, Dr. Ian Watson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-watson-b292819/). He worked with Eli Lilly for 23 years.

Here is my job description of the time I spent working as a contractor at Eli Lilly:

Worked with IT department within Lilly Research Labs (LRL). This department maintains a HPCC (High Performance Compute Cluster) with over 300 nodes where Lilly's research chemists run batch jobs for molecular modelling, including 3D renderings. I was tasked with taking a major piece of that software called GC3TK (Global Chemical Compute Cluster Tool Kit) which runs on Linux Red Hat only and is deployed in the U.S., Spain and China. I was to recommend upgrades for the software architecture and its performance. The software dated from 23 years ago until present day, is still being maintained by a small team including one of Eli Lilly's most senior Research Advisors Dr. Ian Watson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-watson-b292819/) who wrote most of the GC3TK code. It is a mixture of bash, Python and Ruby scripts (some Julia also) and C++ underneath it all. The C++ is mostly conformant to the C++14 standard. The current deployment model is a collection of over 700 separate binary executables, all run using the scripts and tested using ad hoc test scripts in which output of binaries are saved to file and then read from file by other binaries, meaning that performance is bad due to excessive disk writes / reads. Also the completeness and robustness of the tests is compromised with no dataflow documentation.

My recommendation was to change to a Continuous Integration model using Jenkins in which the separate binaries are as much as possible compiled into shared libraries, where each code module and library has a suite of automatic unit / regression tests (no longer ad hoc, to be fully documented by dataflow diagrams and use cases) and in which generated data is kept in RAM as much as possible (with disk writes on other CPU threads) to be passed on to other modules. This would drastically improve performance, plus allow for new flexibility and new workflows that were difficult to test with the separate binaries model.

I supplied all diagrams and documents to support the new architecture, and with the assistance of Dr. Watson, I also implemented a proof of concept using actual code modules in my own separate branch of the GIT repository. This work involved extensive reworking of existing makefiles along with modifying C++ code structure and design. Dr. Watson approved of my work and advised continuing along this path.

Unfortunately, Eli Lilly had just entered a tightening phase in which thousands of senior scientists were offered early retirement. Dr. Watson accepted this offer and as of the new year 2018 was no longer with Lilly, and my contract was not renewed into 2018. The actual implementation work was left to employees that are in the LRL department. My supervisor was completely happy with my recommendations and assured me they will be implemented in the coming years, and I received a robust and enthusiastic reference from both my supervisor and Dr. Ian Watson.

This isn't the only work I have done in the biotechnology field. I am actually quite experienced in the field of DNA biotechnology as well, although I am currently contemplating early retirement and am back in Canada doing some minor contract work from home.

Now, this doesn't make me an expert on drug discovery, not even close. But you can bet that I did extensive research on the industry, given that I expected to be working with Eli Lilly for at least 5 years (that changed due to factors outside of my control).

Now, here's an article from Fortune magazine in 2022 written by Howard Dean, former Democratic governor of Vermont. Yes, a former Democratic governor writing in of all things Fortune magazine!

https://fortune.com/2022/08/25/destr...s-howard-dean/

It's not that lengthy an article, so I suggest you read it. But I draw your attention to this statement:

"No company would want to license a patented molecule from a university, and then spend hundreds of millions–or even billions–of dollars further developing it and testing it, if the federal government could simply snatch away the license on a whim."

Yes, you read that right. Pharma companies spend MILLIONS OR EVEN BILLIONS of dollars to take a patented molecule from a university research lab and develop a drug around it and then test that drug.

So Peter .... Dilip did NOT answer your question, except to give a pat political response meant to pacify you and send you away. His answer was totally ignorant and incorrect. Universities do NOT by and large develop and test drugs. If they do, it would be via FUNDING from private or public pharma companies, which means investors are involved.

Dilip, you still have to answer Peter's question. You put your foot in your mouth by saying it's a very good question! LOL