AmrikeeAkbar
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User ID: 1187
AmrikeeAkbar
4d ago
We did the first two episodes of S5 last night. So far I quite like it; I'll try to maintain momentum and finish strong. I definitely know what you mean about the actors. It's not so bad with the older kids, but it can be hard to suspend disbelief when you're watching someone whose in their twenties notionally playing a high school sophomore
AmrikeeAkbar
5d ago
I guess it is basically a steel man if your argument. To be fair, they're not the only nation whose leadership committed them to decades of misadventure in the region based off of conspiracy theories
AmrikeeAkbar
5d ago
Just finished Stranger Things Season 4, after taking a long hiatus following season 3. I had assumed the law of diminishing returns would apply but was presently surprised that 4, imo, was the strongest season since the first. Taking things in a more horror inspired direction seemed to be just the right move to reinvigorate things while still developing in an organic way from the original premise. I've heard season 5 isn't great; should I end on a high note?
AmrikeeAkbar
7d ago
To the extent I can give you a neat answer, I think it comes down to the principal-agent problem, a ruling class which legitimizes itself on the basis of a particular revolutionary ideology, and of course, blind luck and historical contingency.
As you indicate, prior to the Revolution, Iran was basically an Israeli ally. Then you have the revolution, in which counter-elites overthrew the Shah's regime in the name of an ideology which fused left-wing anti-colonialism with religion. As is usually the case, there was a range of opinion amongst the revolutionaries about what shape the post-revolutionary world would take, but the more hardline elements won out. The Iranian Hostage Crisis was a kind of bleeding ulcer that would have prevented normalization of relations between the US and Iran even if the US had been inclined to recognize the new regime - which we weren't. The Shah had been perceived as a key ally against Communism and the whole US security complex had been humiliated by their failure to anticipate or prevent the revolution, so negotiation was always gonna be a heavy lift.
Then comes the Iran-Iraq war, an absolutely brutal conflict in which all sorts of atrocities are committed and in which the US (who mostly still sees Iran as their main problem in the Middle East) backs Iraq. During the war, Iran doubles down on its revolutionary hard-line attitudes. Remember, a lot of the military was considered unreliable because they were associated with the Shah, so Iran lacks a corp of professional, capable officers. They compensate by invoking sheer fanaticism. When the war ends, you have a generation of leaders whose formative experiences have been fighting the US and it's proxies in the name of Revolutionary Shiism, burying their friends and family along the way. Additionally, various things happen which contribute to Iran being an international pariah and make normal relations difficult to impossible with the rest of the world.
Combine this history with geopolitical opportunism. There's lots of Shia throughout the middle-east, mostly in a politically subordinate position. As you pointed out, Iranians are not Arabs, and are the wrong kind of Muslim as far as most of the middle eastern regimes are concerned. So there's already a lot of tension there, not helped by the fact that Iranians aren't shy about considering themselves the successor of the Persian empire. Iran doesn't have the conventional military power to be a regional hegemon, but of course just as the revolution happens we're entering a golden age of unconventional warfare. So, lets assume you're at odds with all your neighbors, and you don't have the guns, tanks and airplanes to threaten them, but you do have a whole bunch of dedicated Shia operatives with paramilitary experience. And you have a bunch of not-particularly-happy Shia looking to put pressure on their own governments. What do you do?.
Thats more or less how we got to where we are. You have a generation of leaders invested in a particular view of the world, who have embedded themselves in the government and security apparatus of the state. You have a hostile but stable equilibrium in which Iran doesn't get along with the US or its Arab neighbors but nobody wants to risk a full-on military conflict (until recently). Personally, everything I took from own study of Iran in grad school was that I'm glad it wasn't my problem to deal with. Cuz it really is a thorny problem. If you're a based conservative, you can point out that Iran is constantly starting shit at every opportunity, and you're absolutely right. If you're a bleeding-heart liberal, you can point out that all the stick-shaking and sanctions and tough-talk haven't actually effected a change in regime attitudes, and you're also absolutely right. Personally, I'm not optimistic about the latest developments. Sure, we can smash their conventional forces, and their economy, and kill all their leaders. But in another twenty years there will be a fresh crop of military age males. And what will their formative experiences have been?
AmrikeeAkbar
7d ago
Seconding Axeworthy's book. Additionally I'd recommend "The Eagle and The Lion" by James A Bill, which is about US-Iranian relations specifically.
AmrikeeAkbar
7d ago
Listen to that podcast all the time, just put together that Tom Holland is one of the hosts. No idea he used to write fiction, I'll have to check him out.
AmrikeeAkbar
1mo ago
Man I like Wolfe, and he's undoubtedly got a gift for the striking image. But I remember reading a critique once that said, basically: Wolfe takes a fairly conventional sf/f plot and storyboards it out a-b-c-d. Then he decides which parts of the structure to remove or obfuscate to get the reader to play literary guessing games. Ever since then, that critique has always been at the back of my mind. I think it works, but I get why some people thinks it's a writers parlor trick.
AmrikeeAkbar
1mo ago
Don't know how it's evolved with the most recent conflict but Popular Front by Jake Hanrahan has been quite good in the past. May be worth checking out.
AmrikeeAkbar
3mo ago
The Haredi are to my knowledge, virtually unique in that they've largely retained their traditional way of life in the middle of an ultra-modern society without going the way of the Amish. Not only are they not shrinking, they're actually increasing their share of the population, to the point that it has become a significant political issue. I'm deeply curious about this. Can anyone a) recommend good scholarship on the Haredi or b) point me towards any other similar modernity-defying groups?
AmrikeeAkbar
3mo ago
It's striking to me how one can get a sense of relative isolation even when objectively close to other people. Perhaps it's precisely because we're so used to being hemmed in by other people nowadays that even a little bit of separation makes an impression. I used to go running at a park by my house. Objectively it was probably only half a mile wide at its widest point and maybe 3 miles end to end. It was bracketed by the interstate on one side and a suburbs on the other 3 sides. During the day there were usually other people there and you could always hear the noise of the highway whatever the time. And yet, the way the network of trails I ran on twisted in and out of the trees and back on each other, it felt much more expansive than it was, and I often felt quite remote from other people - particularly around dusk. It made such an impression on me that I wrote a little bit of weird fiction inspired by it.
AmrikeeAkbar
4mo ago
On a related but admittedly anecdotal note, it seems to me that a lot of men my age (mid thirties) prioritize family relative to career in way that earlier generations didnt, at least going by cultural depictions. Ive known more than one man in a "prestige" career - finance, consulting, military officer etc - say something to the effect of "if the wife could support us I'd be happy to drop out and stay home with the kids". I wonder how much of this is a change in default life scripts. At one point it was assumed you'd have kids; now this is no longer assumed, people who do choose to have kids are presumably more committed to the whole project. The decline in employment stability probably also plays a role. It makes a lot less sense to give your life to a company when you're not expecting a pension after 40 years
AmrikeeAkbar
4mo ago
I think it's probably true that the Overton window from the 90s thru say 2016 was actually remarkably narrow. A good chunk of the western world had converged on...let's call it post-socialist bourgeois liberalism as The Way of Things. By contrast, in some ways the 60s and 70s were super left wing but you can find other public figures espousing equally right wing views, and being taken seriously. This was also the era of George Wallace and "segregation forever" after all. The Students for Democratic Society and The John Birch Society were formed within two years of each other. I think the 2016 election was less a harbinger of a rightward lurch in American politics as such and more an announcement that the consensus around narrowly defined norms of political/economic/social life had begun to dissolve - at least amongst the masses. It's taken the elites a minute to notice that however.
AmrikeeAkbar
4mo ago
DS9 is the best trek, and probably one of the best sf shows in general. Depth in characterization and storytelling and thematic nuance way ahead of others. Sisko and O'Brien are probably the only two Star Trek characters who actually have a family meaningfully present in their lives; that alone elevates it above the rest. Additionally, DS9 is the only trek willing to even occasionally challenge the post war liberal consensus and take alternative viewpoints seriously. With the other shows firmly embed you in the worldview of federation characters, DS9 gives a lot of screentime to characters from outside the federation who don't automatically accept it's ideals. Even those who do wrestle with federation values and the existence of dilemmas with no easy answers - see 'In the pale moonlight', as others have said.
AmrikeeAkbar
11mo ago
Recently finished the Baroque Cycle after stopping at the second book for ten years. It's a straight-up masterpiece.
AmrikeeAkbar
11mo ago
I actually like Nintis Gate, though I agree it's not ground breaking, and somewhat retro. Good rather than great is where im currently slotting it. Generally speaking I haven't had great luck in books I got from YouTubers/vloggers, so you're onto something with your larger point.
AmrikeeAkbar
1yr ago
While I agree that most neopagans are mostly making it up, there's at least two people buried in Arlington under a Mjolnir symbol. Can't post link cuz I'm on mobile but it was a Fast Company article from around 2013 that talked about it. I also personally know an Odinist who's an Army officer, and have met others who don't describe themselves as such but certainly have an affinity for the symbols of such (with varying degrees of seriousness and understanding)
AmrikeeAkbar
1yr ago
To what extent does the rise of Silicon Valley represent a replacement elite?
Periodically – usually whenever I read some indignant think-piece about how Big Tech is enabling the barbarian hordes of the populist right to destroy all that is Good and Holy – I ask myself if the increasing influence of Silicon Valley and associated industries represents an incipient shift in America’s ruling class. Rage-bait aside, I think its a worthwhile question. Changes in technology, economic, and socio-political organization are usually accompanied by some sort of shift in societal elites; when enough of these changes happen rapidly, we call it a revolution. I don’t know whether future historians will describe our own era as revolutionary, but it seems possible.
To answer this question, we first have to define the established ruling class. I hope to bypass the heated debates that topic inevitably prompts by sticking to some very broad and well-documented generalities.
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From the end of the Civil War, the economic powerhouse of the country was in the North-East, [where industrial and financial capital was concentrated] (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022516/how-new-york-became-center-american-finance.asp).
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The executive bureaucracy, since approximately the Progressive Era, has been dominated by technocrats characterized by an emphasis on formal educational credentials and, often, [association with elite educational institutions] (https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickhess/2024/11/01/is-the-ivy-league-really-a-pipeline-to-political-power/).
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Ownership of the most influential nation-wide news media, whether broadcast or print, has been consolidated in the greater New York metropolitan area since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Taking those things together, I think you have a decent outline of an established American elite. Silicon Valley represents a potential challenge to all those actors. The growth of the tech sector potentially threatens established financial elites; the new media has established media practically in a full-blown panic attack, and the fear of under-credentialed STEMlord barbarians at the gate lurks in the background of practically every discussion about “institutions.”
I’m asking if anyone has actually done any real research on this topic, beyond the sort of casual “wordcels vs shape rotators” framework. How do Silicon Valley types differ educationally, demographically, ideologically? To what extent are they merging with versus competing with the current establishment? Etc I know [the Scholars Stage] (https://scholars-stage.org/the-silicon-valley-canon-on-the-paideia-of-the-american-tech-elite/) has done a little, but I’m looking for anything else anyone’s aware of, either research and analysis or just straight-up raw data.
AmrikeeAkbar
1yr ago
Can you provide any references to the phenomena you described in your first paragraph? I've often suspected that universalist religions are a solution to the problem of scale, but I haven't dug into any literature on it.
AmrikeeAkbar
1yr ago
I think this line of argument conflates two different propositions: a) there's such a thing as too much democracy and b) the only appropriate guarantor against too much democracy is a managerial elite with the backing of the state. Lots of people agree with the first proposition without necessarily agreeing with the second.
AmrikeeAkbar
1yr ago
I strongly suspect that the chattering classes care a lot more about corruption than the majority of voters. Really egregious corruption can rub people the wrong way, particularly if people feel they are being shut out of opportunities that insiders have access to, but I don't think a lot of people care very much about, say, who gets appointed transportation minister. In order to be enraged about deviations from procedural norms, you have to be deeply invested in the legitimacy of those norms to start with. While the PMC may be, increasingly large numbers of voters aren't.
AmrikeeAkbar
1yr ago
As tech advances, won't it take fewer people and less resources to "close the gap" to AI? Say Silicon Valley is on course to reach AGI in 20 years at current R&D rates. If Silicon Valley in 10 years has shrunk to half its current R&D rates, you can still hypothetically get to AGI, it would just take longer.
AmrikeeAkbar
1yr ago
Apologies for the lateness of this reply; I go through long stretches of inactivity here. Maybe both geeks and sociopaths can be driving growth concurrently? At any given time, in any given movement, you can have participants along the whole spectrum of motives. Its probably also true that some movements have "better tech" than others; they're more likely to take root and have lasting impacts. The various Abrahamic monotheisms come to mind as movements with really strong tech. If anything, its probably that the better the underlying idea, the more status to be gained by getting in on the ground floor.
AmrikeeAkbar
2yr ago
I don't actually know enough about the early history of Christianity to make a claim one way or another, to be honest. I'd be interested if you have an alternative set of stages. Or even if you just think there's a better word than "stages" which does sort of imply a linear progression in what is not necessarily a linear process.
Regarding your latter point, I think for me, "class interest" is basically just an emergent phenomena of people following their own personal incentives. For example, if I'm lawyer or doctor, anything lowering the barrier to entry in these fields is against my personal economic interest. Meanwhile, people with aspirations of upward mobility from non-PMC backgrounds, who can't afford or qualify for however many thousands of dollars of student debt that career path entails, would prefer that these barriers to entry be lowered."Class" is such a slippery phenomena; any given individual might be in different classes over the course of their lives, and if we use the word in the broadest sense (to include, say, religious or ethnic groups as well as socioeconomic strata), several different classes at the same time.
AmrikeeAkbar
2yr ago
First time I've seen the rescue game, though I am familiar with John Michael Greer's writing. Generally I've found him quite insightful, though I think I probably have a fundamental disagreement with (what I understand to be) his broadly anti-growth philosophy. I was most interested to learn about the parallels to race discourse in the post-reconstruction south. Everything old is new again!
That's a fair point, and it caused me to do some thinking. I think in the case of Japan, we very deliberately went out of our way to embed the US occupation in the existing structure of the Japanese state, leaving the Emperor on the throne etc. In the Tokyo War Crimes trial, we went out of our way to only prosecute a relatively small handful of top-ranked leaders and a whole bunch of lower-ranking folks were allowed to return to political and government life after a short time. We also kept boots on the ground for a long time, both to contain any resurgent militarist tendencies, but also to shield Japan against enemies like Russia and Communist China. Nothing makes people over look old enmity like a new common enemy. So there was a carrot-and-stick arrangement in place which encouraged post-war reconciliation.
In the case of Vietnam, you again have a case of common adversary in the form of China, which fought a war with Vietnam within a few years of US departure. I will note that even so, it took twenty years for the US and Vietnam to normalize diplomatic relations. And crucially, the North Vietnamese won; its a lot easier to be generous in victory than defeat.
So I won't say its impossible for us to be friends with the Iranians in a decade or two. If an ISIS-like entity were to re-emerge, say, I could see us making common cause. But I do think that kind of reconciliation would require a major fat-tail event that is hard to see from here.
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