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People with IQs below 91 walk among us. Not sure why Project 100000 gets so much criticism of the moralizing type. Sure, it turned out to be a bad idea in ret

by bm3719 3y ago

People with IQs below 91 walk among us. Not sure why Project 100000 gets so much criticism of the moralizing type. Sure, it turned out to be a bad idea in retrospect and should have been a smaller trial run first, but the idea isn't crazy if you put yourself into McNamara's time and place. I could easily see myself thinking that systems were autopilot enough that the IQ of the body component of modern warfare to be of lesser importance. And if that were in fact true, we'd have found a way for such individuals to contribute. Is it more moral for the inevitable sacrifices of warfare to be solely among a society's higher IQ individuals? In the end, it turned out that those of lower IQ would continue having less of a productive role in society--something that was already accelerating at the time. Perhaps that's the real tragedy here. We have an oversupply of those only capable of simple labor. Maybe trying more "x's Morons" ideas isn't such a bad idea?

bt4u 3y ago
A simpler and probably more effective solution (and arguably more moral) would be to make it so only the sons of billionaires and sitting elected officials are allowed to go to war. We would have worldwide peace within a week.
- fakedang 3y ago
  Downvoted by the temporarily embarrassed, soon-to-be-multi-millionaire developers on Hacker News.
Waterluvian 3y ago
Warfighting, while largely a rote memorization and muscle memory exercise in many ways, is only getting more complex and requires more capability. Western doctrine also leans more than ever on the people being the valuable part of the war machine. This is because you can’t retrain as easily as you can build more tanks when training is now measured in months/years vs. weeks. And because battlefield experience is worth far far more than anyone generally understands. If you read the detailed accounts of this program, it’s clear that it wasn’t some inclusivity exercise. They wanted cheap fodder. They really just got a lot of battlefield liability. We’re witnessing what a “soldier comes second” doctrine looks like in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Of course I’m all for better support for the less mentally capable. But let’s not pretend that fighting in a war doesn’t require intelligence.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  another name for "solder comes second" is quantity vs quality doctrine
- hulitu 3y ago
  > Western doctrine also leans more than ever on the people being the valuable part of the war machine. It really depends who's people.
freemanon 3y ago
[flagged]
wolverine876 3y ago
If we completely ignore the human beings involved (it still is idiotic). They aren't dogs or machines, but real people, like you. War is a nightmare for fully capable humans, leading to lifetimes of PTSD, high rates of suicide, and much more damage. Beyond the emotional damage, people need to be able to function to survive. An autistic person under fire in a small intimate squad is in hell. It's also a threat to the people around them, whose lives depend on them, and highly demoralizing - setting an example of transparently bad judgment and disregard for even basic humanity of their own fellow soldiers. And it's a threat to the mission. I know it's trendy to perform amoral, sociopathic disregard for humanity (and geerally to post boundary-crossing provocations on the Internet). It's a very, very dangerous thing - which is probably why it's trendy; people like to play with those things, to look edgy. Our behaviors truly influence reality, as we know well now; the Internet is not a separate world, like a multi-player video game, but part of reality with direct impact. Also, not only does choosing that behavior introduce an enormous negative, but we feel the absence of the positive. If you and I don't do the latter, who will? There's no parents out there to fix what we break as we play. The world needs you.
bigbillheck 3y ago
> Is it more moral for the inevitable sacrifices of warfare to be solely among a society's higher IQ individuals? They're the ones that run the society, so I don't see why not.
fakedang 3y ago
The fact that this tone-deaf comment is the top comment right now speaks volumes of the second nature of people on this website. Modern warfare, especially that since World War 1 and the rise of deaths on the battlefront on a massive scale, requires a high amount of intelligence on all levels to be executed. You need generals who can envision new strategies such as the blitzkrieg or the paradrop. You need sergeants and master sergeants to provision and allocate adequate resources for your regiments. You need privates and conscripts to figure out where enemy mines are, or to follow orders from top to execute their complex maneuvers. Of course, you could also adopt ages-old Russian-style human steamroller doctrines and send in men after men to their deaths, just like the world did in WW1. We're already seeing that in Ukraine - 3 day operation is going strong after 500+ days. > Maybe trying more "x's Morons" ideas isn't such a bad idea? Perhaps the US government should enlist a number of upvoters of this comment, put them on the median national wage and force them to work for days on to refurbish creaking government IT systems? Just a thought, heh.
- jhanschoo 3y ago
  It is a balance. In the other extreme you can't just have gifted people manning your army, or you will have lack of manpower. Not all roles require average or above-average intellect anyway. Of course, we are discussing defensively, where one weighs the danger posed to, and contributed by, a low-IQ individual against the counterfactual of civilian liberties lost owing to the failure of the military from a lack of manpower.
  - fakedang 3y ago
    Again, you don't need gifted people to run along your entire army. You do need gifted people to lead it in the war room. And you cannot sustain it by having those gifted people leading poor IQ people - they need to be people able to follow commands while also being able to take initiative at the lack of command. For that, you need folks with an average level of intelligence.
thworp 3y ago
I think McNamara is the poster child for what damage unconstrained technocracy can do. This project is one of the less horrible ones he spearheaded, but it too had results that were completely predictable to anyone on the ground (who actually had to check their notions against reality).
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  He was dealing with the naive and idealistic bullshit that Americans are actually willing to fight in the wars that they vote for. The Pentagon immediately scrapped the draft following Vietnam and started recruiting from the trailer parks.
mortureb 3y ago
The motivation wasn’t inclusivity, it was the idea of “less valuable” humans being more dispensable.
ookdatnog 3y ago
> People with IQs below 91 walk among us. I feel like you're misrepresenting what the article is about. I'm pretty sure it's not the people whose IQ is a bit below 91 we're really talking about here. As the article states (emphasis mine): > These men all had IQs below 91, and nearly half had IQs below 71. What people find inhumane about this policy isn't "the army recruited a guy with an IQ of 87 from our town", but "the army recruited a guy with an IQ of 68 who can't read or write and has never heard of Vietnam from our town". An IQ below 71 is typically labelled as a cognitive impairment, not only now, but then as well. These are people who are often considered unable to function independently in normal civilian life. The idea that, even with modern tech, a war environment is much simpler to navigate than civilian life, seems so obviously absurd to me that I have trouble even articulating an argument against it. > Is it more moral for the inevitable sacrifices of warfare to be solely among a society's higher IQ individuals? I object to your use of the term "inevitable". Sacrifices are inevitable during war, but the war itself wasn't inevitable. The moral thing would have been to end the war, rather than prolong a war that leadership knew damn well they were losing at this point.

by bm3719 3y ago

bt4u 3y ago

A simpler and probably more effective solution (and arguably more moral) would be to make it so only the sons of billionaires and sitting elected officials are allowed to go to war. We would have worldwide peace within a week.

fakedang 3y ago
Downvoted by the temporarily embarrassed, soon-to-be-multi-millionaire developers on Hacker News.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Warfighting, while largely a rote memorization and muscle memory exercise in many ways, is only getting more complex and requires more capability. Western doctrine also leans more than ever on the people being the valuable part of the war machine. This is because you can’t retrain as easily as you can build more tanks when training is now measured in months/years vs. weeks. And because battlefield experience is worth far far more than anyone generally understands. If you read the detailed accounts of this program, it’s clear that it wasn’t some inclusivity exercise. They wanted cheap fodder. They really just got a lot of battlefield liability. We’re witnessing what a “soldier comes second” doctrine looks like in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Of course I’m all for better support for the less mentally capable. But let’s not pretend that fighting in a war doesn’t require intelligence.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
another name for "solder comes second" is quantity vs quality doctrine
hulitu 3y ago
> Western doctrine also leans more than ever on the people being the valuable part of the war machine. It really depends who's people.

freemanon 3y ago

[flagged]

wolverine876 3y ago

If we completely ignore the human beings involved (it still is idiotic). They aren't dogs or machines, but real people, like you. War is a nightmare for fully capable humans, leading to lifetimes of PTSD, high rates of suicide, and much more damage. Beyond the emotional damage, people need to be able to function to survive. An autistic person under fire in a small intimate squad is in hell. It's also a threat to the people around them, whose lives depend on them, and highly demoralizing - setting an example of transparently bad judgment and disregard for even basic humanity of their own fellow soldiers. And it's a threat to the mission. I know it's trendy to perform amoral, sociopathic disregard for humanity (and geerally to post boundary-crossing provocations on the Internet). It's a very, very dangerous thing - which is probably why it's trendy; people like to play with those things, to look edgy. Our behaviors truly influence reality, as we know well now; the Internet is not a separate world, like a multi-player video game, but part of reality with direct impact. Also, not only does choosing that behavior introduce an enormous negative, but we feel the absence of the positive. If you and I don't do the latter, who will? There's no parents out there to fix what we break as we play. The world needs you.

bigbillheck 3y ago

> Is it more moral for the inevitable sacrifices of warfare to be solely among a society's higher IQ individuals? They're the ones that run the society, so I don't see why not.

fakedang 3y ago

The fact that this tone-deaf comment is the top comment right now speaks volumes of the second nature of people on this website. Modern warfare, especially that since World War 1 and the rise of deaths on the battlefront on a massive scale, requires a high amount of intelligence on all levels to be executed. You need generals who can envision new strategies such as the blitzkrieg or the paradrop. You need sergeants and master sergeants to provision and allocate adequate resources for your regiments. You need privates and conscripts to figure out where enemy mines are, or to follow orders from top to execute their complex maneuvers. Of course, you could also adopt ages-old Russian-style human steamroller doctrines and send in men after men to their deaths, just like the world did in WW1. We're already seeing that in Ukraine - 3 day operation is going strong after 500+ days. > Maybe trying more "x's Morons" ideas isn't such a bad idea? Perhaps the US government should enlist a number of upvoters of this comment, put them on the median national wage and force them to work for days on to refurbish creaking government IT systems? Just a thought, heh.

jhanschoo 3y ago
It is a balance. In the other extreme you can't just have gifted people manning your army, or you will have lack of manpower. Not all roles require average or above-average intellect anyway. Of course, we are discussing defensively, where one weighs the danger posed to, and contributed by, a low-IQ individual against the counterfactual of civilian liberties lost owing to the failure of the military from a lack of manpower.
- fakedang 3y ago
  Again, you don't need gifted people to run along your entire army. You do need gifted people to lead it in the war room. And you cannot sustain it by having those gifted people leading poor IQ people - they need to be people able to follow commands while also being able to take initiative at the lack of command. For that, you need folks with an average level of intelligence.

thworp 3y ago

I think McNamara is the poster child for what damage unconstrained technocracy can do. This project is one of the less horrible ones he spearheaded, but it too had results that were completely predictable to anyone on the ground (who actually had to check their notions against reality).

WeylandYutani 3y ago
He was dealing with the naive and idealistic bullshit that Americans are actually willing to fight in the wars that they vote for. The Pentagon immediately scrapped the draft following Vietnam and started recruiting from the trailer parks.

mortureb 3y ago

The motivation wasn’t inclusivity, it was the idea of “less valuable” humans being more dispensable.

ookdatnog 3y ago

> People with IQs below 91 walk among us. I feel like you're misrepresenting what the article is about. I'm pretty sure it's not the people whose IQ is a bit below 91 we're really talking about here. As the article states (emphasis mine): > These men all had IQs below 91, and nearly half had IQs below 71. What people find inhumane about this policy isn't "the army recruited a guy with an IQ of 87 from our town", but "the army recruited a guy with an IQ of 68 who can't read or write and has never heard of Vietnam from our town". An IQ below 71 is typically labelled as a cognitive impairment, not only now, but then as well. These are people who are often considered unable to function independently in normal civilian life. The idea that, even with modern tech, a war environment is much simpler to navigate than civilian life, seems so obviously absurd to me that I have trouble even articulating an argument against it. > Is it more moral for the inevitable sacrifices of warfare to be solely among a society's higher IQ individuals? I object to your use of the term "inevitable". Sacrifices are inevitable during war, but the war itself wasn't inevitable. The moral thing would have been to end the war, rather than prolong a war that leadership knew damn well they were losing at this point.