Brain Aneurysm

Neutrino_cannon and I were discussing what sort of things you might hear if a 17th century teacher were temporally displaced into the modern day. This is some of what we came up with:

"YOU LET THE PEOPLE VOTE?!"

"YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO WATCH EVERYTHING IMPORTANT REMOTELY AND YOU DON'T?"

"YOU CAN SCAN THOUSANDS OF SQUARE MILES OF OCEAN FOR BOATS IN LESS THAN A SECOND AND YOU STILL HAVE PIRATES?!  WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!"


"YOU CAN LITERALLY CALL DOWN THE THUNDER OF THE GODS AT WILL, AND YOUR NUMBER ONE PROBLEM IS A BUNCH OF ILLITERATE GOAT HERDERS???"

"YOU WANT TO PACIFY A VIOLENT REGION AND THE MOST COGENT PLAN YOUR HIGHLY TRAINED PROFESSIONAL MILITARY OFFICERS CAN COME UP WITH IS LET'S TRY TO BE FRIENDS WITH THEM?"

"THE SECOND MOST ECONOMICALLY POWERFUL NATION HAS AN 18% SUICIDE RATE?"

"THE MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY TO HAVE EVER EXISTED TOOK ON RICE FARMERS ON TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS AND FAILED BOTH TIMES?"

"THE MOST REVERED PIECE OF RECENTLY DEVELOPED TECHNOLOGY AMOUNTS TO AN AUTOMATED GOSSIP SERVICE?"

"AND SAID SERVICE USES, BY SEVERAL ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE, MORE COMPUTING POWER THAN WAS USED TO GO TO THE MOON?"

"YOU ACTUALLY SET FOOT ON THE MOON, AND YOU NEVER WENT BACK?"

"YOU CAN FLY THROUGH THE AIR A HUNDRED MILES FROM CITY TO CITY BUT IT WOULD BE FASTER TO DRIVE BECAUSE OF THE SECURITY MEASURES?!"

"YOU CAN CREATE MAGICAL ENERGY TO SUSTAIN THE HOMES OF A NATION FOR YEARS FROM A FEW HUNDRED STONE OF PITCHBLENDE AND YOU STILL BURN COAL???"

A Martian Visit

Imagine, for a second, that you are someone else. This person you've become does not think like you, does not accept the things you've been trained to accept.

Imagine that all you care about is what is. Imagine, instead of proclaiming what ought to be, and defying reality, come whatever may, you only proclaimed what is, and you only cared for what is.

If there is a Power, you would acknowledge that power. If there were no such thing as a soul, you would not pretend there was. If the sky were blue, you would say so, unashamed. Your belief would be like water, forming around the nooks and crannies of reality. I understand if you have a hard time imagining this; it's not an easy thing for hominids to do.

Now, imagine you, as water to reality's cup, did not grow up in America. Imagine you didn't grow up anywhere in the world. Imagine you grew up on Mars. A Martian ape. Isn't that something? What would you, the Martian ape think of these things you hold dear to your heart? Things like equality. Why, the Martian ape would laugh. Equality? There is no equality. People are not equal. What does equal even mean? Must all people occupy the same space at the same time, possess the same physiology, same mind, same everything? Does equality only extend for people, or does it extend to other things, organisms, cells, minerals, atoms? If equality is something we must achieve, can anything exist any differently than anything else? If it can't, how can that produce anything but nothing? People, creatures, minerals, atoms, quarks, these are human concepts, each possessing a level lower than our understanding. If these are to all be truly equal, what is there to be? Everything has parts, has elements, if these parts, and parts of parts are to be Truly Equal, then there can be nothing. The only solution is obliteration. How absurd! You Earthlings have some funny notions.

What about freedom? What does freedom mean? Well, you, the Martian ape, sees this one simply. An object is said to be free if it has the capability to move, and it only has the capability to move if it actually is in motion. Consider, you say, an axle of a cart. This axle is said to be free if if can turn freely. But, say one were to apply friction brakes to the axle, it would not be free to turn, unless a force of sufficient magnitude were applied to it. Consider that all things, even things in a vacuum, will slow down. Friction is everywhere. Thus, something is "free" only if sufficient power is applied to it to make it move, whether this takes a modicum or an abundance of power to accomplish. Freedom is not a state of being, it's merely a lack of restraint, a lack of friction, combined with some motive for power. But it is not the strategic application of restraint, coupled with a similarly strategic application of power, you think, that the Earth apes desire. It's the complete, unfettered destruction of all restraints. You consider that a system of bodies, each perfectly unrestrained, will affect each other, until no motive power existed within any of them. How, with no restraint, entropy's reaping would be swift and complete. The only result of perfect freedom is perfect stillness.

Perhaps democracy will catch your attention. What is democracy? Well, it's the idea that an equilibrium can be achieve if everything is equal and free. Yes, you cry! An equilibrium of a perfectly still nothing! This is the only result, the only end! Perfect Equality can only result in nothing, and Perfect Freedom can only result in stillness, and that is what you will get! You can't believe what you're hearing. The Earthlings must be mad. Perhaps it is the air, perhaps the high nitrogen content keeps the Earth apes in a perpetual mild high. What else could explain this madness?

It suddenly occurs to you that the constant state of chaos on their planet, restrained only by the frail elements of concentrated power that still exist there, are a direct result of these ideas. You also realize why these ideas become popular: They promise power to the apes. It's well known on Mars that apes crave power; that is why power is kept from them, instead locked away, and used only by the strongest, smartest, most rational ape. If all apes played the game, seeking power, all the time, it might not look like Earth, you think, but it could not possibly look better than Earth. 

The Earth apes cry for "freedom" and they really want an opportunity for power. They cry "equality" in the hopes that some other ape will be stripped of their power, allowing them to move in and occupy the vacuum. You realize that this means war. Eternal war. The Hell?


It takes you a while to realize that simple Martian expression of disbelief is actually a double entendre in context.

You begin to understand why any resistance on Mars is crushed ruthlessly and brutally. You used to think it was regrettable, such savagery. Martian apes hanging publicly in the streets for their crimes. Surely a civilized people would be more discreet! You comprehend now, that if that were not done, if the search for power were not met with vicious brutality, that soon, apes would disguise their lust with the favored axioms of Earth, and the result would only be war. You now realize why Martian conquest is brutal and relentless. Why those who resist are systematically slaughtered to the last ape. Were they not, they might come to believe that their resistance was not just possible, but justified. That peace and progress are not just acceptable losses, but suitable sacrifices, for the goal of their individual power, dressed in a suitable euphemism. (You briefly reflect on how, to an Earthling, "progress" means precisely the opposite of what it does to a Martian.) And if the Emperor left those lands unconquered? They might grow fat, with hidden tendrils of power, and it might be uncontrolled, untrained, vicious lust that rang victorious in that final war, as happened so many times in the great Earth wars that by the end, they were wars of Vice against Vice. No, truly it is better to pursue the swiftest, most final victory.

You're a Martian ape, alone on Earth. One of a handful of tourists that comes each year (Martians do not find Earth to be a particularly pleasant place). You realize that everyone around you, though they are apes, just like you, are completely, totally evil. You realize that even though they do not think of themselves as evil, and even though they think of you as evil, objectively, it is they that are evil, and you who is not. Because they do not wish to fill the cup. They do not bow to reality. They act only on vices disguised, through generations of practice, as virtues. You are one ape, of a handful, in a sea of apes on this blue planet, who is not evil.

The next day you book your return flight to Mars. 

Mutually Assured Destruction: A False Phenomenon

With this blog post, I would like to take some time to coalesce and present some thoughts and conclusions that have possessed me of late, concerning the phenomenon of Mutually Assured Destruction.

For those unfamiliar, Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, is the idea that if I have nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and you have nuclear weapons and delivery systems, then we can create stability if we just promise each other that if the other tries to take advantage of us (the exact criteria here differs depending on who uses the theory) we will annihilate them.

In this post, I am not saying that standoffs are not possible, but only refuting the idea that an engineered standoff between real adversaries can be stable in the long term, which is essentially how MAD is supposed to work.

Before we discuss why MAD does not work, I need to lay some groundwork on how nations work. Nations, fundamentally, are enterprises with the goal of increasing their national worth. One of the most basic ways to do this, and one of the most lucrative, is to conquer other nations. In short, every nation wants to rule the world, even if they don't want to admit it, either because they're playing coy (The US) or are a client state of some larger power (everyone else, except maybe China). This model of the motives of nations will become important later.

To understand why MAD does not work, we must first understand the nature of threats. I do not know about other creatures, but I do know that hominids will not concede merely based on the word of a threat. This seems obvious: If you threaten me with nuclear annihilation, but you don't seem to possess any nuclear weapons, I may try my luck anyway. This is solved by simply doing regular demonstrations of power.

Except, it's also not that simple. Hominids evolved to compete primarily with other hominids, which is why we have huge, energy sucking brains but can't seem to do algebra to save our lives. This means that even if the other hominid has a big stick, and waves it around a lot, we may still try our luck if we believe they don't have the will to use it on us. Given a long enough timeline, the chances of this situation coming to pass approaches 1.

In addition, however, technology is not a constant. It moves, and old technologies get obsolesced. In 1945, the Soviets had virtually nothing that could deal with the threat of nuclear-armed B-29s. Today, swatting B-29s would be child's play for any two-bit nation. This means that as new technologies and capabilities are developed, old technologies are obsolesced. And what are the chances that every new game changing capability is developed by every nation on Earth simultaneously? Essentially zero. For hominids, that means that in a MAD scenario the time to strike is as soon as you have a game-changing advantage. Just developed an anti-ICBM, hydrogen-bomb-tipped, satellite-based, hypersonic missile? Attack now! Attack for God's sake, while you have the edge! This means that MAD actually encourages offense, if only in those areas where a significant technological gap exists.

Further, a policy of MAD is one that virtually no entirely rational, well-informed authority will enact. Why? Because it sacrifices large long term potential rewards for a relatively short-term one. Fundamentally, the nations of the world don't want to obliterate one another so that they alone remain atop a blasted hill overlooking a wasteland. They want to conquer one another, absorbing their population, materiel, and production capability (or, in other words, a nation is a predator, not an arsonist). A policy of MAD says that you will sacrifice that potential goal for the purposes of keeping your neighboring countries off your back. (You cannot enact MAD against only one nation, because then your MAD partner is greatly incentivized to equip your non-MAD-partners with nuclear weapons and get them to launch them at you). Not only is this tradeoff not very rewarding, it also, as I demonstrated earlier, doesn't work.

"But," you exclaim, "the US and Russia kept each other out of war for years using MAD! Clearly it works!" To which I'd respond: The US and USSR post-WWII were not true adversaries. They were sister states, and they knew it. In a true MAD policy, you would have to be very ready indeed to annihilate the enemy whenever they made a move. We don't see this with the US and Russia. The US doesn't, as soon as they get Pershing II missiles based in Turkey, strike at the Soviet Union, knowing the USSR can't do anything about it. They don't undergo crash anti-ballistic missile research programs, even though they knew full well that the Soviets very likely couldn't match them in research capability. With Saturn V launch systems, it would have been quite straightforward to lift a missile defense system into geosynchronous orbit. Yet, they didn't. In short, I do not think the US and USSR took MAD seriously. Neither really wanted to destroy the other* (which you must want for MAD to work), which is why they engaged in some petty proxy wars, and always tried to de-escalate** whenever the situation reached high tensions.

*Though it certainly does seem as though their generals did not know this.

**It does seem counter-intuitive that de-escalation would be bad for MAD, but it is. MAD is essentially the art of posturing with nuclear weapons, and seeking to de-escalate tells the other hominids in the room wearing red stars that you don't mean it, you won't destroy them, and they can attack you with impunity. Of course, they won't, as long as they're just as much a bunch of wet noodles as you are.

The Root of All Unhappiness

There seems to be a common perception these days that unhappiness is born of difficulty; that if we just make everyone's lives easier, the world will be a happier, more productive place.

This is bullshit. Unhappiness is not born of difficulty, of effort, of exertion. Instead, discontent is wrought of confusion, uncertainty, and unpredictability. Humans receive endorphins from being able to correctly predict the future, even if those predictions are negative. When humans make an incorrect prediction, those endorphins are denied, thus breeding discontent. To illustrate this, simply observe that the black comedy genre exists, and that movies like Dr. Strangelove are widely beloved classics. If unhappiness were born of difficulty or misfortune, these movies would not at all be considered comedies, since the protagonists are presented with extremely difficult scenarios. Instead, they're hilarious, because in every case, the hardships and difficulties presented in them are readily predictable by the audience, such as the case where General Ripper, who is crazy, realizes that the contingency plan created for the event of the destruction of the upper echelons of the chain of command gives him the ability to make a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, goading them into war, or when the Russians' Doomsday Device plan is obviously flawed, since an accidental nuclear detonation would doom the world to destruction.

Consider also whenever you get frustrated with a task, is it because the task is merely hard, or because it is more difficult than your expectations or because you cannot figure out how to complete it?

I'm sure my astute readers can figure out where I'm going with this.

Movies for Reactionaries, Part I

I find that as a reactionary, I have a hard time finding movies, music, or books that don't make my propaganda-dar ring loudly in my mind's ear. This isn't because everyone is out to smother the reactionary perspective, of course; it's because the reactionary perspective is so far from the norm that few artists will harbor perspectives compatible with that worldview. Thus, it is a rare treat when I stumble onto a work that does not break my suspension of disbelief through wildly impractical social, governmental, or even metaphysical mechanics.

I find that the 1970 film Cromwell is not only well acted, directed, and produced, but that it also only minimally set off my bullshit meter. This is not to say that it furthers a reactionary worldview; far from it. Our old adversary Lord Protector Cromwell is the protagonist of this fine film, which makes it decidedly not reactionary in nature.

However, Alec Guinness does such a sterling and identifiable job as King Charles I that he can't possibly be called a villain. Charles certainly provides the opposition to the film's protagonist, but he does so in a way that's readily identifiable, and free from any caricature. It's hard to overstate Guinness's portrayal of Charles; he makes Richard Harris's portrayal of Oliver Cromwell look like dogshit, and Harris is no poor actor indeed.

Finally, this film provides a stark, and meaningful rallying call to all reactionaries: Towards the end of the film, as Charles has been sentenced to death for treason, we have our antagonist's* Braveheart moment, except that it is best described as an anti-Braveheart moment, because while Wallace in the Gibson film expends his last tortured breath to bid the audience to defiance, Charles calmly, and without regret, declares his life to have been only in service to peace. William Wallace bids you violence. Charles Stuart bids you peace.

*The character of Charles I provides the viewer with a stark example that an antagonist is not the same as a villain.

In the wake of the England riots

This list says a lot.

Typical Socio-Progressive Flagwaving

Posted without comment.