Things are getting better!

[Synobun]

You must have gone to a small school, then, or somewhere that couldn't attract a variety of teachers. That must have made it difficult for the students who planned to do a science degree or a B.Ed. in science when they got to college/university.

Very small, comparatively. 1000 students sourced from 12~ towns and villages or so. Most of the classes were 'shop classes', i.e. working with wood or cars. Everything else was the bare minimum. It is why I don't especially lament dropping out of high school; if I had stayed, I would have likely not been able to graduate anyways and I would not have been prepared for actual academics in university. Most people from that school don't go on to have extraordinarily successful post-secondary journeys. I think one student from my year went into an actual 4-year university program for business. Everybody else either went to work in the trades or got 2-year diplomas from satellite colleges in our nearest cities (and there, a city is 20,000 people).

 

[innonimatu]

One thing you could add would be to improve the reuse of the trash that goes into landfills. 50 years ago I saw an illustration in a newspaper of a "machine" into which anything was dumped and step by step metals, wood, stones, organics, pollutants, water, etc. were all separated until nothing was left. The exact processes were not clearly defined, but the idea was clear: everything could be broken down into some basic category of material that could be pulled out of the inflow and then used. This imaginary machine began with grinding, shredding, mincing everything into small pieces at the start and from there the magic was worked. That was 50 years ago. I am surprised we cannot do that today. I would think that if one could make such a machine that could run "endlessly" and accept just about any material, it would be useful in solving several growing problems.

We are talking about a civilization that has continuously postponed the solution for radioactive garbage, where even after the disaster of Fukushima demonstrated the problem nothing was done. If this society can't even handle one subset of particularly worrying garbage, do you think they are anywhere capable of developing some kind of universal machine?

The last 50 years have made the problem worse, not easier, to tackle. Products 50 years ago were far less composite than they are now. Engineering for obsolescence has become widespread, product cycles shorter, and it all ends up in the garbage because it is "cheap" stuff "not worth fixing".

Looking around, I cannot but shake my head cynically at the Panglossians. The tech utopia has been a lie. The singularity is a religious fairy-tale used by some man-children scientists to delude themselves. AI is a scammer's tool. And the big social problems remain the very same we discovered with industrialization and preponderant urbanization back in the 17th century.

 

[El_Machinae]

Earlier in the thread I mentioned I'd like to see an opt-in/out tax on income that gets allocated strictly towards QoL research. I think that would be a big boost right away as it'd dramatically increase research funding beyond what individual non-profits can muster.

For all practical purposes, this is essentially the same thing as just donating to charity directly if you're at all willing to slightly pay attention. I believe in iterative wisdom, where I set aside a donation each year that is earmarked how I feel is best. Then, next year, I just shuffle things up based on things I've learned.

You've already mentioned California, and this is also remarkably similar (in effect) to what happened with their earmarked bond issuance for stem cells.

Nearly every charity I can think of will pay incredible compounding returns (after all is said and done), so I refuse to do the Warren Buffet and grow my wealth at some percentage each year and then donate when I am dead. Amusingly, this choice shows his implicit belief. He believes that he can show compounding returns on his investments that are greater than would be achieved by Gates's efforts on the supply side of things.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Very small, comparatively. 1000 students sourced from 12~ towns and villages or so. Most of the classes were 'shop classes', i.e. working with wood or cars. Everything else was the bare minimum. It is why I don't especially lament dropping out of high school; if I had stayed, I would have likely not been able to graduate anyways and I would not have been prepared for actual academics in university. Most people from that school don't go on to have extraordinarily successful post-secondary journeys. I think one student from my year went into an actual 4-year university program for business. Everybody else either went to work in the trades or got 2-year diplomas from satellite colleges in our nearest cities (and there, a city is 20,000 people).

My high school had about 1200 students, and while I'm not sure how many went to college or university, it was a fair number of them.

How was the science curriculum in your junior high? I took two science classes in Grade 7 - the regular one, which was mainly biology, and the science option in which I insisted on doing astronomy. The teacher wasn't into astronomy, and he tried his damnedest to get me to switch to biology, but I dug in my heels and pointed to the class description - astronomy was one of the options and that's what I wanted. So he found three other students to do astronomy as well, and he assigned us a group project (building a telescope), writing a term paper, and left us to our own devices. Our "classroom" was either the library or the science storage room, and he'd check on us once or twice each session and go back to supervising the other students in their dissections.

Grade 8 included the metric system, astronomy, ecology, and a few other things I don't recall at the moment. At least we weren't expected to dissect anything. Grade 8 was the year I got hooked on Star Trek, and dove right into the astronomy part of the class. We were assigned to write a paper about "something in the solar system" so while the other kids were scrambling to get to the books about the planets and work out a schedule for sharing them, I decided to do my project on the Sun. Since I lived in town (the school was for county kids, but my grandparents paid extra so I could go there after we moved into the city), I had access to the public library as well as a couple of astronomy books in my own personal library (yes, I had a personal library when I was 12).

Grade 9 science was mostly physics and chemistry, and thankfully no biology. I have mixed feelings about that class now, considering what was revealed about that teacher a few years ago.