Most people I know, including some on the right disagree with these tactics which seem designed more to intimidate and silence opposition. Of course you’re free to work with whomever you choose but it seems like a pretty empty virtue signal to avoid all companies in a huge, diverse country
The leader of that huge, diverse country controls the most powerful military in the world and is threatening to invade my country and is showing maps where it’s part of the US.
I have a 2 year old daughter.
With every fibre of my being I’m not spending a cent on any US business, person, company.
It might be empty but if enough people do this and put pressure on the US economy it might make a difference. It's unfortunate but many people won't care until it starts effecting them personally.
"Oh, you are donating your time and money to charitable programs to the poor? What virtue signaling." It has just become a cliche to say that doing anything based on your values whatsoever is bad.
Slightly disappointed to realize there is not some automated drink machine behind this, as that's more my interest, but cool nonetheless and you handmade drinks are probably better.
The most most successful car companies in the world are from a country even less advantageous to auto manufacture, Japan. They had very little natural resources and about the only avdantage vs UK was a little bit bigger population.
Cars like Jaguar and Land Rover have famously bad electrical systems. But just saying quality issues doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue. Bad quality at one company is one thing, but if you’re arguing bad quality happened across a whole industry or country, and its the country that started the industrial revolution and could come up with the Rolls Royce Merlin when it needed to, there has to be a deeper reason. I don’t know it unions were the whole story, as really only Germany or Germanic countries have ever had great quality control for cars in Europe, but there must be some systemic reason.
There are lots of manufacturers in the UK right now who have fantastic quality. Rolls Royce aero engines. Lots of pharmaceuticals. Airbus wings and landing gear. Lots of cars as well. Medical devices. The list is endless.
The UK manufacturing sector was worth $279 billion in the last year.
That's all true. But the list could have been a lot longer. The UK had a lot more industry than it does today and there definitely were quality issues. At the same time: competition that wasn't even on the horizon back then (for instance: Korea) became a major factor and at some point you need the scale. For the UK driving on the left side of the road made that all of their exports had to be made for domestic or foreign use, foreign manufacturers often chose to simply not field a model in the UK, so that was an extra cost.
It's funny, I've a complete love/hate relationship with cars from the UK. I love them, love the looks, love to drive them. But I hate the unreliability that was part and parcel of it and I hated even more to buy a spare part and then to find out that it subtly didn't fit because of some defect in body geometry with as a result that it looked like crap (fenders... subframes... don't get me started on that one, I can bore you to death about the kind of crap they sold).
The Metro could have been what the 206 was for Peugeot, instead they made fairly nice design in the most cheap and unsafe way possible. In comparison the 206 was a little tank.
This is an under-appreciated point: the UK manufacturing sector is highly successful, but only where it doesn't employ large armies of workers, and is instead either automated or very small volume/large margin.
News coverage of this is, as expected, completely dire.
> Bad quality at one company is one thing, but if you’re arguing bad quality happened across a whole industry or country
There's a culture in industries. As you said, look at Germany. Look at the culture in SV - it would be hard to open a development business of any size that ran completely against the SV engineering culture.
> the country that started the industrial revolution and could come up with the Rolls Royce Merlin when it needed to
That is almost literally ancient history. Nearly Medieval history. :)
> I don’t know it unions were the whole story
Looking at the two countries with the best reputations for quality, a lack of union and labor projection may be the problem: Germany has very strong unions; in many cases, they get a seat on the board of directors. Japan treats its labor very well - often lifetime jobs, famously Toyota empowers assembly line workers to stop the entire line themselves - and has low labor market liquidity (but my info on Japan could be out of date).
TBF, the industrial revolution started 250 years ago and the Merlin ceased production 75 years ago and has almost literally nothing in common with the Trent - not design, metallurgy, thermodynamic cycle, fuel...
Calling the referenced achievements ancient history isn't an unreasonable take, despite current successes.
I have worked very closely with some autistic people and they were very smart in a human dictionary type way- knew a huge amount of facts but hit a wall very hard with higher levels of abstraction.
Two things I see as required for cutting edge math or physics are intellectual humility and a lot of intuitive feeling for how to approach problems. Another way to say this would be not missing the forest for the trees.
It's kind of wild how the same traits (hyperfocus, detail orientation, pattern sensitivity) can be superpowers in some contexts but limiting in others that require leaps of intuition or comfort with ambiguity
Yeah I am slower, clumsier and somewhat worse with memorizing details but still the person that is called in when there is something novel that requires cutting through multiple levels and using judgement. Though I am extremely thankful for my autistic coworkers since we complement each other as a team.
Having worked with some brilliant people with autism, I argue that deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thiking in real time is the hallmark of autism.
Moreso than anything about emotions, body language, social skills etc this is the most common trait. It pops up in odd places no matter how much you mask or learn the visible skills.
I think the actual hallmark is one layer deeper: the brain's "input filter" is different and doesn't assign "important" versus "not important" distinctions in the same way as a "neurotypical" brain might. (In fact, the brain just might not be very good at input filtering, period.)
This shows up in a lot of ways: sensory (can't just filter out the tag on the back of your shirt), interests (can't recognize that you're spending just a liiiitle too much time on that model train), food (don't categorize trying new foods as interesting, so you don't), etc. But human socialization is incredibly complex, and while many of us can do decently well at learning it, imagine trying to get a grip on social cues without being able to tell what's relevant and what's not. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
It also is a working theory that well matches my experience with the autistic people in my life. "Deficits in cognitive empathy/ inability understand intuitively what other people are thinking", aka "theory of mind", is a really good description of how things are often difficult, and I think "different stimulus input filter" is a pretty good hypothesis for how it might arise.
As an autistic person, what you say is correct to my experience. I have all sorts of sensory processing issues that all basically are variations on "I can't ignore signals".
It's the other way round - let's say you have a thousand inputs, and those contain 1 bit/s in a way that you can't pick one or a few inputs that allow you to correctly decode that one bit of information.
Or let's say you have a million inputs, or pixels, and you need to determine if there is a cat in the picture. Selective attention won't work for that either. You can't pick six pixels that allow you to reliably answer this question.
You need dimensionality reduction, that will reduce the data into a manageable amount of abstract features, from which you can pick what features matter to you.
Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.
To be clear, I'm not proposing any specific mechanism for or details of the difference in input filtering, just that this seems to be central to the impact of autism. (And, of course, it seems very likely that there is no "one true mechanism" here, just as autism has no "one true presentation".)
> Neurotypical people lack (or only have remnants of) this second filter.
This statement didn't scan for me, did you mean "autistic" instead of "neurotypical"? (And "neurodivergent" doesn't fit, there are many more neurodivergences than just autism.) Everything I know about neurotypicality does indicate something like that "second filter" is present (if possibly distributed).
Both have the selective attention filter. Autistic people also have another, dimensionality reduction filter.
So in autistic people it goes (raw sensory data) --> [dimensionality reduction] --> (latent space of abstract features) --> [selective attention] --> (higher thinking)
While for neurotypical people it goes (raw sensory data) --> [selective attention] --> (higher thinking).
Positing the emergence of an entirely distinct layer of processing is a pretty extreme divergence. It goes counter to a lot of established theory and, in general, seems like too big of a difference. Abstract feature determination hardly seems to be unique to neurodivergence.
I think any common neurodivergences that still result in more-or-less functioning adult brains are going to appear as different weightings or emphases, not entirely different effective structures.
One possible contribution to the behavior you are seeing is that sometimes brain behavior that is missing or ineffective gets lifted to the cognitive (conscious or semiconscious) layer. The cognitive layer of the brain can do, essentially, anything. But it has to work a lot harder than the lower layers, so you notice it a lot more. This can result in "squeaky wheel" syndrome, where one counterintuitively notices only the things that aren't working as well as they could be.
The filter is obviously supposed to be there, it's "neurotypical" people who have a problem.
It means you need to use your higher thinking to do sensory processing. It's like if your GPU had burned out. So you had to find a way to do everything on the CPU. It sucks, and you don't have much capacity left for the actual thinking.
I'd say have been successfully precluded from developing that.
Instead, they've learned to substitute its functionality with the quasi-religious faith that they are actually any good at inferring what others think. (Take that precept away and see em flail, it's disturbing.)
At population scale, this resolves to either mass violent panic or a society living under the constant self-fulfilling prophecy that fewer things are thinkable than those which are possible, while screaming that it's the other way around. (Instead of, you know, aiming for the parity between interpretation and reality which is necessary to accomplish anything at all.)
The main neurotypical trait is lack of inherent revulsion to delusion.
Empathy is so where it's at. Especially after a few decades of rats in boxes taught the corporate parrots to bring themselves to say the word.
So, then: when was the last time you expressed empathy, and whom did it help?
And also: when was the last time you expressed empathy for someone you were told you should have no empathy for?
Cmon, give us that sweet, sweet emotional vulnerability. Because, surprise for whoever's not looking: insisting that a legitimate society can be built on the magical belief that performing an emotional emulation somehow equates to giving a damn about someone's actual well-being - that kind of thing is a big part of what's wrong with you guys.
Those are some pretty extreme views. I hope you find a place in this world where you fit in. And I also hope that I am very, very far from that place. It doesn't sound like it would make for a society that matches my values.
Hey, I understand if what I'm saying is making you upset. Not necessarily why, but let's say I can imagine.
Your countersignal references "a place in the world to fit in", this presumes a strong belief that the world fits together, right?
You're pretty invested in the view that social consensus is essentially fair, and does not, for example, hinge on tragicomical amounts of epistemic sleight-of-hand, or anything like that?
You'd find living with that sort of awareness kinda depressing, over the long run prone to lead you to what they call them bad places?
Yeah, well.
In any case. What it would be helpful of you to be aware of. And I don't usually mean things in that sort of sense anymore - but this time I do mean it in the sense of "do this to make the world a better place" helpful: please remain mindful that the world that gave my "views", if they can even be called that, is the same one that gave you yours. There's no essential difference, beyond the paths we've walked through it (which I'm happy to confirm are different enough that you're completely safe from any harmfulness that you've been so kind as to proactively ascribe to me, thank you very much, jfc)
No, the core difference is the level of abstraction, and the inability to communicate between people with different levels of abstraction.
The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems.
Neurotypicality is merely a socially acceptable level of schizophrenia.
Autism results when the level of abstraction is significantly higher than the surrounding society:
You can't automatically understand the concrete speech, and you especially can't understand the "implications" that rely on the concrete magical thinking.
People can't understand you, because their level of abstraction isn't sufficient to understand the actual meaning, so they assume you talk about something random.
People overread the gaze of more abstract thinkers, and underread the gaze of less abstract thinkers, due to the difference in the field of view.
Compare Taylor Swift (ultra concrete, easily understood by neurotypical people) vs Rihanna (very abstract)
> The opposite of autism is schizophrenia, where abstract thinking fails completely, and the person is unable to find correct answers to everyday problems.
I've heard this one before, but expressed in causal fallacy terms.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it's often right to assume a causal relationship even though you are unaware of the underlying mechanism.
If your criteria for assuming causality are too lax, you are schizophrenic (seeing relationships that aren't there), if they are too strict, you are autistic (missing the obvious).
Having worked with some brilliant people who don't have autism, I'd argue that their hallmark is deficits in cognitive empathy / inability to understand intuitively what autistic people are thinking in real time.
I'm not sure how to describe this phenomenon where one person says $CLASS has $DEFICIENCY and they are respected and understood. Then someone else uses the same phrasing to reframe the statement to mean the same thing from a different perspective and that idea is rejected without explanation as to why.
Allistic people do fail to empathize with autistic people everyday. To suggest otherwise only ignorantly refutes my lived experience. Only gaslighting will convince autistic folk that they should disregard that. (And that happens everyday, sadly.)
Yep. Too much empathy can be a diagnostic signal for folks with autism. (These days Asperger's is now diagnosed as autism and not a separate diagnosis.)
There is a very different pattern I learned to recognize with Private Equity electricians. Its not all negative- they have fast availability and good communication (because they have office staff), but that’s the end of the good stuff.
You call for one broken outlet and they pull out fancy branded folders and pens with checklists of every little thing that could possibly be upgraded (inplying its needed for safety) present you with a multi $K bill and then do a little magic 10% discount for some reason to make you think its a good deal.
That said I get my petty revenge by asking questions at the free consult (marketing opportunity) then hiring local guys instead, whenever I cam find them.
I just did an 18K BTU mini split in my garage myself with no HVAC background for around $1K and $300 in tools. For a little more capacity this guy paid 30-40x the price.
This article is a perfect example of why I moved out of NYC. Contractors there are more likely to be dishonest, less skilled and more expensive and have insane leverage over rich apartment dwellers who might own a screwdriver but basically have no ability (or permission) to do anything themselves.
Smart, productive people thus have large parts of their lives eaten up dealing with things that are trivial in a large majority of the country because of the density. I decided I’d rather spend my time pursuing my own goals not basic daily comfort.
You can’t really put the UK surveillance state on a political left right axis though. Its an orthagonal trend where various Britains have always been trying to monitor each other for various purposes and that’s why it grows and grows. At least that’s how it looks to me as an outsider.
Keeping quiet about your faith is probably a wise and respectful way of navigating a multi-cultural, multi-religious society but I don’t think its particulally supported Bibically as most of the New Testamemt after the gospels is about spreading the faith.
Jesus says not to pray loudly like the Pharisees which could be interpreted as not bragging about ones faith, but he also says “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven” so it seems like an instruction to share faith with others.
In present day USA if you loudly announce your faith its hard to escape tribalism associations so I agree with your advice, but I also think its important not to water down religion by ignoring the parts that do not fit with modern sensibilities because then we are having a totally different conversation.
The most genuinely good person I've known, my wife's very devout grandmother, who belonged to the United Church of Christ and whose husband was a preacher for a United Methodist Church, never once went out of her way to proselytize (in my presence at least.) That's not to say she wouldn't talk about God or her beliefs if it was somehow directly relevant to a conversation, but I never saw her trying to "spread the word" just to do so. She emphasized caring for others and the "love your neighbor as yourself," part. Her favorite scripture was the story of the Good Samaritan and that was what she requested to be read at her funeral. She didn't spend time talking about what Jesus wanted, or trying to convince you to believe, she set the example by living it.
The unfortunate part is, in my 38 years of existence, she is possibly the first "real" Christian I've known: Christian through her acts, not just her words. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, Jesus bases judgment not on religious rituals or verbal professions of faith, but on acts of compassion towards others: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the unclothed, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned. This seems to emphasize practical love and concern for the vulnerable as true evidence of discipleship, rather than one's ability to proselytize.
Isn't the most important part of the New Testament the Gospels and almost everything that comes after is more about institutional Christianity? Acts, describing the spread of Christianity after Jesus' ascension, with little new information about his teachings. Epistles focus primarily on doctrine, ethics, and church organization rather than Jesus' words and actions. Revelations...well I'll leave that to others to interpret.
If Christianity is built around Jesus, shouldn't his teachings and words be the focus rather than the institution of Christianity itself? I don't think there is anything wrong with proselytizing per se, it's obviously critical to ensuring the survival and expansion of any belief system and from an evolutionary standpoint, ideas that encourage their own reproduction tend to thrive. But it seems misguided to focus on spreading the faith rather than doing all the things Jesus says you should do.
I seem to have dug out quite a few notions on what religion is all about here on HN, from the shout from the roof tops to "a bit of a chat" - obviously my original comment was DV'd to oblivion.
For me, religion starts and stops from within. I am not an evangelist - my God is mine and your's is yours. I'll tell you what I'm about and no more.
"Still small Voice of quiet" not "Hell fire and damnation".
I will dive in with a gentle nudge but never an exhortation.
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