RSS
From National Interest:
The Russian military will be using genetics to assess that most unpredictable of human qualities: how a person will react in combat.
Want to be a Russian paratrooper or tank commander? Then you’d better hope you have the right genes.
The Russian military will be assigning soldiers based on their “genetic passports.”
“The project is far-reaching, scientific, fundamental,” Alexander Sergeyev, the chief of Russia’s Academy of Sciences, told Russian news agency TASS back in the summer (English translation here). “Its essence is to find such genetic predispositions among military personnel, which will allow them to be properly oriented according to military specialties.”
“It is a question of understanding at the genetic level who is more prone to, for example, to service in the fleet, who may be more prepared to become a paratrooper or a tankman.”
Interesting. Are there any traits where genetic testing is as good right now as regular testing?
For example, I knew a guy who enlisted in the Navy, but got discharged after months of expensive training because he was permanently seasick when at sea. That might be something that eventually could be predicted genetically and would be worth saying: Nah, you are probably never going to get over your seasickness, so you should go enlist in the Army instead.
But most of the time it makes sense just to give somebody a phenotypic test.
For example, George W. Bush scored poorly on his Air Force entrance test on the parts involving artificial horizons and other flying-related knacks. He did okay on other parts, especially leadership personality, so they let him become a pilot. But while he managed to fly a dangerous fighter without killing himself, he was never particularly good at it and gave up flying when he got out.
So, the paper-pencil tests they’ve got already are pretty good.
On the other hand, a big military like Russia’s can probably acquire a sample size of over a million in a decade of genetically testing all new recruits. And they’ve got a ton of real world data on servicemen, so why not correlate DNA with performance and see what shakes out?
Civilian GWAS broke the million sample size barrier with Lee et al last year, but the problem facing these kind of studies is a lack of dependent variable types of data. Lee focused on “educational attainment” because it’s a question asked on a large percentage of medical forms. But there aren’t all that many such common questions from medical studies. In contrast, modern militaries know an absurd amount about the performance of military personnel so it would be very tempting to scan the DNA and see what correlates with what.
Well, I guess the Texas Air National Guard is a division of the USAF–is that right?
About Putin, we all know he’s a Nazi. Right?
Yep. Especially if you want to lose your job.
Far more important to detect NED agents and terminate them. Those guys are like cryptolocker.
Anyway, is the National Interest on trip?
China & Russia’s ‘worst nightmare’? National Interest piece fantasizing sale of US nuke subs to allies is an ‘exaggeration’
Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches
I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages
-a Nobel laureate
I had a few friends in the Air Force. They spread the “Marine+ASVAB = Potato” meme far and wide.
I can’t imagine thisAir Force treatment at the recruitment center parody can’t be too of the mark.
Happy Veterans Day!
Widespread genetic testing might help in determining what career one should have in the military, but probably not as much as the Russians are hoping.
Sounds all very NWO, this starts with the military but no doubt the end goal will be to keep a genetic database of everyone. They usually start agendas like this in a way that makes it sound desirable, like selecting people with the best traits for combat soldiers, but the end goal is always to roll it out to society in general.
I find it odd how everyone claims Russia is “based”, and yet it seems to me a disproportionate amount of this “futurist”, NWO type stuff comes from Russia.
I would bet the same thing is happening here. Someone in Russia broke a minor story about some extremely small and innocuous study being performed on soldiers' DNA, and it turned into "Russia is building das ubersoldaten!.
It will pass.Replies: @Josep
2) Start doing the same, but with a heavy heart, because we don't like stooping to their level.
3) Guess what, the 'enemy' were never doing that thing we accused them of! But it turns out to be so useful we'll just carry on anyway.Replies: @OFWHAP
By the way, did you read the feature in City Journal last week on the Williamson College of the Trades?
It’s a Pennsylvanian 3-year vocational college that admits based on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (a superset of the AFQT used in the NLSY which the Bell Curve analyzed).
https://www.city-journal.org/williamson-college-of-the-trades
Young men only.
Means tested poor kids only.
100 percent free; no federal assistance accepted.
Living in supervised dormitories.
Up at the crack of down.
Trade work in the a.m., suits and ties for classroom work in the p.m. (writing, math, etc.).
A quarter of accepted students wash out, and misfits are “encouraged” to get lost, but those that stay all get jobs.
These are the trades taught: carpentry, masonry, horticulture, machine tool tech, painting, power plant/electrician. They maintain their own college grounds and facilities.
https://www.williamson.edu/education/trade-programs/
This article makes it sound like the place is skimming objectively-tested smart but non academically oriented poor kids and sending them into jobs that end up making them more money than many college graduates, debt-free. There are stories of graduates who have started nice businesses or risen to the top of their companies, but I don’t know how common that is.
"They maintain their own college grounds and facilities."
I knew an outsourcing company who got the contract to build new networks for the Department Of Computing at a UK technical university (I think it was Strathclyde in Scotland). Couldn't believe it. All that ostensible brainpower and knowledge among the staff, a horde of essentially free labour in the students - and they couldn't build their own networks!
It would also have looked great on the graduate CVs.Replies: @notsaying
I didn’t know they admitted based on ASVAB scores but that makes sense based on what I’ve seen.
The old County psychiatric hospitals (aka funny farms) were literally that. Big dormitories built on sprawling rural grounds with college-like administration buildings and vocational classrooms. All the food: meat and veggies, were grown on the premises by the loonies. What a perfect way to ground (sorry) someone who suffers from flights of fantasy and delusions.
But we can't have that today. Learning and doing self sufficiency is labeled cruel and unusual punishment. Better to drug them into a somnambulant state.
Oh, almost forgot. They had crematoriums as well. Really.
Bush flew the relatively docile F-102, the schoolmarm of the Century Series. It had a few quirks but overall was not too challenging to fly.
He would have had to master the somewhat more challenging T-38 Talon in UPT. The story was that had he been regular Air Force, he would not have been sent to fighters but probably transports, and had he not had sponsorship he would not have gotten an ANG slot in those days. So while he was not wholly unqualified he was the beneficiary of a sort of favoritism in two ways.
As a president, he would have made a good baseball commissioner.
It's a Pennsylvanian 3-year vocational college that admits based on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (a superset of the AFQT used in the NLSY which the Bell Curve analyzed).
https://www.city-journal.org/williamson-college-of-the-trades
Young men only.
Means tested poor kids only.
100 percent free; no federal assistance accepted.
Living in supervised dormitories.
Up at the crack of down.
Trade work in the a.m., suits and ties for classroom work in the p.m. (writing, math, etc.).
A quarter of accepted students wash out, and misfits are "encouraged" to get lost, but those that stay all get jobs.
These are the trades taught: carpentry, masonry, horticulture, machine tool tech, painting, power plant/electrician. They maintain their own college grounds and facilities.
https://www.williamson.edu/education/trade-programs/
This article makes it sound like the place is skimming objectively-tested smart but non academically oriented poor kids and sending them into jobs that end up making them more money than many college graduates, debt-free. There are stories of graduates who have started nice businesses or risen to the top of their companies, but I don't know how common that is.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @YetAnotherAnon, @JMcG, @ThreeCranes
It sounds like KIPP for 19-year-olds.
KIPP more or less seems to work for hard-working adolescents.
He would have had to master the somewhat more challenging T-38 Talon in UPT. The story was that had he been regular Air Force, he would not have been sent to fighters but probably transports, and had he not had sponsorship he would not have gotten an ANG slot in those days. So while he was not wholly unqualified he was the beneficiary of a sort of favoritism in two ways.
As a president, he would have made a good baseball commissioner.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @ivvenalis
The f102 was less of a widow-maker than the f104?
The later F-106 was a more desired assignment by far. It was fast and therefore a far better interceptor, but it also had twice the wing loading. Real fighter pilots loved it but it was a more demanding aircraft to fly. It’s safety record was actually better, mostly because the Air Force became a much safer operation overall in its era. It had a much longer service life and was phased out largely because its avionics fit was too time consuming to maintain and it was the last airframe that used that engine.
Looks like Anatoly Karlin finally found his dream job.
Reminds me of Gattica.
Genetic screening could probably be helpful in assessing things like susceptibility to PTSD, but I doubt the science is anywhere near predicting actual behavior in combat. There are just too many confounding factors.
Whatever the case, it will make it a lot easier to prosecute war crimes if every soldier’s DNA is on file, so I bet armies will be strongly opposed to the collation of personal genetic profiles. Armies are basically public-sector unions with heavy weapons.
Granted, the non-combat parts of DoD are much like public-sector unions, but they don't use heavy weapons and, in contemporary warfare, are exposed to danger somewhat less than they would be if living in a high crime area back home in the US.
Counterinsurgency
1] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/611144
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montesquieu see section "Political views" for an excellent description of the problem the US is facing today, as the political establishment tries to transition to a government without branches in order to institute the command economy it needs to keep urban areas dominant.
Reminds me of Gattica.
Genetic screening could probably be helpful in assessing things like susceptibility to PTSD, but I doubt the science is anywhere near predicting actual behavior in combat. There are just too many confounding factors.
Whatever the case, it will make it a lot easier to prosecute war crimes if every soldier's DNA is on file, so I bet armies will be strongly opposed to the collation of personal genetic profiles. Armies are basically public-sector unions with heavy weapons.Replies: @Anonymous, @PolMordreth, @Counterinsurgency, @Daniel Chieh
Karlin will occasionally cite evidence that he suspects that “Putler” secretly reads his blog posts. But of course he’d like to take credit for Putin’s good ideas because, as Martyanov has said about Karlin, he has an ego the size of a cathedral. 🤣
It's a Pennsylvanian 3-year vocational college that admits based on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (a superset of the AFQT used in the NLSY which the Bell Curve analyzed).
https://www.city-journal.org/williamson-college-of-the-trades
Young men only.
Means tested poor kids only.
100 percent free; no federal assistance accepted.
Living in supervised dormitories.
Up at the crack of down.
Trade work in the a.m., suits and ties for classroom work in the p.m. (writing, math, etc.).
A quarter of accepted students wash out, and misfits are "encouraged" to get lost, but those that stay all get jobs.
These are the trades taught: carpentry, masonry, horticulture, machine tool tech, painting, power plant/electrician. They maintain their own college grounds and facilities.
https://www.williamson.edu/education/trade-programs/
This article makes it sound like the place is skimming objectively-tested smart but non academically oriented poor kids and sending them into jobs that end up making them more money than many college graduates, debt-free. There are stories of graduates who have started nice businesses or risen to the top of their companies, but I don't know how common that is.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @YetAnotherAnon, @JMcG, @ThreeCranes
We need something like that in the UK.
“They maintain their own college grounds and facilities.”
I knew an outsourcing company who got the contract to build new networks for the Department Of Computing at a UK technical university (I think it was Strathclyde in Scotland). Couldn’t believe it. All that ostensible brainpower and knowledge among the staff, a horde of essentially free labour in the students – and they couldn’t build their own networks!
It would also have looked great on the graduate CVs.
It may have just been easier to have outsiders to it. Also the contract may have included multiple universities. In any case, this way there were no arguments, no embarrassment, no fingerpointing.
It would have been an interesting project for them, that's for sure.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
Oy, tovarisch Trofim Lysenko is turning over in his grave.
“And they’ve got a ton of real world data on servicemen, so why not correlate DNA with performance and see what shakes out?”
We could also dig up all the dead generals, test their DNA, and correlate with their historic performance.
Whatever, they’ll be no match for our tranny corps.
My guess is that it’s a boondoggle. Besides being able to brag about how high-tech it is, think how much money will flow from the state budget to the private companies providing genetic testing services! It’s completely in line with other Russian phenomena such as a private monopoly feeding Russia’s 350.000-strong National Guard.
I find it odd how everyone claims Russia is "based", and yet it seems to me a disproportionate amount of this "futurist", NWO type stuff comes from Russia.Replies: @Intelligent Dasein, @Daniel Chieh, @Lurker
I seriously doubt this genetic testing is happening at all. These kinds of stories about Russia always turn out to have been propaganda and hype and sensationalism. A few years ago, there was a big splash about Russia going all in on cryptocurrencies with the Kremlin’s blessing. That faded into oblivion without ever being retracted. The official Russian spokesmen said that they had studied the matter but had no plans to do anything, all to no avail. People believed what they wanted to believe.
I would bet the same thing is happening here. Someone in Russia broke a minor story about some extremely small and innocuous study being performed on soldiers’ DNA, and it turned into “Russia is building das ubersoldaten!.
It will pass.
Everybody knows genetics were invented by Hitler to opress transvestites.
Maybe eventually they’ll be able to just clone from whatever DNA they want.
In the US Army, tests such as doing repugnant tasks, rappelling from helicopters, dropping into water from a rope slide, parachuting from aircraft, and so on are used to screen out people who can't serve in an assault / raiding unit. Since scarce trained and capable people sometimes get killed when a unit member becomes a psych casualty, washing out a probably psych casualty makes sense both from a humanitarian / combat effectiveness standpoint and from a dollars and sense standpoint.
In both cases, the tests are simply "let the candidates encounter close simulations of real stress and see who holds together". I should add that a surprisingly large percent do hold together, the percent depending on just how extreme the stress gets.
So: Genetic testing makes sense as an initial screening. And I don't really see what the people here have against keeping a person out of what amounts quite often to training for a suicide job. Save those training slots for the people who want them, and a surprisingly large number of people do.
Counterinsurgency
The future belongs to robot soldiers. I don’t know how long will it take, but I guess it will be the new norm. Why waste precious vulnerable tissue & fluids creatures?
That’s the wrong question. A better question is: does adding genetic testing to the regular testing improve matches enough to justify its extra cost. It seems likely that genetic testing will eventually be nearly free, so that this better question is also easy to answer.
Russia: tests to determine who the biggest badass will be.
America: Letting women into special forces for diversity’s sake.
World War III is going to be great!
The way it’s going, I believe Western European countries will also have genetically selected armies in the not too distant future.
Whether the genes will be Middle-Eastern or Sub-Saharan, however, is still to be determined (or decided on the battlefield).
A friend has a startup in Russia which aims to analyse your DNA and then suggest the right subjects to study and career path to follow.
Family Tree DNA offers a factoid test for the Warrior gene.
Also a test for “Avoidance of Errors”.
Guess there may be something to this.
Reminds me of Gattica.
Genetic screening could probably be helpful in assessing things like susceptibility to PTSD, but I doubt the science is anywhere near predicting actual behavior in combat. There are just too many confounding factors.
Whatever the case, it will make it a lot easier to prosecute war crimes if every soldier's DNA is on file, so I bet armies will be strongly opposed to the collation of personal genetic profiles. Armies are basically public-sector unions with heavy weapons.Replies: @Anonymous, @PolMordreth, @Counterinsurgency, @Daniel Chieh
Ummm… the US military has maintained a DNA registry of all service members for decades. if you served since 1980 (i think) there is a dna sample in the FBI computers with your pictures and your fingerprints….
So it can't be used in investigations, even if a soldier is a suspected serial killer, and it would be useless for genetic screening.
When America’s tranny army defeats the Russians on a 900 mile front during WWIII, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg will make the HBO series “Band of Trannies” starring Jesse Smollett as the tranny platoon sergeant.
He would have had to master the somewhat more challenging T-38 Talon in UPT. The story was that had he been regular Air Force, he would not have been sent to fighters but probably transports, and had he not had sponsorship he would not have gotten an ANG slot in those days. So while he was not wholly unqualified he was the beneficiary of a sort of favoritism in two ways.
As a president, he would have made a good baseball commissioner.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @ivvenalis
It’s perfectly plausible that Bush got some special treatment but anyone who habitually manages to land a jet fighter solo has something on the ball. And saying that a plane is less dangerous than the F-104 isn’t saying much.
WWII aircraft were much more demanding to land, and to fly in general.
Careful with the Russian reporting, Steve, or you’ll be suspected of being a Russian mole! LOL!
Don’t you know you’re not supposed to say anything nice or even objective about Russia?
Reminds me of Gattica.
Genetic screening could probably be helpful in assessing things like susceptibility to PTSD, but I doubt the science is anywhere near predicting actual behavior in combat. There are just too many confounding factors.
Whatever the case, it will make it a lot easier to prosecute war crimes if every soldier's DNA is on file, so I bet armies will be strongly opposed to the collation of personal genetic profiles. Armies are basically public-sector unions with heavy weapons.Replies: @Anonymous, @PolMordreth, @Counterinsurgency, @Daniel Chieh
You wish. “A rational army would run away” [1,2] . Combat units can’t think like public-sector units without becoming combat ineffective. If all combat units are ineffective, the sponsoring country eventually loses its ability to support an army and its interest in giving such support. That, IMHO, is one of the big reasons that unionizing the non-USSR military was an objective of the Western Left.
Granted, the non-combat parts of DoD are much like public-sector unions, but they don’t use heavy weapons and, in contemporary warfare, are exposed to danger somewhat less than they would be if living in a high crime area back home in the US.
Counterinsurgency
1] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/611144
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montesquieu see section “Political views” for an excellent description of the problem the US is facing today, as the political establishment tries to transition to a government without branches in order to institute the command economy it needs to keep urban areas dominant.
Only the Germans had problems with the F-104s.
https://img.memecdn.com/and-then-obi-wan-discovered-the-clone-army_o_5545503.gifReplies: @Counterinsurgency
If you want an account of the testing required to find people with personalities that hold together under stress, take a look at UK SAS training. Trouble is, it’s expensive, and the people who don’t hold together during the “your head is about to be crushed” test (which is pretty convincing, from what I’ve read) might become psych casualties latter.
In the US Army, tests such as doing repugnant tasks, rappelling from helicopters, dropping into water from a rope slide, parachuting from aircraft, and so on are used to screen out people who can’t serve in an assault / raiding unit. Since scarce trained and capable people sometimes get killed when a unit member becomes a psych casualty, washing out a probably psych casualty makes sense both from a humanitarian / combat effectiveness standpoint and from a dollars and sense standpoint.
In both cases, the tests are simply “let the candidates encounter close simulations of real stress and see who holds together”. I should add that a surprisingly large percent do hold together, the percent depending on just how extreme the stress gets.
So: Genetic testing makes sense as an initial screening. And I don’t really see what the people here have against keeping a person out of what amounts quite often to training for a suicide job. Save those training slots for the people who want them, and a surprisingly large number of people do.
Counterinsurgency
The Deuce was the “Interim Interceptor”, and not very fast, speed being the sine qua non of intercepting it was not the stuff of legends. However, considering the mission profiles it flew, it was as fighters go pretty safe. It was generally well liked as far as overall handling went.
The later F-106 was a more desired assignment by far. It was fast and therefore a far better interceptor, but it also had twice the wing loading. Real fighter pilots loved it but it was a more demanding aircraft to fly. It’s safety record was actually better, mostly because the Air Force became a much safer operation overall in its era. It had a much longer service life and was phased out largely because its avionics fit was too time consuming to maintain and it was the last airframe that used that engine.
The question here about Russian efforts to genetically profile their troops for performance may be a partial ruse. Maybe our “partners” actually want info on infectious disease susceptibility so that they can better understand offensive/defensive situation wrt Russian/US capabilities. Recall Russian concerns regarding US requests for Russian DNA several years ago. This is all so obvious.
So, he’s gonna put the cream of the crop of Russia’s youth into the meat grinder?
War already is dysgenics, this could make it even more.
It's a Pennsylvanian 3-year vocational college that admits based on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (a superset of the AFQT used in the NLSY which the Bell Curve analyzed).
https://www.city-journal.org/williamson-college-of-the-trades
Young men only.
Means tested poor kids only.
100 percent free; no federal assistance accepted.
Living in supervised dormitories.
Up at the crack of down.
Trade work in the a.m., suits and ties for classroom work in the p.m. (writing, math, etc.).
A quarter of accepted students wash out, and misfits are "encouraged" to get lost, but those that stay all get jobs.
These are the trades taught: carpentry, masonry, horticulture, machine tool tech, painting, power plant/electrician. They maintain their own college grounds and facilities.
https://www.williamson.edu/education/trade-programs/
This article makes it sound like the place is skimming objectively-tested smart but non academically oriented poor kids and sending them into jobs that end up making them more money than many college graduates, debt-free. There are stories of graduates who have started nice businesses or risen to the top of their companies, but I don't know how common that is.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @YetAnotherAnon, @JMcG, @ThreeCranes
I’m not far from this place and work with quite a few alumni. They do a remarkable job there. I’m a little skeptical of the means testing part though. I believe that originally you had to be orphaned or at least fatherless to attend, but that’s no longer the case.
I didn’t know they admitted based on ASVAB scores but that makes sense based on what I’ve seen.
When I was in the Air Force in the early 70’s some pilots I was in a class with with were discussing the characteristics of the upcoming Space Shuttle and one of them asked rhetorically, “who are they going to get to fly this thing, old F104 pilots?” I beat everyone else to the obvious quip, by replying “There aren’t any old F104 pilots!”.
Everything made less widows than the F104!
Use large scale DNA testing to determine population susceptible to naturally occurring diseases. Then use that knowledge, combined with other knowledge, for public health purposes. Vaccine design or whatever the genius class can determine. I’m not a damn genius, but this seems obvious. WTF.
I find it odd how everyone claims Russia is "based", and yet it seems to me a disproportionate amount of this "futurist", NWO type stuff comes from Russia.Replies: @Intelligent Dasein, @Daniel Chieh, @Lurker
Futurism and basedness are not necessarily incompatible.
You basically pick the poison you wish to live with.
Perhaps when its either blue-haired fat vixens and hopeless gray slavery or its iron wombs and mind-controlled brain monitoring, we’ll have all have joys of “pick your fighter.”
Didn’t the Soviets just ignore Lysenko in their secret weapons programs?
Reminds me of Gattica.
Genetic screening could probably be helpful in assessing things like susceptibility to PTSD, but I doubt the science is anywhere near predicting actual behavior in combat. There are just too many confounding factors.
Whatever the case, it will make it a lot easier to prosecute war crimes if every soldier's DNA is on file, so I bet armies will be strongly opposed to the collation of personal genetic profiles. Armies are basically public-sector unions with heavy weapons.Replies: @Anonymous, @PolMordreth, @Counterinsurgency, @Daniel Chieh
I’m sure that Mr. Karlin also wants to make sure that there are enough cybernetics, otherwise Engineseer without mecha-tentacles is just lame.
The Starfighter landed at around 180 mph in normal config.
Erich Hartmann the top scoring ace of all time (352 kills in WW2) became a squadron leader in the post war Luftwaffe and resigned when the F104 was adopted by Germany. He claimed that Lockheed bribed German officials to take the 104. Turned out he was right.
The Italians and Japanese also bought it and even partially built it domestically. The apocryphal story is that a German pilot asked an Italian how come they weren’t having losing all those F104s and the Italian responded that they were losing them too, they just didn’t complain about it.
“Interesting. Are there any traits where genetic testing is as good right now as regular testing?”
No.
But the Russian effort seems worthwhile, even if it has no practical payoff for 8-10 years.
One of the guys in my UPT class got airsick frequently … I still don’t know how he made it that far without anyone noticing.
Vestigial recognition of HBD in a long-forgotten inglenook of the federal government:
Israel drafts women, though far from equally, and exempts Arab men altogether. Race trumps sex there.
(Most countries with female conscription appear to feel threatened by a larger neighbor: Israel, Eritrea, Cuba, Taiwan… Add Sweden to that list. They stopped the draft in 2010 with the understanding that women would be included should it ever return. Russia spooked them, and now it’s back. Norway’s is pure, but admirably consistent, feminism.)
Huh? How can you get sick on an aircraft carrier? The vibrations? The fumes?
I never got seasick until one day at sea I challenged Poseidon by eating too many greasy molasses doughnuts at coffee break, then was sent to work in the forward hold. After that, I always got sick. Didn’t get me out of work, though. Suck it up, sailor.
My buoy tender had one quarter the beam, one-sixth the length, and less than one-thousandth the displacement of a carrier. If you can get sick on a floating airport, that’s at a pathological extreme.
The F-104 was especially dangerous. One “quirk” was the through the bottom ejection seat. If you were close to the ground you needed to flip over to get out. Which I never (in my limited experience) heard of happening. There was a mechanic at a flight test operation on Edwards AFB who accidentally set the seat off while working in the cockpit. I guess he was lucky, instead of being put through the hangar roof he ended up with a broken back.
The Germans had the worst experience with the type but later on got it sorted out and had good results. It was the wrong airplane for the mission but eventually they made it work.
It was a very educational airplane in that a great deal was learned about not only flying it but about how to get a large number of different places in different parts of the world all to produce it consistently. But a price was paid for that.Replies: @John Henry
Putin to Have Genetically Selected Army
Steve Sailer • November 13, 2019
Do not want to sound dimmer than at catalogue value, but one can indeed start at the environmental data end and end up at the GWAS sampling end.
The big data mining firms, where the customers, consumers are the product, (Gooogle, Facebook, NSA-CIA-WHATEVER and etc.) should have and can sort, and model environmental data per individual, group, for a chunk of the globe. That is their day job. It would not be hard to “incentivize´´, encourage, and convince the subjects so sorted and modeled in a category of usefulness according, to hick up a sample of their DNA, if it is not already covertly(to whom) in medical and other databases. Exhibitionism starts with DNA. That would be a full circle.
Dim as always, there is no doubt to the mind that this is done already, not to sort tank commanders or paratroopers maybe. Certainly not the most urgent and interesting place to start. Meaningful data float in the Cloud, interesting research can be done, if one is allowed access. There is no contradiction between science and second rate. Google and consorts is the real academy of science, the Ivy League of today. The inquisition would set fire to their server farms first.
I find it odd how everyone claims Russia is "based", and yet it seems to me a disproportionate amount of this "futurist", NWO type stuff comes from Russia.Replies: @Intelligent Dasein, @Daniel Chieh, @Lurker
1) Claim your ‘enemy’ is doing something ‘bad’.
2) Start doing the same, but with a heavy heart, because we don’t like stooping to their level.
3) Guess what, the ‘enemy’ were never doing that thing we accused them of! But it turns out to be so useful we’ll just carry on anyway.
(Most countries with female conscription appear to feel threatened by a larger neighbor: Israel, Eritrea, Cuba, Taiwan... Add Sweden to that list. They stopped the draft in 2010 with the understanding that women would be included should it ever return. Russia spooked them, and now it's back. Norway's is pure, but admirably consistent, feminism.)Huh? How can you get sick on an aircraft carrier? The vibrations? The fumes?
I never got seasick until one day at sea I challenged Poseidon by eating too many greasy molasses doughnuts at coffee break, then was sent to work in the forward hold. After that, I always got sick. Didn't get me out of work, though. Suck it up, sailor.
My buoy tender had one quarter the beam, one-sixth the length, and less than one-thousandth the displacement of a carrier. If you can get sick on a floating airport, that's at a pathological extreme.Replies: @Lurker
I don’t think carriers were mentioned.
2) Start doing the same, but with a heavy heart, because we don't like stooping to their level.
3) Guess what, the 'enemy' were never doing that thing we accused them of! But it turns out to be so useful we'll just carry on anyway.Replies: @OFWHAP
After reading Deep State, by Mike Lofgren, it becomes really clear that all stories like this are released by the Pentagon as “threat inflation” to vacuum up more money from the government. If this ends up getting fat contracts for Boeing/Lockheed/Raytheon/Northrop/General Dynamics, then the generals who lobbied so hard on their behalf can get a nice supplemental income after leaving the military for civilian life.
America: Letting women into special forces for diversity's sake.
World War III is going to be great!Replies: @enough already, @bigdicknick
None of this going to pan out. Best case scenario someone in Russia’s ruling cliques going to get even more insanely rich. This is equivalent of Elon Musk’s prediction in November 2014 that AI would be a threat in humanity in five years time frame (10 years max, as he put it). The country is not able to develop (not for the lack of brains) an internationally competitive washing machine. I’m not too sure about Soviet legacy weapons quality either. Post-1991 developed high-end Pantsir anti-aircraft missile system got easily destroyed in Syria by Israelis multiple times. I’m really wondering if Steve is gullible enough to buy any of this shit. Most likely not.
America: Letting women into special forces for diversity's sake.
World War III is going to be great!Replies: @enough already, @bigdicknick
perhaps trans make the best kamikaze pilots?
You are right, but legally it can’t be used for anything but identification of remains, and the data they keep purposefully excludes anything that could be used to evaluate health.
So it can’t be used in investigations, even if a soldier is a suspected serial killer, and it would be useless for genetic screening.
Sadly, despite the coolness value otherwise, I agree its probably just another boondoggle. People tend to underestimate the government’s proclivity for fanciful and glamorous waste.
I told my kids back in 2000 that this would be “the biological century”.
The AI-robotics thing is going to be huge. But the potential disruption from this DNA thing–and just biological understanding in general, think “an end to aging”–is going to be even huger.
As disruptive as the 20th century was with electricity, internal combustion, air planes, nukes and finally the IT revolution … the 21st will likely be the most disruptive at all. It may well be when the very nature of human life/evolution is changed.
I just wish we weren’t in the grips of this stupid, vile minoritarianism and were headed into this thing with an elite that wasn’t utterly full of shit.
This will likely result in much grief.Replies: @jpp
Sounds like Martyanov is projecting his own arrogance.
"They maintain their own college grounds and facilities."
I knew an outsourcing company who got the contract to build new networks for the Department Of Computing at a UK technical university (I think it was Strathclyde in Scotland). Couldn't believe it. All that ostensible brainpower and knowledge among the staff, a horde of essentially free labour in the students - and they couldn't build their own networks!
It would also have looked great on the graduate CVs.Replies: @notsaying
Somebody would have to maintain the network. Would anybody want to service a network built by students? I am not so sure. Would there have been agreement among the staff about how to build the network?
It may have just been easier to have outsiders to it. Also the contract may have included multiple universities. In any case, this way there were no arguments, no embarrassment, no fingerpointing.
It would have been an interesting project for them, that’s for sure.
If outsourcing companies know more about networking than professors and doctors of computer science, then maybe the outsourcers should be teaching students and awarding degrees. No learning is as good as 'learning-by-doing'.
"Would there have been agreement among the staff about how to build the network?"
I believe there's a hierarchy in a university computing department, just as there is in outsourcing companies. You do have a point though, there is this famous diagram.
https://www.businessballs.com/local/pix/businessballs/treeswing/computer_book_treeswing_pictures.jpgReplies: @notsaying
US: Million Veteran Program (MVP) https://www.research.va.gov/mvp/
The AI-robotics thing is going to be huge. But the potential disruption from this DNA thing--and just biological understanding in general, think "an end to aging"--is going to be even huger.
As disruptive as the 20th century was with electricity, internal combustion, air planes, nukes and finally the IT revolution ... the 21st will likely be the most disruptive at all. It may well be when the very nature of human life/evolution is changed.
I just wish we weren't in the grips of this stupid, vile minoritarianism and were headed into this thing with an elite that wasn't utterly full of shit.Replies: @Daniel Chieh
I agree with the caveat that I think that we will be able to detect differences in phenotypical expression via genetic causes more than we will be able to edit it without nontrivial cost(mass use of test tube babies, for example).
This will likely result in much grief.
Guess there may be something to this.Replies: @notsaying
This “claim” about the Warrior Gene makes no sense:
If a DNA site that’s trying to sell you something and they can’t show it has any significance or proves anything, then I’m going to figure that they don’t know what they are talking about.
Putin should genetically select women who like birthing lots of feminine girls and masculine boys and drive Russian’s population to 750 million. Russia’s global dominance will follow.
In West Germany F-104 was a national emergency with almost third of them crushed.
I found the whole article at National Interest and Yahoo (no comments left about it at Yahoo, interestingly enough).
Anyhow, I find this DNA testing stuff very disturbing. It reminds me a lot of what I recently read about some job applicant “testing” companies like Hire Vue. Hire Vue records job applicant videos claiming they can use various techniques to pick out the top candidates for jobs for their client companies. “The AI focuses on the candidate’s face moves to determine how excited someone feels about a certain work task or to see how they would handle angry customers. Those “Facial Action Units” can make up 29 percent of a person’s score. The words they say and “audio features” of their voice make up the rest.” Who really knows if their claims are true? Everything is proprietary and yet there are big companies using these videos to disqualify hundreds of thousands of job candidates. College kids are now going crazy worrying about making their video and whether it will advance them along or stop them dead cold on their job hunting attempts — without even having the opportunity to find out what they did “wrong.” I think this is very bad trend. I don’t think anybody here would like Hire Vue to determine if they get the chance for a job. I know I wouldn’t. [There was a long article in the Washington Post about them if you want to know more.]
This DNA stuff sounds unproven and bad to me also. I do not see what in people’s DNA would determine they are better for some jobs than others, much less how they would hold up in combat. The article says:
How would you like the US to demand you get a DNA test — particularly one for which you would either not get a result or a result you could trust? I don’t think so. The reasons Putin gives for doing it are clearly bogus. God only knows what other pseudoscientific uses will be made out of all this information. The article suggested “It has also spurred fears that Russia is edging towards a Nazi-style eugenics program in which certain groups, such as those Russians of Slavic ancestry, will be favored.” I don’t know about that but it seems possible. It’s certainly not impossible because once the DNA of all Russians is collected the government could do anything and say anything they wanted about the results.
I don’t like this but I am glad that I found out that Putin’s going to give forced DNA tests to the whole Russian population. That says a lot about him.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russian-military-will-soon-assign-soldiers-based-their-genetic-passports-95646
It may have just been easier to have outsiders to it. Also the contract may have included multiple universities. In any case, this way there were no arguments, no embarrassment, no fingerpointing.
It would have been an interesting project for them, that's for sure.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
“Would anybody want to service a network built by students? I am not so sure.”
If outsourcing companies know more about networking than professors and doctors of computer science, then maybe the outsourcers should be teaching students and awarding degrees. No learning is as good as ‘learning-by-doing’.
“Would there have been agreement among the staff about how to build the network?”
I believe there’s a hierarchy in a university computing department, just as there is in outsourcing companies. You do have a point though, there is this famous diagram.
Modern jet fighters are not tough to land and take off and fly around in. That’s why there are no two seat trainer variants of the current generation ones. Some of the older ones could be a little challenging but aside from the 104 or at the opposite end of things the U-2, the T-38 Talon which every US AF UPT graduate flew from the early sixties to the early nineties was the most demanding aircraft they would fly in their careers.
WWII aircraft were much more demanding to land, and to fly in general.
About Putin, we all know he's a Nazi. Right?Yep. Especially if you want to lose your job.Replies: @Muggles
Mr. McKenna is thinking about Jr. Bush (a Texas Guardsman for a brief moment) not his daddy. Bush Sr. was shot down in the Pacific, in the real Navy AF.
Ejection seats have always been mechanic killers. The 104 was originally made with the bottom seat but most were refitted with the more conventional one by the sixties.
The Germans had the worst experience with the type but later on got it sorted out and had good results. It was the wrong airplane for the mission but eventually they made it work.
It was a very educational airplane in that a great deal was learned about not only flying it but about how to get a large number of different places in different parts of the world all to produce it consistently. But a price was paid for that.
At the moment genetic knowledge is useless for what this article suggests. It might screen out some medical problems that could be undesirable, but nothing further.
This is mostly hype, not science. Behavioral traits are not currently predictable via DNA analysis, though some broad tendencies on the undesirable end of the spectrum might be discovered.
Identical twins seldom end up doing the same thing the same way with the same results.
Currently detailed genetic analysis of DNA subsections (which could hold predictive value, in the future) is extremely expensive to perform.
It's a Pennsylvanian 3-year vocational college that admits based on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (a superset of the AFQT used in the NLSY which the Bell Curve analyzed).
https://www.city-journal.org/williamson-college-of-the-trades
Young men only.
Means tested poor kids only.
100 percent free; no federal assistance accepted.
Living in supervised dormitories.
Up at the crack of down.
Trade work in the a.m., suits and ties for classroom work in the p.m. (writing, math, etc.).
A quarter of accepted students wash out, and misfits are "encouraged" to get lost, but those that stay all get jobs.
These are the trades taught: carpentry, masonry, horticulture, machine tool tech, painting, power plant/electrician. They maintain their own college grounds and facilities.
https://www.williamson.edu/education/trade-programs/
This article makes it sound like the place is skimming objectively-tested smart but non academically oriented poor kids and sending them into jobs that end up making them more money than many college graduates, debt-free. There are stories of graduates who have started nice businesses or risen to the top of their companies, but I don't know how common that is.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @YetAnotherAnon, @JMcG, @ThreeCranes
“They maintain their own college grounds and facilities.”
The old County psychiatric hospitals (aka funny farms) were literally that. Big dormitories built on sprawling rural grounds with college-like administration buildings and vocational classrooms. All the food: meat and veggies, were grown on the premises by the loonies. What a perfect way to ground (sorry) someone who suffers from flights of fantasy and delusions.
But we can’t have that today. Learning and doing self sufficiency is labeled cruel and unusual punishment. Better to drug them into a somnambulant state.
Oh, almost forgot. They had crematoriums as well. Really.
A lot of fighters had landing speeds that were pretty high. What made the 104 even more dangerous than most was that it was only able to fly with those tiny wings because it used blown flaps as a crutch. At lower speeds the bleed air from the engine was sent under the flaps to supplement lift. That meant that lift could vary with throttle position, and if the engine conked out entirely the plane would have the glide slope of a crowbar. Even other planes that used that system still had lower wing loading than the 104, so they weren’t as reliant on it.
Erich Hartmann the top scoring ace of all time (352 kills in WW2) became a squadron leader in the post war Luftwaffe and resigned when the F104 was adopted by Germany. He claimed that Lockheed bribed German officials to take the 104. Turned out he was right.
The Italians and Japanese also bought it and even partially built it domestically. The apocryphal story is that a German pilot asked an Italian how come they weren’t having losing all those F104s and the Italian responded that they were losing them too, they just didn’t complain about it.
If outsourcing companies know more about networking than professors and doctors of computer science, then maybe the outsourcers should be teaching students and awarding degrees. No learning is as good as 'learning-by-doing'.
"Would there have been agreement among the staff about how to build the network?"
I believe there's a hierarchy in a university computing department, just as there is in outsourcing companies. You do have a point though, there is this famous diagram.
https://www.businessballs.com/local/pix/businessballs/treeswing/computer_book_treeswing_pictures.jpgReplies: @notsaying
HA! Yes, you never know what you will get, do you?
By the way, where did you find this? Have you been keeping this newsletter yourself since 1973?
A quick search for "what the user wanted" "tree swing diagram" etc will find lots of different versions.
Another quote pinned on many a desk was this, allegedly by the Roman Petronius Arbiter but actually by Charlton Ogburn. Anyone whose teams have been shuffled and reporting lines changed will empathise.Don't even get me started on the mainframe prints of naked ladies. It was a more innocent world. These below are ASCII, not EBCDIC, but the effect is similar.
https://asciiart.website/index.php?art=people/naked%20ladies
Well psychopathy aligns well with special forces…so any genetic testing there would be beneficial and have the added attraction of redirecting criminals into the special forces where they can do evil for the state.
“In contrast, modern militaries know an absurd amount about the performance of military personnel so it would be very tempting to scan the DNA and see what correlates with what.”
They can turn that information over to AI and Big Data and get some statistics. Though not everything is determined by genetics.
Such as the Special Ops squad machine gunner in Afghanistan, fast moving through high altitude mountain terrain in August heat, searching for any survivors of the shoot down of Extortion One Seven. Puking his guts out, carrying his M240B. Squad leader offers to carry the M240B. Reply is “No way!”. Which gene determines that trait?
Meanwhile, shouldn’t basic training weed out the basically unsuited. Then advanced training determines who has the right stuff?
GWB had leadership skills? Read that as the Bush Family is deeply connected and therefore Dubya was to be passed, even if he couldn’t fly half as well as the 9/11 Saudi pilots did in their training. Pappy was a pilot, so Dubya had to be a pilot. Needed it on his resume to be elected POTUS.
One thing in GW Bush’s favor, at least he didn’t kill other personnel with his flying antics.
“A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Just more 1984. But you fools love it.
True. I friend of mine worked for the IRS for years. He told me that in the early 90s they got the bright idea that they were gonna OCR everything. The fact that OCR was pretty bad back then (computers were too slow) didn’t stop the IRS from letting large contracts to Beltway Bandits who were only too happy to take their money and fail.
This will likely result in much grief.Replies: @jpp
I wonder how Western Society will respond when Chinese scientists commence with the ethically suspect portions of human experimentation. Will it adjust its ethics and compete, or will it let them pull ahead?
And all the lesbians and poofters.
One of my favorite meme’s featured SkyNet shutting down permanently due to an unexpected Windows update.
None that we know of…
Though, Laura Bush likely has more confirmed kills…
That’s one heck of a wordgargle, but yeah, it just means “Having a warrior gene does not mean that you have to be more aggressive, but you are more likely to be.”
The Germans had the worst experience with the type but later on got it sorted out and had good results. It was the wrong airplane for the mission but eventually they made it work.
It was a very educational airplane in that a great deal was learned about not only flying it but about how to get a large number of different places in different parts of the world all to produce it consistently. But a price was paid for that.Replies: @John Henry
21 USAF pilots were lost (Wiki), including top line test pilot Captain Iven Kincheloe. I lived near Edwards AFB when his accident happened. He was a local hero already with the community and we all had a sense of loss over it.
In a decent-length IT career, I’ve seen this (usually an A4 print or photocopy) on half a dozen people’s desks, usually people at Business Analyst/Systems Analyst level i.e not grunt but not management – the people who actually see that the work is done (hopefully) properly.
A quick search for “what the user wanted” “tree swing diagram” etc will find lots of different versions.
Another quote pinned on many a desk was this, allegedly by the Roman Petronius Arbiter but actually by Charlton Ogburn. Anyone whose teams have been shuffled and reporting lines changed will empathise.
Don’t even get me started on the mainframe prints of naked ladies. It was a more innocent world. These below are ASCII, not EBCDIC, but the effect is similar.
https://asciiart.website/index.php?art=people/naked%20ladies
Think of the hours invested in this ASCII art!
Thanks for sharing.
The quote about reorganization is only too true.
Don’t worry, America has a secret weapon
Isn’t this just an extension of the Russian “farm fox experiment”?
Or maybe they have just read too many GI Joe comics……
“Serpentor was designed to be the ultimate Cobra leader. Doctor Mindbender and Destro combed the tombs of the greatest leaders in history to find cells with DNA traces. These long-dead genetic blueprints were combined to produce a clone with the genius of Napoleon, the ruthlessness of Julius Caesar, the daring of Hannibal, and the shrewdness of Attila the Hun. Serpentor is a brilliant tactician and a master of political intrigue, and was eventually capable of wresting control over Cobra from Cobra Commander.”
I’m late to this party, but this reminds me of an anecdote from Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs:
I’ve only been seasick once in my life, for a couple of hours while going marlin fishing in Cabo San Lucas. It was incredibly awful. But then it cleared up when we stopped beating into the waves and in ten minutes I felt like a million bucks.
I would bet the same thing is happening here. Someone in Russia broke a minor story about some extremely small and innocuous study being performed on soldiers' DNA, and it turned into "Russia is building das ubersoldaten!.
It will pass.Replies: @Josep
Yeah, I could have sworn something was fishy here.
I don’t know if it’s been discussed before here (i.e. on Steve’s blog), but US-based “news” outlets aren’t really known for their objectivity towards Russia, and National Interest may not be any different. I have yet to see the Russian media, let alone RT, talk about genetic screening in the Army, and until then I’m going to take this with a pinch of salt.