China vs US: Will Science & Tech Lead to World Rule?

[paledim]

how do you propose they "beat America"? Remember that nearly everyone (if not everyone) in the United States owns some kind of weapon. Also, Americans are very proud of their country. Let's say for example that China was to invade (not using nuclear power) by sea. It would be impossible. US has the largest navy/advanced tech. Even if China had more advanced tech, technically speaking there are some nearly 100 million people on the Western US Coast all easily capable of buying firearms. China would be suicidal to drop military in US.

Howver, there is also the nano war. The thing is, America has no yet been completely explouited of natural resources and Asia is not a very wealthy/easy to produce resources as opposed to America. America (inc. Canada) could be self sufficient.

In my opinion. If China or any axis of US wanted to hit US hard, it would be to first remove its allies (like Israel etc...). This being on the cultural war front.

 

[oldtobor]

as to their succcess, that depends completely upon the work ethic, ambition and intelligence of the INDIVIDUAL.

This in fact is the ideology of success that represses people psychologically; you can never do enough:

1) work ethic can mean 80 hours a week, but if the boss wants 100 hours and you don't deliver, well you don't have the work ethic, it is always your fault, no matter how hard you worked in the last 3 years. And in fact I know many people who were layed off after working very hard, they had the work ethic, a corporate decision on the other side of the planet closed their offices;

2) You are never intelligent enough; you couldn't find the bug in that 50,000 line program in a few days ? not smart enough! you couldn't reach the sales target ? not smart enough, etc.

The problem with this outlook is that the worker is always constantly at fault, is always guilty of not achieving some moving target, the guilt is always self inflicted.

This is very convenient to big companies, keep workers always blaming themselves while we make them work harder and harder. You can constantly change the moving target in any of a hundred ways and find some way that any even great worker can't reach it.

In truth 99 million american workers are on the lower pay scale only 100,000 make a lot more, so they are the only ones that deserve more, one in a thousand. Are you one of those?

 

[oldtobor]

they got there by busting their asses in school and working some 14 hour days for years on end and biotech firms, construction companies, stock firms etc...

This is another example of psychologically repressing the more unfortunate. Many people have studied all their lives, but didn't become wealthy, many people all over the world have a very high degree of knowledge and aren't wealthy. Oh but they had to work "14 hours a day" for years. Why ? Slicing and dicing stocks ? working with stocks is like playing poker, sometimes you guess right and win and make money sometimes you guess wrong and lose. Is that actually work ? or is it play ? The guy who works at construction did he actually build the homes with his own hands, or did some mexican slave do it for 5 dollars an hour ? who actually worked there ? biotech should be very much study and thinking, you can do that on a beach even better, or do you have to show some boss that you are "putting in the hours" and "face time" ?

I am tired of hearing the same old story of "hard work", "work ethic" etc. when in reality it is a game to fool people.

If those people were successful, it was because they were LUCKY, KNEW HOW TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE AND SELL THEMSELVES WELL, and also they did their homework, studied and applied what they studied well. It can be done well working 5 hours a day, if you work well.

Give me an example of a typical 14 hour a day job and where all the work is being put in if I'm wrong. Useless meetings don't count since that is just an elaborate form of partying.

 

[hinella]

Can't remeber how many times I have read similar debates. The real flaw of all these kinds of debates is based on generalizing particular cases. Each and every person, job, experience is unique, may have some general properties amongst them, but each case is a single case. So you will find an entire spectrum of people from those who "worked hard" and failed to those who didn't do anything and became rich. OF course common sense dictates that by applying yourself constantly you should get better results. But it is just common sense, your mileage may vary greatly.

 

[mheslep]

The Franklin Institute lists some of the many Chinese inventions that came before US confederation here:

http://www.fi.edu/tfi/info/current/inventions.html

Including: gunpowder, the compass, spaghetti, and many more.

Yes though unfortunately little to nothing innovative came out of China after the establishment of the US, that is, while China was closed to the rest of the world.

 

[W3pcq]

I believe that during the korean war China, along with the Soviet Union were far ahead of us in mind control technique. Discovery of these techniques being used on pows in korea led to the famous Mkultra project. After that it became a technology race in the mind control department. They were the innovators of that technology. Information on how the technology has advanced, or even how advanced it was is largely classified, so me or you couldn't really say who is ahead, or how advanced it is now.

I suspect that there is a lot of classified technology on both sides which is unavailable to the public, so I think that the op's question is going to always be a mystery to the public.

Certain kinds of technology are better weapons when made public, certain types are not.
One example is the atomic bomb. We have it and we can strike, so we say don't mess with us, and we gain lots of power. On the other hand biological warfare, for example selectively bread antibiotic resistant small pox. That technology is more powerful kept secret because it can be used in a sneaky way, and making it public would cause efforts on the other side to defend. The same with mind control, it is better left a secret. You never know what kind of advancements they have on the sneaky department.

 

[Salish99]

On the note of how China and the US (and Russia) can collaborate or compete, I can recommend this article:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2008.09.007