How Science Works

I don’t believe that we are educating Americans appropriately. Large portions of critical industries are in the hands of foreigners because of the failures of US education. These failures are deep and systematic — all stakeholders share blame — but must be addressed.

via tdaxp, Ph.D. » Blog Archive » How Science Works.

My reply to this comment was:

< If they are in the hands of foreigners, then it sounds like what you really need is an army. Perhaps an army of students who want to learn, testing or no testing, but an army just the same. You should build your army the old fashion way, by recruitment, instead of trying to find blame. It sounds to me, as you describe the situation of these (now) foreign companies, what you are proposing is just too little too late. >

I had to laugh at the thought that someone at this (tdaxp) web site was worried about “foreigners” occupying critical industries of America. Exactly what foreigners are they worried about, ha!

While I haven’t visited this site very often in the last few years, it has always been a pro-globalization, pro-military/industrial complex advocate, which if I understand correctly has little to do about “being” American, and more about following wealth.

It seems funny now that so-called “foreigners” have penetrated and make up the bulk of both markets (globalization and the military/industrial complex) that the authors of this web site seems worried. As I said, exactly which “foreigners” are they talking about? Foreigners from another country, or the foreigners who are the opposite of our under-educated Americans in the topic deemed important by the critical (now foreign?) industries?

We are a culture of blame, and our education system (which tdaxp has narrowed the blame down to teachers and publishers) is now deemed to be the blame for the success of our Nation of Americans.

It seems funny to me also that the people who are educated, by our system of education, are the ones who are most critical of our education system. It is as if they had, without help from the system at all, elevate themselves in such a way that the system never touched them, as they went through it.

I admit, if they had gone through a system in which the system was built around the Teacher instead of Student, they may have become very good engineers. And maybe, because they were Students learning engineering, and because that is what they wanted to do, the system taught them how best to blame the system for what they didn’t want. Maybe that is what our system does best, create a nation of blamelessness in ourselves, and I don’t know maybe that is a plus.

What has become clear to me is that what our system does best is to produce people who are advocates of change, at least those with the time and resources to work at change, and I think they want change for the better.

This advocacy for change is something I don’t believe a system that is Teacher based can accomplish, but what a globalized world need now. Especially now at a time when the military/industrial complex and our critical industries have moved off-shore of the USA, are against change, and especially against change coming from Students.

7 thoughts on “How Science Works”

Larry,

An excellent post!

The excellent topic you raise is what we mean about ‘American – what are American interests, what are foreign interests, and what are un-American interests.

My general thought is that a country like the US is best served by waging a State-Without 5GW [1], “where an operational arm of a government attacks a different society.” Specifically, we should be focusing on the economic infrastructure of the system of the world. Our natural objective is to exist on our own terms, to live in peace, and to promote the well-being of Americans.

If you consider the 1940 (when militarily aggressive state-socialist societies were ascendant) as the most dangerous moment for this objective, the following 70 years have been astonishgly successful. I believe we are in the consolidation stage of a State-Without 5GW that has remade the economic system of the world. I believe this final stage is roughly encompassed by the terms State Monopoly Capitalism [2], Ultraimperialism [3], and State Cartel Theory. [4]

Nonetheless, disasters can happen, and it is possible to imagine a serious threat to the global system regarding either China, India, or Russia. It is obviously dangerous to have our critical infrastructure run by nationals from these countries. I’m not arguing that foreigners should be kept out. But given two futures — one in which we are forced to hire foreign nationals for these positions, and another where Americans can compete for them – I’d choose the second.

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2007/08/01/kinds-of-5gw.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-imperialism
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_cartel_theory

larrydunbar

January 3, 2012 at 12:19 am

tdaxp,

Thanks I am glad you were able to condense my post down to “about ‘American'”. It will take me some time to go through all your references, but I will say: the triangle in the post Describing the Military-Industrial-Sysadmin-Complex: How We Will Win the 5GW to Shrink the Gap looks to me like the wrong structure. The structure actually has, if I may be so bold to suggest, a vertical component created by the horizontal component. As it seems to me that your horizontal component appears to be a corrupted version (which I expected of 5GW) of the implicit image of America, it will give me something to think about.

Reply
- larrydunbar
  
  January 3, 2012 at 10:44 am
  
  “looks to me like the wrong structure.”
  
  My apologies. I am guessing that the whole point of 5GW is that there is no vertical component. The vertical component is created by the potential of a nation, and the strategy of 5GW is to ‘hide” the potential of a nation.
  
  The vertical component is the normal-force of warfare that controls the friction in the other force. These forces in your diagram are, more or less, represented by the red and blue arrows.
  
  By hiding the potential of the nation (even if you are hiding it in plane site) there is no friction-controlling force, and so all forces, attracting and repulsive, are controlled by self-control of the “players” (or in this case perhaps it is better to use gamers). Or by “bouncing” a normal force off of the sides of your triangle.
  
  As I said, 5GW is carried out in plane-site, which I mean the plane looks like a line, similar to the sides of the triangle. This means 5GW is carried out in the Observation time-step within the nation’s OODA loop.
  
  5GW most resembles an advertising campaign carried out by corporations within the market.
  As a foreign policy it most resembles the Carter Doctrine, or in other words, what is more 5GW than deigning access to “foreigners” in the Middle East, when those foreigners include yourself?
  
  Our entry into Iraq in the 90’s by the first Bush was a part of the Carter Doctrine, as well as the strategy of getting behind the Northern Alliance and pushing our way into Afghanistan, by the second.
  
  The Carter Doctrine was the mechanism created to deal with the vertical component created by Nixon, as his dealings with China required.
  
  The Carter Doctrine enabled the USA to hand over the oil in Iraq to China.Without the Carter Doctrine we would have taken the oil ourselves and sold it to China.
  
  The Carter Doctrine keeps everything “foreign” out of the Middle East, except the implicit image of the Nation State to Observe.
  
  So that brings us back to the questions: what is meant by foreign in the Nation State of the USA and what does it mean by “being” American, as, under the Carter Doctrine, of being of the Middle East?