upvote
This really is the takeaway for me. The elites of the Empire come off as lazy and ignorant even when Britain has a massive massive technological lead from the work of organizations like the Royal Society.

The scientific advantage was enormous, and it seems like virtually none of these elites bothered to study the sciences. During that era, the elites of other countries were far, far more ignorant. Compare the socializing and partying of the Victorians with the opium addicted and superstitious Manchurian Emperors of China or the hereditary inbred nobility of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they come off as absolutely industrious.

While Victorian elites were partying it took about 70 years for the Japanese to go from a Feudal Society to having a more formidable Navy than the British Empire.

reply
Yeah, exactly. British power came from technological advancements that occurred before the Victorian era: steam engine, spinning jenny, railways, electricity, etc. By the time the elite depicted in this article was running the country, they were largely inheriting that technological lead, and arguably had already lost it by the turn of the 20th century.
reply
Deepmind, one of the top three western frontier AI labs, is headquartered in London. The other two are headquartered in San Francisco.
reply
Disclosure: I did not read the whole thing. I, too, felt the premise was faulty and not worth reading beyond.

First paragraph: "Once adulthood is reached, life follows an austere pattern, with a 5am start, cold baths, daily visits to the gym, little or no alcohol, a Huel-rich diet, and Stakhanovite working hours. This last point generates particular excitement, and descriptions of powerful people dwell with eager fascination on how many hours they devote to their labors."

Why are we taking the CEOs words at face value? They are notoriously known for doing and saying whatever will most help them succeed. Do they say they do these things? Sure. Do we know if they do? If they look like they workout, they probably do, but otherwise how do we know what they do with their day? Anyone who probably actually does know probably has to sign some crazy NDA. Will lying about their routine help them succeed? Quite possibly. CEOs rarely work their way up in the same company over decades, starting on the factory floor. They are MBAs that hop from one company to the next. So they are incentivized to promote some kind of mystique about themselves to make them seem more deserving over the next hopper. Knowing the lack of ethics associated with CEOs, it is not a stretch to assume there is a lot of fluffery in their self-proclaimed routine.

reply
The Empire ended far after the end of the Victorian age.
reply
The decline and fall was within a lifetime. Not just a random person's lifetime, but that of a single famous individual. By any of the usual endpoints (Indian Independence, Suez Crisis, Winds of Change/South Africa's withdrawal from the Commonwealth) the Empire ended while Winston Churchill was alive- he was born in the 1874, at the height of the Empire, graduated Sandhurst and joined the British Army in 1895, took Queen Victoria's shilling in several colonial wars, then was Secretary of State for the Colonies in the 1920s, and died after Britain had withdrawn from most of her African holdings.
reply
Within a lifetime or so, which is certainly within a range you would expect for a global empire to collapse; that rarely happens overnight. That said, it is an unfalsifiable supposition, as much as the article's supposition is, although I framed mine in less certain terms than the article claiming it as factual that said elites were effective.
reply
you're missing the point: this is a submarine propaganda piece to get the STEM nerds to low-key accept aristocracy

been seein a lot of it lately, yarvin eat your fuckin heart out

reply
Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, both trained engineers albeit ideologues, just received leadership roles at the pentagon
reply
Mentioning those two dumb dumbs in connection with Winston Churchill, Bismarck, Cromwell, come on, they are not in the same league as Truman, Eisenhower, Grant Lincoln, Tecumseh Sherman, Theodore Roosevelt, the list is very long… Where you can dump them however is in a position right next to Pete Hegseth, or Joseph McCarthy.
reply
Who is it sitting with Donald Trump at regular meetings? Who is it who was just put in charge of the American Military?

Are you really sure of what you are saying?

reply
You have several comments in this thread. They would all be more useful if you would just plainly state your point and drop the condescending tone.
reply
My point is asking people to sharpen theirs. When they fail to do so, the faults in their statements are exposed, and we all learn something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

As for condescension, I'll kindly note that it was you who was instructing me how to engage people and how I should be writing. When someone is writing a statement that directly contradicts even the news of the past few days, I have to ask if they are sure. I'm not sure if I can be much more deferential than that.

reply
deleted
reply