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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| The US military has a 'Gradually, Then Suddenly' problem |
| 2024-02-21 |
| [ZMan] The Hemingway line about bankruptcy happening gradually then suddenly is a great line because it applies to many things. The suddenly part is what everyone can see and what everyone remembers. It is the gradually part that is overlooked. It is the important part of the dynamic because it explains why the event occurred. Landslides are not random events but the accumulation of many small, unobserved events that eventually reach a tipping point and we get the big event. That is something to keep in mind as the military struggles to both meet its recruitment numbers and maintain the human capital needed for its operations. Fifty years ago, after the Vietnam war, the military put an emphasis on quality over quantity in both its arms and the men using those arms. The lesson of the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era, the so-called Stripes period, was that the modern military needed to be smarter, relying on intelligence rather than just brute force. There is a lot more to the renaissance of the American military that began fifty years ago, but the salient factor today is the emphasis on intelligence. The reason for that is the military is suffering from a brain-drain. The overall intelligence of the military is in decline and it is most acute among the officer class. According to that linked report from National Defense Press, "Two-thirds of the new officers commissioned in 2014 would be in the bottom one-third of the class of 1980." As one would expect in this age of censorship, certain factors are left out of the discussion, but they hover over it like a fog. In fact, this reality hangs over everything in American society, despite the rules against acknowledging it. The highly complex machine that is the modern high tech American society is in a race. Will the robots reach the point where they can run things for us before the general intelligence of the population declines below a sustainable threshold? |
| Posted by:M. Murcek |
| #24 *unfortunately, that was not the history lesson exercise. "Pretty sure I would have pulled a strong A." "Your points have been redistributed to those who didn't work, Komrade. What do you think of Equity?" "fuuuuuk." |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2024-02-21 22:16 |
| #23 Had a math teacher who, at the end of the week, would put up a problem which was sometimes mathematical and sometimes a riddle. Great teacher. Eldest got a fantastic history lesson the other day. Put nine hours into a project, quotes, citations, bibliography, the works. Gets to class and teacher says don't turn it in, everyone gets an 85%. Called a Buffer Student to ease classroom disruptions, knows for a fact nobody around even cracked a book. Talk about pissed. off. "Why even do the work?! What is the motivation?" "So...what you really got was a history lesson on Communism?" |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2024-02-21 19:58 |
| #22 Yes, I felt the question was ambiguous. Frank supplied the missing piece. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-21 19:38 |
| #21 The question didn't ask how many additional ounces, it just asked how many ounces a bottle half full at 8 ounces, it will hold 16 ounces when full. Evaporation is immaterial. In psych there is an old term called functional fixedness, which blinds reasoning to non-traditional pathways. The classic is the question about how to make a box. In the premise, the reader is told he is presented with a 4x4 ft sheet of plywood, two saws, a hammer, a 90 steel degree measure, a wedge, a can of red paint a box of 10p nails and a tape measure. The challenge is to produce, in any form, in any style, a simple box, in 1 hour. The actual solution is merely to dump out the nails and voila, challenge completed. But the box of nails is rarely seen as a "box" rather it is nails and the challenge shadows thinking into formatting the components into something. QED |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2024-02-21 19:19 |
| #20 Vinegar, please concentrate on the Glock problem. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-02-21 18:59 |
| #19 "additional" is the operative phrase |
| Posted by: Frank G 2024-02-21 18:46 |
| #18 16oz is the answer. You don’t even know your own question. |
| Posted by: Vinegar Greque3942 2024-02-21 18:40 |
| #17 See. I didn't read it that way. I'd have got it wrong. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-21 17:47 |
| #16 Relevant? Yes, 16 oz is total bottle capacity. Total capacity after fluid reduction is the question. .20 x 8 oz = 1.6 oz 8 - 1.6 = 6.4 16 - 6.4 = 9.6 oz 9.6 = remaining total capacity |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-02-21 17:21 |
| #15 B, when I studied for my first MS certification, the instructor explained how to read the questions. He said there would be irrelevant details intended to mask what was really being asked. I bring that up because in your first example, I couldn't understand what the size of the bottle (half-filled means 16 oz bottle) had to do with the fact that there would be 6.4 oz left after reducing by 20%. If I got it wrong, I missed what the question actually asked because I couldn't grasp what the 16 oz bottle had to do with it. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-21 16:59 |
| #14 Too difficult? Ok, we'll ghettoize it. If your Glock magazine contains 17 rounds. You fire 5/17th's of the ammo in your mag. You remove the magazine and give a half dozen rounds to a brother. How many rounds remain until you must reload ? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-02-21 16:41 |
| #13 ^ They have been told since pre-K there will be no math... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-21 16:29 |
| #12 I wonder how many might discover the answer ? A bottle is half filled with 8 ounces of solvent. If 20% evaporates, how many ounces of solvent will the bottle now hold? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-02-21 16:23 |
| #11 Whole generations of young men are now freed from the anguish of disappointing their fathers by not attending West Point. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-21 16:20 |
| #10 West Point Grom, where black females have special exceptions on their way to the stars. |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2024-02-21 15:38 |
| #9 #5 These are cadets from a military school, right? So why is everybody (at least in line#1) overweight? |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-02-21 14:43 |
| #8 If these are the officers that will lead US troops against US citizens, I like our chances. Unpack that one... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-21 14:40 |
| #7 /\ Perhaps that is the goal. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-02-21 14:25 |
| #6 We at least won't be losing our "best and brightest" in pointless neocon proxy wars. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-21 14:23 |
| #5 Someone, anyone, what is it as a society we have gained ? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-02-21 14:16 |
| #4 "Two-thirds of the new officers commissioned in 2014 would be in the bottom one-third of the class of 1980." A daring analyst would then cross reference the demographics of that cohort and discover the DEI cancer in full bloom! |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2024-02-21 13:54 |
| #3 The Trump administration's policy makes sense to me: demand that allied countries take primary responsibility for defense in their region and then the US will back them up. |
| Posted by: Vernal Hatfield3347 2024-02-21 10:50 |
| #2 Maybe its [well past] time to reconsider being the 'world's policeman'. As we've posted, why are we defending someone else's border way over there on the globe and [other than Texas] absolutely unwilling to defend our own right here. You have one job and you are failing it. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-02-21 07:39 |
| #1 I would caution against confusing a "problem" with a plan. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-02-21 02:04 |