How are they supposed to know their computing technology is worse than the US's? THIS IS SECRET RESEARCH!
Option A: vacate a few overseas territories. Option B: vacate all overseas territory, lose all industrial capacity, country under occupation, lose three million people . They went with option B, naturally.
Option A: roll the dice and see what happens, depending on a host of unknowable fog-of-war matters
Option B: vacate China and Indo-China, resulting in massive rioting and the collapse of the government since the public won't be happy about admitting defeat after tens or hundreds of thousands have died in the war.
Suppose the Chinese completely obliterate the US military, using amazing advances in hypersonic weaponry, satellites, cyberwarfare, drones and so on, along with their US+EU sized manufacturing sector. They capitalize on their advantage to occupy Japan, Australia, the Pacific and bring the US to its knees by blockading all its ports.
Should we say 'oh the US was completely retarded going to war over Taiwan and losing 5 million men, all its prestige, overseas territories, alliance networks'. No because this wasn't a reasonably foreseeable outcome. Nobody knew beforehand that the Chinese were so capable, only with hindsight does 'oh their manufacturing capacity is so enormous' really become obvious, since people are assuming a short war fought in a single decisive battle. Only with hindsight do we know they had backdoors in all this critical infrastructure, that they'd stolen the specifications for US weapons, that there were 5th columnists feeding them intelligence. Only with hindsight would we learn that, since there hadn't been a naval war for decades, the meta had changed decisively in ways that benefitted the Chinese and obsoleted US strategy.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How are they supposed to know their computing technology is worse than the US's? THIS IS SECRET RESEARCH!
Option A: roll the dice and see what happens, depending on a host of unknowable fog-of-war matters Option B: vacate China and Indo-China, resulting in massive rioting and the collapse of the government since the public won't be happy about admitting defeat after tens or hundreds of thousands have died in the war.
Suppose the Chinese completely obliterate the US military, using amazing advances in hypersonic weaponry, satellites, cyberwarfare, drones and so on, along with their US+EU sized manufacturing sector. They capitalize on their advantage to occupy Japan, Australia, the Pacific and bring the US to its knees by blockading all its ports.
Should we say 'oh the US was completely retarded going to war over Taiwan and losing 5 million men, all its prestige, overseas territories, alliance networks'. No because this wasn't a reasonably foreseeable outcome. Nobody knew beforehand that the Chinese were so capable, only with hindsight does 'oh their manufacturing capacity is so enormous' really become obvious, since people are assuming a short war fought in a single decisive battle. Only with hindsight do we know they had backdoors in all this critical infrastructure, that they'd stolen the specifications for US weapons, that there were 5th columnists feeding them intelligence. Only with hindsight would we learn that, since there hadn't been a naval war for decades, the meta had changed decisively in ways that benefitted the Chinese and obsoleted US strategy.
More options
Context Copy link