here are two identical bell curves, separated by one standard deviation
we talk a lot around here about "failure to distinguish the general from the particular", but it goes both ways
normal people live here
here, the distributions are only weakly predictive - a lot can happen! what can you say!
if you are normal, your irl experience has taught you that it's not just immoral but *dumb* to generalize too strongly here, where you live
& you are correct
if you are +1SD, you live here
you still see a lot of blue here, which tantalizes - clearly blue can do well in this world, the blue you meet seems pretty normal, maybe we are Not So Different
a little harder to defend, but still a good way to live, if you live here
if you're exceptional, though, you live here, & the differences are much harder to ignore
this is also where almost all important things happen
lots of other newsworthy things happen here, mostly bad/sad things
if anyone has visited a place like this, you can't help wanting it to be different, you're desperate for a solution - it's like hell
It's very, very stupid not to generalize here, & when people refuse to it's very frustrating
these places are also where viral social media phenomena happen, so if you live on this segment of the curve & see this all day long, social media is an intensely validating place to be
is that a good thing? idk
when the normie tells you to touch grass, he is inviting you to meditate on this
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Mainly bc people compare it naively to the specialty aircraft it replaces (fighters, bombers, EW, etc) w/o considering what it means to be able to project all those capabilities into contested airspace on a single survivable platform
Also because we've been doing counterinsurgency for the last 2 decades & F-35 is wildly over-engineered for close air support in clear skies
F-35 is for the Chinese
People also point out that the US hasn't actually replaced all those other aircraft like that's proof that F-35 is a failure, but the whole point is to send in the cheaper specialized aircraft *after* F-35 has jammed & bombed & cybersexed China's air defenses
harry potter witchcraft is a kind of superpowered science, magic people just have access to some inborn access to a different energy source, which enables a different technological system
but witchcraft, historically, has always been about making deals
seiðr (Norse witchcraft) wasn't considered effeminate because it was intellectual or "nerdy", but because they were giving powerful entities transactional access to their bodies
this guy isn't a "wizard" or a "shaman", he's a "he-witch"