Eetan
5d ago
That’s blatantly not true, though.
This is blatantly true, and getting even more true every day. Ruled based order is order of permanent gangrenous wounds that will never heal.
North vs South Korea. Armenia vs AZ. North vs South Cyprus. Israel vs Syria and Lebanon. India vs Pakistan. Etc, etc. There is no active shooting war for most of the time, but there is no peace either, and no hope there will ever be one.
For comparison, see, for example from 19th century, war of 1870. War ended with great victory for Germans, great humiliation for French. France lost two provinces, lots of cash and honor.
What happened afterwards? Peace. Bad feelings remained, but diplomatic relations were restored, French could travel to Germany and vice versa, no walls and barbed wire on the borders. Not thinkable today.
Not that I would expect Russia to pull out in shame.
Do you expect the relationships returning to normal, do you expect the "international community" recognizing that things are back as they were in 2014, only Russia got little bigger.
No. End of the war would mean permanent ceasefire and permanent DMZ, permanent walls and mine fields watched by killer robots. Good for nature and wildlife, not for anyone else.
Eetan
5d ago
Putin has zero incentive to agree to any kind of real ceasefire, because he’s about to win the war.
Let's assume that your rosy picture of Russian armed forces is accurate.
Just stay the course, few more months of grind to flatten the Ukraine and it is done. Ukraine army is broken, Zelensky dead or in Florida, Russian flags fly over Kiev and Odessa. It is over.
Now what? The sactions last, new Russian territory is not recognized by the "international community", frontier states are frantically rearming, including nuclear weapons. Hundreds of billions of Russian funds are never going back. Russia won ... patch of devastated land where anyone who could fled and only the elderly pensioners are left.
Putin can present it in TV to Z audience as glorious victory, but that's all.
Eetan
5d ago
British Empire wasn’t going to survive either.
British Empire was artifact of 19th century industrial revolution, no one ever explained how should few hundreds of thousands of British aristocracy and upper classes control 25%+ of human race for all time.
Eetan
5d ago
What is an American, in your book?
Legal category (comprising about 340M by now, about 4.1% of humanity).
If you have paper issued by proper authority following proper procedure that says you are an American, you are one.
Make it anything else, and you open door you really do not want to be opened (no matter how personally strong and tough you are and how many guns do you own).
Eetan
6d ago
What does a durable peace treaty look like these days?
Nonexistant. In the Rules Based Order, wars never end, at best you get cease fire and permanent demilitarized zones.
Eetan
6d ago
People willing to work for low wages just don’t exist in America.
Well, then capitalist solution is to raise the wages. There is no problem in finding oil workers, no matter how remote is North Dakota and how dirty and dangerous work it is.
Eetan
6d ago
Increasingly, Americans won’t do physically difficult low status work at all.
Well, the solution is to make the work well paid, and high status. Let Hollywood make flood of movies about brave and manly construction workers and vegetable pickers.
Yes, Soviet efforts to do this completely failed, but Hollywood is Hollywood. If you can make cool and prestigious as hard, dirty and dangerous profession as cow herder, you can do anything.
Eetan
6d ago
This is all kayfabe, and deal, big beautiful deal, had already been made - deal trading Ukraine for Syria and Iran. The surprising fall of Syrian regime had been only the beginning, and Iran is next on the chopping block.
Just one current puzzle piece supporting this take - not only US and Israel, but Azerbaijan too seems to be readying.
Yes, it is something from Tom Clancy novel - US air, naval and space forces engage in brilliant shock&awe campaign, while mighty Azeri Army rolls to Tabriz and Tehran and inside Iran several unexpected surprises in September 2024 style happen. Freedom wins, bald eagles rejoice, all who remember 1979 get their revenge.
But current world is place where things are against happening in true Hollywood kino way. The new screenwriters hired in 2020 are pros who know their job.
Eetan
6d ago
So only pure Anglo-Saxons could be Americans? I am afraid that this ship sailed long ago (it was 1850's sailing ship that brought Irish, Germans and other European riffraff).
Eetan
6d ago
recipes for Bolshevik revolutions multiple times over
Not exactly. Recipe for Bolshevik revolution is poverty, hunger and unpopular war that is not going well.
Maybe around 2030 in MegaBlackPill timeline, when US casualties in Iran and Yemen get to six figures, while economy crashes and both man made and climate change caused disasters hit major food exporting areas of the world simultaneously you might have a chance to see something.
Tartaria
Tartaria is the perfect product of late Soviet and post-Soviet decay and disappointment.
"No, we are not decrepit shithole that is laughingstock of the world! We wuz khans, and tsars, and sultans, and pharaohs, the whole world once belonged to Great Russian Tartarian Horde!"
The fact it is, beyond all expectations, gaining fans in the West, is significant.
tulpas
Nothing mysterious about self induced schizophrenia, and, seen from the outside, nothing particularly enjoyable either.
edit: link
Eetan
6d ago
If you take conspiracy theories seriously, there is nothing "enjoyable" there. Who is supposed to enjoy that they (whoever "they" are) are deceiving the mankind for decades and centuries with no end in sight for nefarious gains and getting away with it?
World where conspiracy theorists are right is nightmare fuel.
(Exceptions might be various "forbidden technology" conspiracies, claiming that free energy is kept secret by Big Oil and miracle cures for all diseases are suppressed by Big Pharma. This universe, if real, would be awesome - just break into these secret vaults and Star Trek utopia is here.)
This explains the temporary success of Qanon - this was rare conspiracy that claimed that good guys are out there fighting the good fight.
Eetan
9d ago
What is the significance of October 6, 1973?
Eetan
10d ago
Depends on definition of "golden age". Time of peace? Time of prosperity for average person? Time of great scientific/literary/art creative genius?
Eetan
10d ago
Who cares what Hanania thinks about human excellence? He has (generously) 1/1000th of Elon's following, maybe 1/100,000 of his wealth. Is Hanania running a viable AGI program? Is Hanania building huge rockets? Are Hanania's opinions relevant in world affairs, does he control key communications infrastructure used by armies? Is he doing anything of importance whatsoever?
No one shall care about Hanania, but you should care, if you care about world's affairs at all, if man who does all these things, destroys his brain with drugs and gets all his information from xitter and 4chan shitposters.
Eetan
10d ago
Just checking again, and Mr Kaufmann declares himself "Zionist" and "Christian nationalist" simultaneously.
It is unclear what he means by "Christian nation".
Nation that is overwhelmingly Christian? Many such cases worldwide. Excluding Vatican and tiny island countries, most significant is probably 98% Christian Romania.
Nation where Christianity is established by law and non-Christians are persecuted? No idea if there is such place today, and no idea either how will creating such place make the world more free.
Eetan
11d ago
Continuing my alt hist scenario- epistemic status, considering moving over to an alternate history forum, open to recommendations.
Online oldest and biggest AH place is here but beware. It is extremely PC, woke long before wokeness was a thing, space. Expect to be banned for the slightest infraction (mere mention of HBDIQ concepts, taken for granted here or other rationalist and post rationalist spaces is sufficient). Enter at your risk.
Just one example: short althistorian career of famous Eric S. Raymond
Others- few old time forums and bulletin boards exist.
Only I can think about is Axis History Forum unsurprisingly dedicated to WWII history with lively alt-his subforum. It is nerd paradise, highly technical discussion backed by proper citations is expected (and it is normie place, nothing resembling Nazi apologia and Holocaust revisionism is tolerated).
Even stronger case could be made that no matter how weak is traditional European feudal system, it is excellent in suppressing peasant rebellions. There is no case in recorded European history of peasant revolt even slightly endangering TPTP (unlike China).
See the ease how even the most extensive revolts were put down. And they were, by Chinese standards, not very revolting at all.
edit: links linked properly
Eetan
11d ago
"Guess which people are more conformist and which are more bold and daring?"
Descendants of serfs who were subjugated to their lords for millenia with little protest, or descendants of peasants who were continuously revolting for all recorded history? Hard guess.
Eetan
11d ago
No, this is a code for: "we want traditional European urbanism without traditional European rule of law"
Eetan
13d ago
In particular, I used to have the naive anti-conspiracy view that it's almost impossible to keep an important one going due to a single defection blowing everything up, even if smaller and/or more specific ones may happen.
As spook world "standard candle" we can always use one well proven evil conspiracy, the infamous MKULTRA (and adjacent projects).
For 20+ years, in peace time, thousands, possibly tens of thousands of professionals engaged in Nazi/Imperial Japan style extremely unethical human experimentation. And it was all successfully kept secret (until handful of files who escaped destruction were discovered by accident).
All commonly proposed mechanisms to uncover and stop such nefarious activity failed.
No one talked (or if someone talked, no one listened to him)
No investigative journalists uncovered this scandal.
No elected representative of the people did anything.
No conspiracy theorist found what is going on, when MKULTRA was revving up, tinfoil hat crowd debated whether Eisenhower is willing Communist agent or naive Communist dupe.
One exception was this book from 1967, describes mind conditioning methods similar used by MKULTRA
If course, in the book the perpetrators are nasty South American Nahzees who want to manipulate stock market and get rich, not American patriots bravely fighting communism (and the book was, anyway, just drop that vanished in ocean of conspiracy/parapolitic writing at the time).
Eetan
13d ago
Yes, it is all contextual. "Charismatic" colonels are few, most officers are cogs in the machine (just like most CEO's). Analogically, you can say that popular and well connected investigative reporter is rather powerful, but how many of these are in NYT of today?
Eetan
13d ago
Rome succeded in Romanizing the people it ruled beyond the wildest expectation, Gauls and Hispanics speak Latin to this very day. Goths, Vandals, Saxons etc were never ruled by Rome.
Eetan
13d ago
In related news, coronavirus research in Wuhan lab goes on.
No need to be worried, plebes. Trust USG, trust CCP, trust the experts.
Do you believe false things?
You, high IQ, well educated, traveled and read motte denizen, you personally?
Not ordinary mistaken trivia knowledge, for example when you are unsure whether US has 50 or 51 states, or on what continent is New Guinea, but when facts about the world that serve as bedrock of your beliefs that happen to be totally delusionary, at catastrophical odds to reality. Can it happen to you?
It happens frequently. See the famous poll where about one in 20 of "very liberal people" believe that tens of thousands of unarmed blacks are annually killed by police.
For non-US example, see this poll among Palestinians, where one third of population of Gaza believe that Israel has less than 500k inhabitants.
"No, it cannot happen to me! I was trained in martial arts of rationalism by ancient master Yud the Yumongous! I am unstoppable!"
Well, it can happen not only to "brainwashed libtards" or "dumb Ayrabs".
It happened to credentialed rationalist and one of Yud's disciples.
The short xeet that went viral:
Until I was 38 I thought Men's World Cup team vs Women's World Cup team would be a fair match and couldn't figure out why they didn't just play each other
And the long essay where Eneasz Brodski at request of his readers and haters explains how it happened:
How To Believe False Things - by request, this is an explanation of how I got 38 years old believing a match of World Cup men's team vs World Cup women's would be fair.
TL;DR: EB learned about relative strength of men and women as we all learn all things we know. From his own experience, from media, from experts. EB trusted them all, without considering that his experiences could be extremely unrepresentative, media could be completely fictional and experts could just plain lie to his face.
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