institutional downspiral
malign merit, circle the drain
the simple fact is that aptitude tests work. IQ tests work. they measure real, meaningful variables that are highly predictive of success at a great many tasks. people are, of course, free to dislike this fact to the fullest content of their hearts, but a fact it will remain.
and being increasingly stupid about it is not helping anyone, least of all those it was intended to.
back in 2020, the university of california system decided to phase out the SAT/ACT and in 2021, a lawsuit made it permanent.
this certainly increased the “diversity” of students, but perhaps not in the manner that had been hoped. i cannot speak to whatever they were aiming at, but “massive diversity of preparedness and capability” is what they got. in these days of grade inflation, AI, and social promotion, it (entirely predictably) filled the UC system with kids who had no business being there and we, flattly, unprepared for and unable to catch up to the work.
it’s so bad the faculty are revolting because STEM students cannot manage middle school math. here’s the letter signed by 686 faculty as of this writing: LINK
it does not mince words:
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; - Exodus 20:5
"Let me control the issuance of the currency of a Nation, and I care not who makes its laws."
“We rely upon the stupidity of the American voter” ~ Johnathan Gruber."
"Structural inflation as they cannot even understand what they already did."
Australia sues US giant 3M over 'forever chemicals' in firefighting foam
Australia is suing 3M over its alleged use of 'forever chemicals' in firefighting foam
The Australian government is suing US manufacturing giant 3M for AU$2bn in damages (US$1.4bn; £1.1bn) over its alleged use of toxic "forever chemicals" in firefighting foam that contaminated dozens of defence bases across the country.
It is the largest legal claim ever brought by the government, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said, as it seeks to recoup the "substantial costs" in dealing with the chemicals - known as PFAS - at 28 locations.
It claims 3M withheld and misrepresented details about the foam and its environmental impact, assuring them it was safe, despite knowing otherwise.
In response, 3M said it has never made PFAS in Australia and stopped selling the foam there 20 years ago.
In announcing the legal action on Thursday, Rowland said the government was committed to holding 3M and 3M Australia to account "for the economic and environmental harms associated with PFAS contamination".
Intelligentsia
Human Intelligence Sharply Declining
The benchmarks are not looking good, folks.
By Noor Al-Sibai
Published Mar 16, 2025 6:45 AM EDT
No, it's not just you — people really are, per a number of surveys, way less intelligent than they used to be.
No, it’s not just you — people really are less smart than they used to be.
As the Financial Times reports, assessments show that people across age groups are having trouble concentrating and losing reasoning, problem-solving, and information-processing skills — all facets of the hard-to-pin-down metric that “intelligence” is supposed to measure.
These results, the FT reports, are gleaned from benchmarking tests that track cognitive skills in teens and young adults. From the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future study documenting concentration difficulties of 18-year-old Americans to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that measures the learning skills of 15-year-olds around the world, years of research suggest that young people are struggling with reduced attention spans and weakening critical thinking skills.
It's obvious that the US has gone from slow decline starting circa 1971 to steep decline starting circa 2007 and accelerating after 2015 to 2020. So a lot of these posts get redundant and in some ways irrelevant. What seems relevant is how people should respond. Generically, my pet phrase has been: Flight attendants, prepare for collapse. How that is done can vary according to the skills of the person.
While the periphery breaks down rather slowly at first, the capital cities of the hegemon should collapse suddenly and violently.
Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Apr 19, 2026 2:29 pm
This post will pull together a lot of separate discussions and it's almost inevitable I will forget something.
There was something Arthur Demarest said, paraphrasing, that at the peak of a civilization great projects will be seen just before the collapse. Marc Widdowson said, paraphrasing, that when a particular type of civilization develops for the first time (agricultural, industrial, etc.) the collapse into the dark age will be especially bad. I'm not looking for the exact quotes and hope this is accurate.
Another thing that's come to my mind regarding bubbles is that the shorter the time to the fulfillment of the promise of the bubble, the shorter and less severe the preceding collapse. Looking at 1929, the high flyers were RCA (televisions) and GM (automobiles). RCA started developing the television in 1929. By the time the 1960s rolled around, there was a television in almost every living room and the interstate highway system covered the nation. The promise of the 1920s bubble was quite realistic; nonetheless, the Dow lost 89% from its peak in 1929 to its 1932 low. Going back to 1720, the promise of the South Sea Bubble was goods from every corner of the world. They got quite ahead of themselves and that bubble collapsed something like 98% and there was a long depression. Then there were the Romans. They had an industrial civilization coming into form as has been discussed. More and more evidence of this is being found. They were about 14 centuries ahead of themselves and everything collapsed to essentially zero. That seems to be the category we are in now with the promise of artificial intelligence and the Internet. I think most would say that it's not a promise, that we are doing it now. That's probably what the Romans were saying too.
The Austrian economists might say the longer interest rates stay down and the longer and more money printing takes place, the further the entrepreneurs have to reach into the future to find projects to work on. It's greater manipulation and fraud in the present context but in a few hundred years it may become a new reality as a new information age gets its footing somewhere in the world. At which point, people will probably have forgotten about what happened here and Nvidia will not even be a historical footnote.
Another way of saying nearly the same thing:
19:22
Keep in mind these individuals the job of the CEO now is it
19:29
used to be to underpromise and over deliver. Now it's to overpromise and underdeliver and create a vision that
19:34
creates cheap capital so you can pull the future forward.
19:46
So their job is to predict a very exciting future.
20:43
The key attribute of an innovator right now is storytelling. And that is to make sure the promise is way
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ahead of the performance such you can access cheap capital and pull the future forward.
The Diary of a CEO and The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway
2,889,600 views May 4, 2026