An Apocalypse of Stupidity: One Possible Future

They will tell you that the world will end by nuclear holocaust, or by climate catastrophe. Or perhaps they'll say the world will choke to death on its own pollution, or starve for lack of enough resources to feed an overpopulated planet.

A Slow Apocalypse of Stupidity: Fourmilab

But more likely to seal the fate of humanity, is the slow and steady loss of human problem-solving ability.

Regional Variations in IQ Test Scores

Over tens of thousands of years, separate human breeding populations evolved to meet divergent challenges in their environments (Kanazawa PDF). Some environments presented greater challenges to be solved, for the sake of survival. The farther from the equator a group migrated, the greater the seasonal challenges of survival. As greater intelligence evolved, humans devised sophisticated societies and technologies to shield them from the environment.

But in the course of becoming more intelligent, they created micro-environments of culture, with differential rates of divergent intellectual revolution.

Rates of Population Growth

Not all populations reproduced at the same rates. More affluent, more intelligent, and better educated women chose to reproduce at lower levels -- or not at all -- compared to women of lower educational attainment (on average). Higher birthrates among less intelligent populations began to affect overall average IQ levels.

And since IQ is strongly correlated with level of economic achievement (Gottfredson PDF), societies with lower average IQ levels tended to be the most impoverished societies.

Imagine a World Without Europe or the Anglosphere

Besides economic achievement, scientific and technological achievement tends to accompany high average IQ. Low IQ nations in the map above tend to be very tiny, unless they are lucky enough to have a high IQ smart fraction.

The higher IQ populations which are responsible for the economic, scientific, and technological accomplishments in the map above, are also the populations which are shrinking in size -- while lower IQ populations are growing.

Finally, crime and corruption tend to correlate with low average IQ levels. So that even low IQ populations lucky enough to have a smart fraction, will be less able to efficiently utilise that lucky bit of human capital. Homicide per 100,000

There is no reason to expect the differential birthrates between the different strata of IQ and education, to change. The global decline in average IQ seen in the graph above, is likely to continue unless something significant happens to change the trend.

Many people are aware of the trend, but no one has a good answer for it. Good people may well think the answer may be found thru better education:

While the smart people know they must fight the tyrannical government or run away to another country, the not so smart grow in numbers. In our current state, we will not be able to hold government accountable and put a stop to the tyranny. We must overcome the stupid somehow. We must find a method to show them the folly of their ways. We must “educate” them on what their responsibilities are in society and we must show them how to exercise those responsibilities properly. _LibertarianViewpoint

But no one really believes that such "education" can be both effective and humane. And since we voluntarily limit ourselves to humane methods, we must admit that we will have to look for other solutions.

Here is an analogy: Realistic energy analysts generally accept that humans should use unconventional oil, gas, and liquids as temporary "bridge" fuels to better forms of power and energy such as advanced nuclear power. In other words, we must make good use of the next few decades to develop long term energy solutions that will last for many thousands of years.

In the same way, realistic students of the human future understand that brighter people must make very good use of the next few decades to develop bridge technologies which will see us past the approaching dysgenic bottleneck.

First, we must take the trouble to understand that the problem is real.

Genetics, Genes, Genomics, and g (Plomin PDF) _via Meng hus blog

g: Highly General and Highly Practical (Gottfredson PDF)

We must understand how differences in average intelligence between population groups influence quality of life issues such as crime, affluence, social trust, levels of corruption, etc. Such an understanding is likely to influence important life choices.

And we must be able to project current trends -- often contradictory trends -- into the near future. Then we must devise ways of best dealing with our conclusions for our own sake, and for the sake of our dependents.

$100 Billion And All I Got Was This Lousy Climate Model?!?

Since 1989 the US government has spent almost $100 billion on climate studies, modeling, prediction, regulations and more. In the end, the best models developed so far do 2 - 3 X worse than chance alone! As real world temperatures continue to diverge wildly from climate model projections, US taxpayers are starting to wonder where there money is going.

Jo Nova IPCC Consensus Vote

Joanne Nova's report, Climate Money, documents $79 billion spent by the US on climate science up until the year 2009. Since then, over the past 3 + years the Obama government has expanded spending on climate science, regulation, enforcement, and all aspects of the carbon orthodoxy. Almost no area of US government, academia, or media is left untouched by the agenda of carbon hysteria.

Random Walk Examples

Scientists and institutes associated with the IPCC receive many billions of US dollars per year to accomplish results which could be achieved by a 3 year old child with a random walk generator.

in 2008 and 2010, a team of hydrologists at the National Technical University of Athens published a pair of studies comparing long-term (100-year) temperature and precipitation trends in a total of 55 locations around the world to model projections. The models performed quite poorly at the annual level, which was not surprising. What was more surprising was that they also did poorly even when averaged up to the 30-year scale, which is typically assumed to be the level they work best at. They also did no better over larger and larger regional scales. The authors concluded that there is no basis for the claim that climate models are well-suited for long-term predictions over large regions.

A 2011 study in the Journal of Forecasting took the same data set and compared model predictions against a “random walk” alternative, consisting simply of using the last period’s value in each location as the forecast for the next period’s value in that location. The test measures the sum of errors relative to the random walk. A perfect model gets a score of zero, meaning it made no errors. A model that does no better than a random walk gets a score of 1. A model receiving a score above 1 did worse than uninformed guesses. Simple statistical forecast models that have no climatology or physics in them typically got scores between 0.8 and 1, indicating slight improvements on the random walk, though in some cases their scores went as high as 1.8.

The climate models, by contrast, got scores ranging from 2.4 to 3.7, indicating a total failure to provide valid forecast information at the regional level, even on long time scales. The authors commented: “This implies that the current [climate] models are ill-suited to localized decadal predictions, even though they are used as inputs for policymaking.” _FinancialPost

Jo Nova (PDF)

This table shows US government climate related expenditures up until the year 2009. But as you can see below, President Obama has expanded climate spending steadily year to year. This is even true for agencies such as NASA, whose primary mission is supposed to be outer space exploration. Something odd happened to NASA during the 1990s, when US VP Al Gore took a special interest in the agency . . . .

The table above illustrates the year on year spending increases in various US government departments, in the Obama years.

But these tables do not reveal the amount of spending related to climate policy which may go under different names in the department budgets. They likewise do not reveal the amount of climate spending at other levels of US government, or by other member governments participating in the IPCC. And they certainly do not reveal the $trillions slated to be routed through the IPCC in redistributive ransom payoffs from the developed world to the third world.

The largest costs from climate change policies will never be measured, since they are not truly measurable. These are the "opportunity costs" and the "opportunity destruction" brought about by the prevention of vital energy, commercial, industrial, and residential projects around the world. We are entering an era of climate agenda caused energy starvation and a consequent economic decay.

This is taking place at the same time that much of the developed world is experience a demographic implosion, likely to reduce the available brainpower and manpower which will be needed for humanity to work its way out of this carbon hysteria morass.

Climate Money PDF report by Joanne Nova

Validation and Forecasting Accuracy in Models of Climate Change (PDF)

The credulous attitude of academics, journalists, politicians, and media personalities toward the IPCC "consensus" reminds me of a raunchy scene from the movie "Idiocracy." The movie theatre is packed with patrons comically enchanted and amused by a single image on the giant screen: a rather ugly arse farting.

Welcome to the Idiocracy.

US Demographics at the Tipping Point

This article was previously published on abu al-fin blog

The US has passed a milestone: From now on, the majority of births in the US will be to non-European women. Highest birthrates in the US occur among non-white Hispanics. Black American women also have higher birthrates than do Euro American women. Birthrates among the much smaller groups of disparate Asian populations in the US vary considerably.

Wall Street Journal

For the first time in US history, whites of European ancestry account for less than half of newborn children, marking a demographic tipping point . . . _WSJ

This demographic tipping point changes a lot more than just the ethnic makeup of the US population. Because different population groups tend to arise from different cultures, holding different customs and values, the political and economic behaviour of the new majority is likely to tip the overall economic and political behaviour of the US significantly.

Perhaps it would be instructive to look at the differences between the populations of Northern Europe and Southern Europe. While both the North and the South are governed by some form of welfare state, Northern Europeans tend to be more naturally austere and thrifty, whereas Southern Europeans tend to take like more from day to day, enjoying the warmer sunnier climate, the wine, the Med.

Greece is becoming the first to suffer for its peoples' inherent lack of austerity and thrift. As Greece's economy crumbles, a regime of austerity would allow the country's economy to recover its footing -- but the politics of Greece and the natural inclination of its people will not tolerate austerity enforced from above. And as for austerity from within -- the people simply do not have it in them.

The same is likely to prove true for Spain, Italy, Portugal, as the economic crisis worsens for each in its turn. Their economies could use some austerity to allow them to recover and rebuild, but the people are not likely to stand for it. Perhaps it was the lack of inherent austerity in the people which allowed the situation to approach its denouement.

In the demographic transition of the US, we see populations of innate austerity giving way to rapidly growing populations which lack this natural thrift and planning sense. Given these changes, we can expect an acceleration of the trend toward larger government and less personal savings, planning, and responsibility.

Regardless of the best intentions, and all of the other strengths which may be brought to a nation, people cannot help who they are. If a majority contains a flaw which will prove to be fatal within a particular type of political and economic system -- say a democratic welfare state -- then events will work themselves out much like water finding its way to the sea.

There are many ways to find one's way to "the truth", but at the end of every chapter in life, the real world will have had its say.

Some changes are abrupt and unpredictable. Other changes -- such as the consequential changes in a society that come with a changing demographic -- may occur more slowly. While these shifts may be predictable, they can take place at a rate which allows them to be easily ignored, if the mainstream of government, media, and academia does not wish the population to be bothered with troublesome implications.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst. And expect something somewhere unpredictably in between.

20 Years of Progress

Twenty years ago, Los Angeles was burning. Police officers were initially held back from the rioting, in hopes that the violence would die down on its own. Instead, rioters attacked firefighters who tried to save homes and businesses, and the infectious fever spread across the city.

The city was burning around us. They were going to try to keep us safe. We were in Koreatown, and it was April 29, 1992...A teacher said he would allow me to follow him around the city. Then I could make my way back to Pasadena. The deal he insisted on was: If something happened to me, if my car was stopped, he was not going to help me...Nancy instructed me to stay close. We drove south on Broadway. I had never seen anything like it. Fires, looting, anarchy. We were trying to shoot photos from the car. Paul insisted we stay inside. I was trying to get my flash to fire. It worked the day before and the day after — but not that night. I didn’t see the man with the gun that came up to Nancy’s window. I was focused on my malfunctioning flash. She told Paul: “Drive, drive, drive.” We barreled through the chaos. I started counting the gunshots. That’s one shot. That’s two. That’s three. _LATimes

Long suppressed resentment and rage flared into flame. Angry glares become violent outbursts. Mobs of men and boys stalked anyone who looked out of place, with murderous intent.

A city that had been smoldering for decades burst into flames once again. Like Watts, like Detroit, like Newark, like any town or inner city that had collected and cherished a critical mass of resentment and hatred, LA flared orange and red.

A people who had been conditioned to blame everything from poverty to disease to migraines on "the oppressor race" were prepared to unleash their long suppressed anger and hate.

People were dragged out of cars and trucks, beaten and murdered in an orgy of violent emotion. No one could explain, calmly and rationally, why they did these things. They only knew it felt good. Community leaders and elected representatives supported and excused their actions.

The violence was not new -- it had been present in every inner city neighborhood around the country. It was the intensity and focus of the violence which proved a revelation. Thoughtful analysts began to look at roots of violence around the world, considering a possible racial or genetic basis.

Cognitive science had learned that intelligence was highly heritable, with clear statistical stratification by racial categories. Perhaps tendencies to violence were similarly heritable? While not a politically correct question, it was a crucially important question for rational people to ask.

Global maps of average IQ, birth rates, GDP, literacy, and other measures of social function and dysfunction all seemed to stratify according to regional -- and often racial -- characteristics. Certainly culture, religion, rule of law, corruption, and more all contributed to the overall portrait, the contribution of racial and genetic components could not be denied out of hand -- and required more study.

Thoughtful persons began to ask whether entire population groups were being left behind by advances in science and technology. As different societies' infrastructure came to rely more and more on sophisticated technologies, which required higher cognitive aptitude to maintain, it became clear that populations with low average IQs would struggle to keep up.

Chronic frustration at lack of achievement would naturally be converted into blame toward those who did succeed. As "underclass" status became intergenerational, political leaders and media conglomerates found an advantage in stoking the envious resentment, despite the obvious risk of violence.

And so the dark, rank, violent underbelly of diversity is exposed, time and again. But few learn the lesson -- that prosperous and successful societies must operate on trust. Without the trust, the machine accumulates a destructive grit and grime that leads to societal breakdown. As long as underlying realities of innate inequality and cultural incompatibilities are denied, the societal trajectory is downward.

From Australia to Canada to the UK to Europe to the US: You are soaking in a PC flood of denial, brought to you by your governments, your media, your academics, your pop stars. You are soaking in a growing Idiocracy.

Be very careful out there. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

A Contemptible Conformity: Humans as Hardwired Herd Beasts

Some people conform more than others. Across different contexts, this tendency is a fairly stable trait [1]. This stability suggests that the tendency to conform might have an anatomical correlate [2]. Values that one associates with available options, from foods to political candidates, help to guide choices and behaviour. These values can often be updated by the expressed preferences of other people as much as by independent experience. In this correspondence, we report a linear relationship between grey matter volume (GM) in a region of lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFCGM) and the tendency to shift reported desire for objects toward values expressed by other people. This effect was found in precisely the same region in each brain hemisphere. lOFCGM also predicted the functional hemodynamic response in the middle frontal gyrus to discovering that someone else's values contrast with one's own. These findings indicate that the tendency to conform one's values to those expressed by other people has an anatomical correlate in the human brain. _Current Biology Campbell-Meikeljohn et al

Current Biology Campbell-Meikeljohn et al
We have known for many decades that humans can be moved to behave in irrational and fanatical ways, by perceived popular or group opinions and attitudes. Following the disturbing Nazi Germany experience of WWII, psychologists attempted to determine how decent people could be led to conform to indecent behaviours. From the Asch experiments to the Milgram experiments and more, psychologists unfolded an image of human conformity to crowd pressure which is most uncomplimentary to the species.

The research cited above looked at how easily a person's opinion of a piece of music could be swayed by the opinions of "reviewers." Those subjects with larger volumes in the orbitofrontal cortex were more easily swayed by "expert opinion." Popular media article describing the research

One example of the dangers of conformity to the herd is climate activist Peter Gleick: His fraud and deception is but the latest in a series of contretemps for the "climate consensus orthodoxy." Such acts of consensus-inspired insanity force thinking persons to scratch their heads in wonder. What is it that compels nominally intelligent persons to blissfully surrender themselves into a sea of fanatical conformity, convinced that the "safety in numbers" will protect them no matter how deeply they descend into a consensual mindlessness?

But if there is something hardwired into the brains of conformists so that they truly cannot help themselves, should we deal with their contemptible behaviour differently?

Difficult to say. Although consensual herd conformists tend to behave abysmally en masse, we are required to deal with them individually, on a case by case basis. We must also admit to ourselves that the rehabilitation from herd conformity to rational, independent thinking, is not likely to be successful for most affected persons.

We would like to think that the group hysteria which brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany, will not be repeated in more modern times. But we would probably be deluding ourselves by believing that, particularly in light of a declining demographic, the coming Idiocracy, and the clique-like nature of academia, media, popular culture, and politics. In light of all that, a "Lord of the Flies" future may be the best we can expect.

Here is a sad addendum, and a hint of future uses of advanced technologies which should have been used to improve the human condition.

When Everyone is Thinking the Same Thing, Someone is Not Thinking

He, who has learned to doubt and to ask questions where the norms forbid it, can never stop the habit. As such, every creative person is building bridges to those masses of people who are tied up helplessly by the pressures of peers and society. His is a step out and above the group. And however strong the creative person is enchained by conventions, he has unshackled himself on his way as a free and autonomous personality. As such, he may have cleared a new path for his group, his society and perhaps humankind in order to transform culture and to create space for other free personalities who want to set new goals.--Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943)
_Tahoe is Walking On

The established order is always threatened by innovation and creative ideas. That is why the persons who display a great deal of creative talent and potential for disruptive thought are generally either co-opted, marginalised, or disposed of in some way.

The lopsided ideological nature of modern media and the modern professoriate and intellectual celebrities, suggests that almost everyone is thinking the same thing. Which means that almost no one is actually thinking.

A lot of people are emoting, and intuiting. But few are thinking.

And that is a huge problem, when modern societies are faced with the huge problems of debt and demography, among others.

If you are wondering what people and societies can do to get themselves out of this groupthink conundrum, this would be a good place to start.

Euphoria in an Idiocracy: Fast Lane to the Finish Line

Crystal Meth effects have been described by users as having endless energy, no need to eat or sleep, super focus, productivity, and a feeling of euphoria...Methamphetamine causes numerous neurotransmitters to be released in the brain, producing a sense of euphoria that may last as long as 12 hours, depending on how the drug was taken...Crystal Meth is taken orally, snorted, injected, or smoked. Immediately after smoking or intravenous injection, the user experiences an intense sensation called "rush" or a "flash". This sensation lasts only a few minutes and is described as being extremely pleasurable. Those who take crystal meth orally or snort it also experience a sense of euphoria. _Effects of Crystal Meth

How the World Ends
Crystal meth is taking over the world, from China to Australia to California to Africa to the Middle East. In Africa, it may be considered a stealth epidemic, since many official statistics have not caught up with the reality. For example, drug seizures at Lagos airport in 2010:

NDLEA’s Lagos Airport Commander Alhaji Hamza Umar said: “In 2010, the command arrested 200 drug suspects, including 172 males and 28 females, with 399.431kg of drugs consisting of 237.5kg of cocaine, 44.907kg of heroin, 42.050kg of cannabis, 74.755kg of methamphetamine/amphetamine and 0.240 grammes of other psychotropic substances. _The Nation

Note that only cocaine seizures out-massed methamphetamine seizures. As recently as 2008, methamphetamine abuse in Africa was rarely acknowledged:

It is reported that there are about 14 - 22 million cannabis abusers, 160, 000 - 340,000 opiate addicts, and 640,000 - 830,000 cocaine users for the population aged between 15 - 64 in the West African region in 2008, while the rate of abuse of drugs by youth is higher than the world average... _AllAfrica

Muslim countries are not immune: Iranian couriers are becoming particularly active in the worldwide distribution of methamphetamine.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's 2011 Global ATS Assessment report, Iran in five years became a major producer of crystal methamphetamines and a supplier of 'mules' trafficking the drug to Asia....Iran is a country with a high population of people already addicted to opiates and heroin.
'The are skills there in terms of producing drugs, and we see a production base there exceeding local demand,' he said _M&C

In Pursuit of Euphoria
Iran is both a large-scale producer and a consumer of drugs-of-abuse.

Today's Islamic Republic offers premonitions of a narcodystopia. Take a car ride through Tehran at night, and your driver may tell you that the underage girls in chadors who offer esfand -- seeds that are burned to ward off the evil eye -- along the highways are really selling sex to enable addicted fathers. Ride the metro, and you will see battered children pitching trinkets and fortunes to sustain their parents' habits. Visit a poor southern suburb like Shahr-e Rey, and you might see a cigarette vendor in the bazaar with a sideline in used needles. Walk through Khaju Kermani Park on the capital's southeastern outskirts, and you might witness young girls smoking crystal meth in full view of park authorities, while in the background a tall, badly sunburned man with track marks on his arms staggers around in an ill-fitting, woman's blouse. _FP

Euphoria in Iran
China's drug addicts try to stay out of sight whenever possible. But the problem of drug abuse in China is growing, along with the growing sense of alienation and unhappiness as large numbers of Chinese begin to give up their hopes.

Shenzhen Overpass
If you haven't read Robert D. Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy, you should do so. Kaplan has enlarged the article into a book length treatment, also worth reading.

Drugs of abuse find many niches, in a wide array of lives and geographical locations. Besides destroying human capital in drug users, the drug trade provides profits for powerful and murderous criminal cartels and gangs from Mexico to South America to Africa to Central Asia.

Powerful mind altering drugs are widely used to subdue kidnapped girls who disappear into the sex trade world-wide. These drugs are also used to induce loyalty and motivation to kill in the kidnapped child-soldiers of Africa and elsewhere. Even if these youngsters eventually escape their human captors and manipulators, it is not certain that they will ever escape their chemical captors. And it is not likely that they will ever reach their potential.

It has been claimed that in the UK, high IQ is associated with higher rates of drug use, and it has been claimed that in the US, children of European descent are more likely to abuse drugs than children of African descent. Certainly drugs tend to flow to where the money is, and there are no populations that are totally immune to the lure of drug induced euphoria and escape. Human capital is being destroyed all over.

What is the antidote? Drug legalisation would solve some of the problems by removing most of the criminality involved, and much of the violence. Large problems would remain after legalisation, of course, just as the US still has a lot of problems from alcohol abuse long after the repeal of prohibition. But we should not expect perfection or utopia from our policy choices, only a form of dynamic and realistic optimisation.

Al Fin sociologists and substance abuse specialists have long felt that society needs to develop and make available drugs which provide mild euphoric effects, along with a cognitive boost, and various healthy side effects that are lacking in all currently known drugs of abuse. In other words, rather than prohibiting the experimentation with drugs, youth would be encouraged to experiment with a wide array of stimulatory and euphoric activities -- some of which would involve mind altering drugs. They would also involve music, dance, games, risk-taking of various types, strenuous exercise, ritualised combat of a non-lethal variety, electromagnetic brain stimulation, virtual reality scenarios, and other non-pharmaceutical activities designed to satisfy the urge to experiment with physical, mental, and spiritual states.

But all such activity should occur in the context of the wider experience of developing personal talents and competencies, and practical skills. The strongest, most lasting, and healthiest high, is the high of achievement and a happy contentment with oneself. Only in such a state can a person fully open up to true sharing and love with other persons.

But before societies at large learn the lessons that Al Fin social professionals are trying to teach, a lot of very bad things are going to happen around the world as a result of the failure to learn these basic lessons in child-raising.

Be ready. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Widespread Mental Atrophy and the Coming Idiocracy

It has been widely observed that the birthrate of countries tends to fall as they become more wealthy. Most countries in Western Europe now have birthrates below the replacement rate; in the absence of immigration, their populations can be expected to fall in the future.

... one might expect that since low IQ countries tend to be less wealthy, they should also be expected to have higher birthrates than countries with high IQ. If population IQ and wealth remain constant, the average IQ of the world should then fall over time, since a larger portion of population growth will occur in low IQ countries. _Fourmilab

FourmilabWe are fairly safe in projecting a steady decrease in the world average population IQ over the next 40 years, given current trends in birthrates. The "Flynn Effect" may slow the rate of decline of mean global population IQ somewhat, but the trend seen in the two graphs presented here is the most likely general scenario, for this statistic.

GNXPFollow the Dark Blue Line Down L to R
This dysgenic trend is caused by differential birthrates between women of high intelligence and women of low intelligence. It portends an ominous future for large areas of the world which may lose or destroy their "smart fractions," their lifelines to high technology amenities of the developed world such as electricity, modern transportation, and modern medicine.

But a far more pressing concern for modern societies in the year 2011 is the process of "dumbing down" which has been applied to citizens from pre-school through graduate school, and beyond. It is this underutilisation of cognitive potential which is greasing the wheels for the bullet train bound for Idiocracy.

Consider the public and academic debate over why Japan surrendered at the end of World War II. In the Boston Globe article linked above, the author presents what he and others claim is a new and radical theory which they say is likely to overturn decades of conventional wisdom. Instead, what is presented is a false dichotomy -- an elementary logical fallacy which should have been spotted by anyone graduating from grammar school. Yet, you have academics grappling for supremacy based upon the inability to integrate multiple causes for events.

Or take this article about the famous "wild boy" Peter of 18th century Germany. The author of the article, an historian, apparently settles upon an explanation for the wild boy Peter's existence, which any 8 year old would instantly recognise as impossible. See if you can spot the author's oversight.

We are faced with a future of magnificent technologies, where each human can potentially own thousands of "technology slaves" to do large numbers of things for him on a routine daily basis. In such a pampered world, there is a clear danger of humans allowing many of their faculties to atrophy and wither, becoming vestigial. It is yet another form of "dumbing down," to add to the multitude of other forms emanating from schools, the media, mainstream culture, and the labyrinth of political rules, regulations, and norms which are endless, contradictory, inexplicable, and ultimately destructive to independent thought and action.

The Idiocracy will have many simultaneous causes. The process described in the video clip above is just one of the many dynamic foundations of the coming Idiocracy -- which will be far less benign and peaceful than the movie portrays. More like The Coming Anarchy described by Robert D. Kaplan.

The multicultural celebrations in London last week offer a foretaste of the coming state of any western cities which have allowed neo-tribalism and multiculturalism to proceed beyond a prudent point. Some cities will be lucky to escape total destruction of city centres and the immediate surrounding areas.

Global IQ Test Results by Nation

Many wonderful technological and scientific discoveries and developments are on their way. It is important to position oneself so as to be able to take advantage of these technological advancements. At the same time, it is important to place yourself and your family in a place of relative safety and security, and to always push yourself and those close to you to develop and expand their given abilities.

It is important to keep in mind the critical core needs of an advanced civilisation, and to develop better ways of providing them on an impromptu, decentralised basis. Brian Wang takes an interesting, preliminary look at this idea.

If your government and mainstream culture is killing the future of your civilisation, you need to think of alternatives.

The College Imperative and the Coming Idiocracy

More: Now we are learning that as many as 85% of US college graduates are forced by debt to move back in with their parents when they leave college. Perhaps someone should have told their parents this was going to happen, before the fact?

For several decades, American children have been pushed toward a college education as the path to life and career success. More and more children are enrolling in college -- over 70% of American high school graduates enrolled in college over the past decade. Yet there are many reasons to believe that this rush to a college education is not only counter-productive, but may be downright destructive to a society.

Image Source
It has been argued persuasively that a rigorous 4 year college degree can only be put to good use by a person at or above the 80th percentile of IQ. Forcing more people into the system requires a dumbing down of admissions, a dumbing down of course work, and a dumbing down of evaluations and credentials.

If 70.1% of high school graduates enroll in a college or university, how does a college degree give you an advantage over the rest of the population? Back in the early 1960s, Americans didn't need to go to college. We were a creditor nation with a strong manufacturing base. With an unemployment rate of only 5%, jobs were available to almost everybody. Less than 50% of American high school graduates enrolled into college. For those who did attend college and graduate with a degree, it was actually something special that made you stand out from the rest of the field, because not everybody had one.

...The current college education bubble is one of the largest bubbles in U.S. history. The college bubble has been fueled by the U.S. government's willingness to give out cheap and easy student loans to anybody who applied for them, regardless of if they will ever have the ability to pay the loans back. Student loan debt in America is now larger than credit card debt, but unlike credit card debt, student loan debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. _CollegeBubble

The situation is even worse for women. Women who go put all their energies into the higher education bubble and a career, all too often risk dying childless and unloved, and deeply in debt besides. Even so, the proportion of women attending college is growing and approaching 60% as the proportion of men continues to fall toward 40%.

It is the most intelligent and best educated women who are choosing careers over motherhood, while the least intelligent women are bearing the lioness' share of children. Given the choice of sex partners by less intelligent women, it is likely that the average intelligence of newcomers to society is declining -- a dysgenic process leading to Idiocracy.

GNXP
The same trend toward higher proportion of births from low-IQ populations is taking place in nations across the western world -- in no small part due to the push for more children to go to college, particularly women.

Many other potentially catastrophic side effects of the "college imperative" are put on display in the documentary "College Conspiracy." The college bubble is a source of massive capital misallocation and extreme (often frivolous) debt, for youth just beginning their lives. The psychological impact of living under so much debt is incalculable. Many young people must postpone thoughts of marriage and raising a family for many years -- and sometimes indefinitely -- due to massive educational debt. And the problem is only growing worse over time.

Is college a waste of time? No, it is a waste of lives and a waste of human capital. The college imperative is becoming the waste of the future -- the midwifing of the Idiocracy.

Artificial Intelligence: Experts Admit that AI Stinks

Marvin Minsky, Patrick Winston, Noam Chomsky, and other thinkers, researchers, engineers, and scientists, think that artificial intelligence has gone wrong. And the way things have been going, it is not likely that AI researchers will get on "the right track" for some time -- since most of them cannot seem to understand the problem.

Several up and coming AI workers (plus Ray Kurzweil) have predicted that human-level AI will be achieved within the next 10 to 20 years. Where is the progress which they can point to, in order to justify these claims? Within their own imaginations, apparently. According to some of the thinkers and AI pioneers quoted at the link above, the problem of AI is not being approached correctly. One of the most piercing criticisms of the field seems to be that it is focusing on tactics rather than strategy.

...clearly, the AI problem is nowhere near being solved. Why? For the most part, the answer is simple: no one is really trying to solve it. This may come as a surprise to people outside the field. What have all those AI researchers been doing all these years? The reality is that they have largely given up on the grand ambitions of AI and are instead working on increasingly specialized subproblems: not just machine learning or natural-language understanding, say, but issues within those areas, like classifying objects or parsing sentences. _TechnologyReview

This is clearly true. What is tragic is that a large proportion of the current crop of top-level AI researchers do not seem to understand the difference between strategy and tactics, in the context of AI. Strategy in AI calls for much deeper level thinking than tactics, which may in fact be beyond the capacity of most researchers -- and even beyond the range of philosophers such as Dan Dennett, who has relatively low expectations for human-level AI in the foreseeable future.

As brilliant as earlier AI researchers a John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert may be (and may have once been) in their hay-day, the extent of the problem of human-level AI was too poorly defined for anyone to grasp the challenge.

Modern researchers who make boastful claims for the likelihood of achieving human-level AI in 10-20 years do not have that excuse. Clearly neither Kurzweil nor the other AI hopefuls truly have a grasp of the problem as a whole. And that failure will be their undoing.

What would it take to succeed at human-level AI? A closely-knit, multidisciplinary team of thinkers willing to try outlandish and counter-intuitive approaches to the problem -- well out of the mainstream. To achieve human-type machine intelligence, high level expertise in one's field is but the barest beginning, hardly a single step in the journey of a thousand miles. One must also have a child-like approach to the world, be both brilliant and incredibly humble in the face of the ineffable, and be able to integrate complex ideas from both within and without his own field of expertise into a new, working holism.

Of course it sounds like psycho-babble, but when approaching something far too complex for words, such failures of communication are inevitable. Al Fin cognitive engineers recommend that the concepts of "embodied cognition" and "preverbal metaphor" be kept foremost in in the minds of any hopeful AI developers.

For everyone else, don't get your hopes up too high. Higher education in the advanced world -- particularly in North America -- is moving into serious difficulty, which means that research facilities and funding are likely to be cut back, perhaps severely. The economies of the advanced nations, and the US in particular, are being badly mismanaged, which means that private sector efforts will also likely be cut back. The problem may require the emergence of an individual with the brilliance of Einstein, the persistence of Edison, and the wide-ranging coherent creativity of a da Vinci.

In other words, people need to become smarter -- at least some people. Then they can learn to evolve very smart machines. And perhaps to interface with networks of these very smart machines. Then, possibly, using this symbiotic intelligence to design even smarter people.

Because let's face it: Humans -- especially PC-cultured humans -- will only take us to the Idiocracy, sooner or later. And the Idiocracy will be not only stupid, but downright brutal.

Atlas Shrugged, Dumbed Down Electorate, and Idiocracy

Wikipedia Commons
Atlas Shrugged, The Movie Part I, is due to be released to theatres in one week. The book Atlas Shrugged was written by Russian emigre' Ayn Rand, in the 1950s, published in 1957. It is set in a society where people have forgotten how to think rationally, and are thus at the mercy of powerful groups who tell them how to think and what to do. It is a society very much like our society, and the book is a powerful cautionary tale for persons bold enough to think for themselves.

Modern society is breeding generations of persons incapable of rational thought, regardless of the amount of "education" they are forced to endure. In spite of everything, university students cannot think, cannot read or do maths, cannot write, cannot spell -- one could be easily forgiven for thinking that most college students do not actually belong in college.

Here is the problem with societies whose brightest lights are not so bright -- for whatever reason: The persons and groups that are chosen to lead these societies tend to exacerbate the "brain dimming problem," rather than to generate solutions to it. And so the process of "dumbing down" progresses along the path of least resistance until -- before you realise it -- a full-blown Idiocracy is in session.

From the point of view of schooling, when children typically enter first grade at about age 6 years, only one third are able to use any logical reasoning. That means that they are not ready for much of what is usually taught at that grade. This issue of readiness is a significant one for schooling and this table gives the first general information about readiness. Some teachers and principals have estimated for me that about one-third of the matters in junior high school require formal reasoning. Yet, at those ages (12-14 years) no more than 20% have reached that reasoning level.


That means that most of the children cannot understand the most significant matters being taught in junior high school. In essence they are being taught in a foreign language. The result is that such children begin to pay no attention and begin, as is now well known, to consider dropping out of school. When they arrive in senior high school and the lack of understanding continues, drop-out behavior becomes a real alternative.


Teachers surely know that there is a spectrum of ability levels of the children in their classes, but they don't know how to handle it. If teachers were really aware of the data in the table, they would know that significant modifications of their instructional level are needed for these non-ready children. That still wouldn't tell them what to do.


What is needed is what can be called cognitive level matching (CLM): matching the level of instruction to the expectations of the individual students. Now that we have the Shayer/Adey test (and others developed since then), teachers can discover the reasoning levels of their students and interact with them accordingly.


There is no question but that this is an enormous strain on the teachers, and requires that the teachers, too, be tested for their operating cognitive levels. The need for such testing is evident from the last line of the table which gives the data for adults. Adults remain at the highest percentage reached at the end of high school: only one-third can reason formally. So, acceptance of applicants to higher education schools should be based on testing of the cognitive levels of prospective teachers in addition to the information gathered from the usual SAT test taken at the end of high school for those preparing to go on to higher education. _The Fourth "R"

I think you see the problem with the all-too-reasonable recommendations given at the conclusion of the essay above: Teachers' unions would never accept the requirement that teachers actually be capable of rational thought in order to be employed as teachers. If ordinary members of government unions in Wisconsin were willing to skip work to demonstrate and occupy public buildings, faking medical excuses and abandoning their responsibilities just for the right to be forced to have union dues deducted from their paychecks, how do you think they will react if regulations come along that require them to be able to think like intelligent beings?

Modern dialogue at the highest levels is chocked full of logical fallacies. Even the more intelligent students are not typically taught basic reasoning skills -- nor are they given the ability to detect the common fallacies and illogical modes of reasoning. This lack of ability to reason is reflected in much "research" -- including research in sciences such as climatology and psychology. Naturally the problem extends down the bell curve (see graph at top) -- to the less intelligent. Overall, fuggiduhbowdit!

When faced with such a society of madly proliferating dimwits, John Galt chose to chuck it all and abandon society to its Idiocratic tendencies -- and he invited all rational and ethically ambitious persons to join him in safety. Society would eventually fall apart of its own inconsistencies and inadequacies, allowing Galt and his co-conspirators to return and help put the pieces together more rationally.

But fiction is fiction, and reality is fiction too er, reality, although often "stranger than fiction." If all the bright, competent, rational, and ethical persons dropped out of modern societies, it might be difficult to find enough working pieces in the aftermath to put together a functioning society. Difficult to say.

It is obvious that resources are flowing from the productive to the unproductive, and that the rapidly expanding government-dependent sector is on a determinedly kamikaze course.

You may not be willing to "go Galt," but you should have at least one fallback position. Preferably more. Optimally, a community of ethical, competent, and rational persons would stand ready to form a focus of competent recovery, should the situation warrant.

There is an ongoing counter-reaction to the Idiocracy, but the sheer numbers of Idiocrats and government-dependent persons argues against the success of the anti-Idiocratic forces. In modern societies, brain-rot tends to set in from the earliest ages and progress from there, unless the parents are truly exceptional.

It is likely to take a number of years for the parallel trends of societal breakdown to reach a climax -- if Obama is re-elected the derailment is apt to come a bit sooner.

The Best Defense Against Propaganda Like "Gasland" is to Learn How Things Are Actually Done

26Feb2011 MORE:New Scientist looks at the questionable tactics and claims of Gasland. The New York Times -- lately more of a tabloid rag than a purveyor of accurate news -- makes some new claims about threats of radioactivity released by wastewater from fracking. Time will tell. Certainly the developed world needs the energy and fuel from unconventional hydrocarbons to allow it to bridge into the era of advanced fission, advanced biofuels, enhanced geothermal, fusion, and other advanced nuclear and exotic particle reactions.

This video provides a brief summary of the oil and gas drilling process. If you pay attention over its few minutes, you will know far more about oil & gas production than most of the faux environmentalists who write propaganda pieces and make propumentary films on the topic, meant to sway public opinion.

The Oscar-nominated film Gasland is a fine example of the genre known as "propumentaries", or propaganda as documentary. Michael Moore is a master of the genre, but Josh Fox is certainly up and coming in the field with this entry.

Here is a website devoted to debunking Gasland

Here is a PDF from Gasland's maker meant to debunk the debunking of Gasland, called Affirming Gasland

A further debunking of Gasland can be found here and here and here

It should be said that for most thinking persons, Gasland debunks itself. But the film is not aimed at thinking persons, it is aimed at members of the Idiocracy, programmed by a failed educational system not to think at all. With that audience, the film has apparently succeeded -- since it is nominated for an Oscar.

President Obama's EPA and Interior Department have succeeded in proclaiming CO2 as a "dangerous pollutant" and in stonewalling offshore oil drilling at all costs. Obama's minions have shut down several coal mines and coal power plants. Obama's NRC is dragging its feet on newer, safer, nuclear plants. All forms of reliable energy have been targeted by Obama's regime. If the regime were able to find any significant pretense to pull the plug on shale gas, they would have done so by now. As it is, they are still looking for anything at all substantial they can use to shut down yet another form of energy. Gasland is certainly not that thing, but is rather in the category of a joke. But they are still looking -- hard.

You can bet a large number of overseas gas producers from Russia to MENA are very interested in seeing Obama take action against shale gas producers. Needless to say, lefty-Luddite greens of the dioff.orgy persuasion are likewise eager to intensify the Obama program of energy starvation in the US.

Dying US Counties: A "Baby-Bust" Phenomenon

Across the developed world, the "baby bust" is leaving its mark in ghost towns, ghost counties, de-populating cities and states, and an emerging displacement of older populations by newer populations of outside origin.

Dying counties in the U.S. were rare until the 1960s, when the baby boom ended. By 1973, as farming communities declined, roughly 515 counties — mostly in the Great Plains — reported natural decrease. The phenomenon then began to show up in industrial regions, such as upstate New York and California. Natural decrease peaked in 2002 at a record 985, or 1 in 3 counties, before increasing births and an influx of Hispanic immigration helped add to county populations during the housing boom.

Following the recent recession, birth rates have dropped to the lowest in a century. Preliminary census numbers for 2007-09 now show that the number of dying counties is back on the upswing. Recent additions include Pittsburgh and its surrounding counties.

James Follain, senior fellow and economist at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the University of Albany, said a new kind of declining city may be emerging in the wake of the housing bust — metropolitan areas that rapidly overbuilt earlier in the decade and then suffered massive foreclosures.

He cited as examples Las Vegas, Miami, parts of Arizona, and Stockton, Modesto, Fresno and Riverside in California. Like traditional ghost towns, Follain says, portions of these areas could spiral down from persistent loss of jobs and population and lose their reason for being.

Follain also pointed to a tighter fiscal environment in Washington that will limit help to troubled areas. The Obama administration announced this month it would shrink the government's role in the mortgage system to reduce taxpayer exposure to risk. House Republicans also are pushing federal spending cuts of more than $61 billion, even if it means reducing jobs.

"It's going to be a very slow recovery," Follain said. _AP-Yahoo

You may think that the population bust is mainly affecting Japan and Russia, but this deflationary trend affects virtually all European and Northeast Asian populations. While third world populations continue to expand, more developed nations -- with populations possessing higher average IQs -- are shrinking. The end result of these differential birthrates is a steady decline in the average global population IQ -- despite the so-called "Flynn effect."

It is clear that the higher-IQ populations of the world -- the people who drove the technological revolutions in medicine, agriculture, science, technology etc -- are fading, while the lower-IQ populations are on the ascendancy, numbers-wise. This is an ominous trend for the planet overall, since poverty, corruption, and eco-devastation are greater overall in low-IQ, third world regions.

It is time to face the facts about global population trends and what they mean for the intermediate term of the human world. The coming reality -- or should I say the "coming anarchy" -- will not be pretty. Those who are prepared will be better suited to reach the other side.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Is Wikimedia Dumbing Down the Idiocracy?

NYT
Several areas of commerce, enterprise, and science remain the province of mainly-male participation. Physics, mathematics, advanced computer science, technical engineering, math-intensive sciences, aircraft test pilots and combat pilots, commercial sea captains, and so on. Most informed people understand that research is dominated by males, but few people realise that technical information intensive areas -- such as highly demanding reference information providers -- are also dominated by males. A lot of politically involved feminists would like to change that situation, but is there a danger in moving too forcefully from the top down when changes may adversely affect critically important services?

...surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of [Wikipedia's] hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.

About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University.

...The notion that a collaborative, written project open to all is so skewed to men may be surprising. After all, there is no male-dominated executive team favoring men over women, as there can be in the corporate world; Wikipedia is not a software project, but more a writing experiment — an “exquisite corpse,” or game where each player adds to a larger work.

...The public is increasingly going to Wikipedia as a research source: According to a recent Pew survey, the percentage of all American adults who use the site to look for information increased to 42 percent in May 2010, from 25 percent in February 2007. This translates to 53 percent of adults who regularly use the Internet.

Jane Margolis, co-author of a book on sexism in computer science, “Unlocking the Clubhouse,” argues that Wikipedia is experiencing the same problems of the offline world, where women are less willing to assert their opinions in public. “In almost every space, who are the authorities, the politicians, writers for op-ed pages?” said Ms. Margolis, a senior researcher at the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California, Los Angeles.

...Ms. Gardner said that for now she was trying to use subtle persuasion and outreach through her foundation to welcome all newcomers to Wikipedia, rather than advocate for women-specific remedies like recruitment or quotas.

“Gender is a huge hot-button issue for lots of people who feel strongly about it,” she said. “I am not interested in triggering those strong feelings.”

Kat Walsh, a policy analyst and longtime Wikipedia contributor who was elected to the Wikimedia board, agreed that indirect initiatives would cause less unease in the Wikipedia community than more overt efforts.

But she acknowledged the hurdles: “The big problem is that the current Wikipedia community is what came about by letting things develop naturally — trying to influence it in another direction is no longer the easiest path, and requires conscious effort to change.” _NYT

The Wikipedia world is indeed a rough and tumble world of competitive edits and re-writes. If a person cannot withstand criticism and competition, they will not likely last long in that world.

The male hormone testosterone shapes the human brain in multiple ways not yet fully comprehended by science or society at large. Much of what science has learned about the influence of hormones such as testosterone on the gender differences so prevalent in society, is considered not politically correct -- and thus essentially unmentionable in left-leaning tabloids such as the New York Times, quoted above. Testosterone makes males more interested in objects than people, more competitive, have generally superior spatial and higher math skills, physically larger and stronger with greater stamina, tending to greater independence, and generally more logically determined and less emotional in the face of distractions.

Charles Murray's fascinating book, Human Accomplishment, provides a historical reflection of the phenomenon that Wikimedia's executives and critics are struggling with. Males have tended to achieve the lion's share of discoveries, inventions, and masterpieces of art, music, and literature as far back as history can tell.

A population shrinkage is occurring among the more intelligent people of the world -- Europeans and Northeast Asians -- while an explosive growth of population is occurring among the less intelligent people of the world. The average intelligence of the human population is inexorably dropping from near 90 points of IQ, downward -- close to the mid-80s and below. That qualifies as an Idiocracy.

In order to dumb down the Idiocracy, one must institute foolish rules of arbitrary and counter-productive governance, while educating the populace to accept dumbed-down groupthink rather than to think for themselves. It is easier than you might think. What Wikimedia is contemplating -- and what many western governments have done, and called affirmative action -- is an excellent example.

Obama, Like an Albatross, Hung 'Round the Nation's Neck

America is facing a significant restructuring, beginning with the state and municipal levels of government

Critical information about the image above and the muni and sovereign bond crunch

Will America choose a rational bankruptcy restructuring plan for the troubled states, or will Obama try to bail out his friends in public sector unions at the cost of the greater US economy?

Here is just one reason why American jobs are not coming back: weak demand. But there are many other important reasons -- including intentional job-killing and industry-killing energy starvation policies within the federal government. Oddly enough, almost all of the reasons for the endless recession center on Obama and his enablers.

The Obamacare scam that was forced through the Pelosi-Reid US Congress is a huge, job and business-killing monstrosity. But is Obama's "Net Neutrality" plan even more monstrous?

Around the world, America is perceived as weak under Obama. It is being called the post-American, Chinese century. But if the US can get the albatross off from around its neck, is it possible the US has a bit more life left in it?

Who could lead America out of the rapidly deepening pit that Obama is digging? There are no names mentioned as credible challengers to the albatross president. The only name that keeps being mentioned -- generally in terms of which leftist would like to kill her today -- is Sarah Palin. Just when you thought you'd heard the last of her, she keeps showing up.

America's ruling classes have built a byzantine edifice of state-sympathetic media -- in both the news and entertainment sectors. For three years, both media sectors have mercilessly and incessantly attacked anyone bold enough to criticise or contradict the albatross in chief. The media sectors have studiously avoided the glaring weaknesses and failures of Obama's policies, and have exaggerated the most insignificant successes into grand triumphs.

A lot of Americans have been stupid enough to fall for the agitprop. After all, average population IQ in the US is only 98 points. That means that about half of Americans have IQs below 98! A very scary thought, around voting time. Knowing that the average populution IQ of Mexico is 87 fails to provide reassurance for America's future ability to vote its way out of the quagmire of stagnant idiocracy.

Focus on the basic essentials for yourself, your families, your communities if you have them. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Chasing the Dream When Government Fails

Once the space-shuttle program ends this year, the only way to get people into orbit and to the International Space Station will be to buy seats on Russia's three-person Soyuz capsules. So NASA, through its Commercial Crew Development program, has given $50 million in grants to companies developing new spacecraft capable of carrying people and supplies into orbit and to the space station.

The recipient of the biggest chunk of this money was the Sierra Nevada Corporation, which received $20 million to develop the Dream Chaser. This spacecraft, the size of a business jet, will take cargo and up to eight people into low Earth orbit, where the space station is located, and then return and land on commercial airport runways. _TechnologyReview

SpaceDevAdvanced Dream Chaser
The NASA Space Shuttle program is reaching the end of its lifespan, and unless Americans want to keep hitching rides to orbit with the unpredictable Russians, an alternative path to space must be devised. NASA's pathetic $50 million Commercial Crew Development program is dwarfed by the agency's global warming budget -- and yet the pittance of an afterthought may prove helpful in seeding a private launch industry.

The "Dream Chaser" is a design that NASA reverse-engineered from the Soviet space program, while the Russians were busy reverse-engineering the NASA Space Shuttle.

In the 1970s, the Soviets tested a vehicle like it, known as the Bor-4. The crew of an Australian ship photographed it, and NASA used the image to reverse-engineer a similar craft. The resulting design, NASA's HL-20, underwent significant development and testing and was intended to be a lifeboat for astronauts aboard the space station. But the HL-20 program lapsed.

Six years ago, a small aerospace company that Sirangelo headed, called SpaceDev, licensed the design from NASA and began to modify it, for instance adding the hybrid motors. The motors burn an unusual fuel: a combination of recycled rubber and nitrous oxide. This has almost the same energy density as conventional fuel but can be burned in a more controlled way and thus might be safer, though only multiple flights can prove whether it is. Sirangelo compares the system to a burner on a gas stove that can be turned to a lower or higher flame. The same hybrid motor was used in SpaceShipOne, which won the X Prize in 2004, and will also be incorporated in Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, intended to fly tourists into suborbital space.

...Everything on the Dream Chaser except the initial launch booster and the fuel cartridges is designed to be reused. Still, turning a profit will require flying multiple Dream Chasers 50 to 100 times each, and Sirangelo admits that he doesn't know when that will occur. "We're entering an unknown world," he says. The company isn't disclosing exact figures, but Sierra Nevada, a profitable company founded in 1963, has invested tens of millions of dollars in the project—more than the company received from NASA this year. Sirangelo says Sierra Nevada plans to continue to invest own money in the project. "If we don't get to our milestones, we don't get paid," says Sirangelo. The company has applied for a second round of funding from NASA that will be given out later this year.

..."There is potential for the new vehicles to be safer than the space shuttle, but the only way you really know is by flying," says Pace. If the regulatory burden under which NASA labors were applied to commercial efforts to make crew vehicles, it would crush them—but what kind of compromise regulations will be written is still unclear. _TechnologyReview

Yes, it is most important to read all of the fine print. If the US government decides to crush private space enterprise, it can easily do so via "crushing" regulations, taxes, penalties, fines, licenses, and a multitude of other means that a legalistic bureaucracy tends to use to crowd out and destroy anyone outside the bureaucracy itself.

Smart people will devise workarounds, in order to get things done despite the blooming reign of idiocracy.