20 ms·

The 480

148 points by Hooke 7y ago

hiccuphippo 7y ago
So during JFK times the candidates would shape their campaign around the voter's beliefs. These days they shape the voters beliefs around themselves. Reality is more dystopian than fiction.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > ...during JFK times... Not "during JFK times", but in the JFK campaign. Not so much shaping campaigns around beliefs, but assessing who matters to your campaign as a pure technical pursuit. As for your jab, if you think that the President has somehow foisted his campaign on the electorate, rather than the other way around, that is the sort of profound misapprehension that doomed his opponent. The fact that voters can be convinced to agree or disagree with the candidate is more or less orthogonal. Do you think that JFK never influenced a voter by speaking?
  - seph-reed 7y ago
    I read somewhere that the percentage of conservatives who believe that Covid is a threat dropped from 70% in Feb to like 30% now. Not sure if that's true, but if it is, it would indicate their beliefs are vastly more dependent on his words, than his words on their beliefs.
    - moojd 7y ago
      Are you sure those numbers aren't reversed? I'm in a red state and while most people I know were in denial a month ago most now at least have moderate concern. It's pretty hard to deny that COVID-19 is a threat when our hospitals are full and the empty shelves in our grocery stores are a signal that people are panicking.
      - dhosek 7y ago
        There seems to be some whiplash effect. Also the geographic sorting of voters leads to a not insignificant number of people deciding that it's an urban/blue state problem.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- mcv 7y ago
  Yeah, I'd say adapting your political agenda to what the people want, is vastly preferable to changing what the people want to fit your political agenda. Yet that's the reality of the US political system of today. Especially with the influence of media outlets like Fox and others.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    I had a "discussion" with a Trump supporter who attacked Hillary Clinton because she used to be anti-gay-marriage, then "conveniently" changed her tune when it became popular, thus revealing her true nature as a flip-flopper, while at the same time defending Trump for his current anti-gay-marriage stance, which was simply excusable political expediency to appeal to Republicans, because he actually has a history of being pro-gay (if having an unhealthy obsession with Elton John (and Roy Cohen!) can be considered being pro-gay), and his true nature was pro-gay but he was just pretending to be anti-gay for convenience, to get the Republican nomination, and now to stay in power by bribing Republican Senators with red meat for their bigoted constituencies. As if his "actual beliefs" were what mattered (and he knew what they were for sure), and that superseded his actual behavior and its effect on the lives of actual gays. That was all just horse trading, you understand. https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/09/donald-trump-elton-john/ https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/09/donald-trump-elton-jo... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-cohn-relationship https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-coh... It didn't matter to him that Hillary used to be "bad" then went "good" ("evolved"), while Trump use to be "good" then went "bad" ("devolved"). For him, it was both of their original positions that mattered, not their trajectory or where they ended up, or even the effects of their words and deeds. He wouldn't give her the room to improve, because improving was only "politics", but he gave him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't really mean the anti-gay things he said and did, or actually agree with the anti-gay people he chose as vice president, supreme court judges, cabinet members, etc, because selling out his actual beliefs to the right wing in exchange for power was only "politics". People know very their politicians are lying to them and everyone else, but they pick and choose which lies to believe and which not to believe, because they think the politicians are nodding and winking at them personally, because they're in on the game, and it's justifiable to lie for power because the ends justify the means, at least for their team. That's why dog whistles work so well.
- nickbauman 7y ago
  Never more than now do I feel we are in an actual dystopia with Trump.
jimbob45 7y ago
Burdick also wrote Fail-Safe, which was essentially the no-nonsense complement to Strangelove. Decent book if you have nothing else to read and you're willing to trust a stranger's opinion on the internet.
- Lammy 7y ago
  Decent movie adaptation too.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Whoa. I ran across that in a library in junior high, when I was 12-15, and I still remember the plot and various incidents. It is a very affecting book.
- dhosek 7y ago
  Dr Strangelove was originally planned as a serious film until Kubrick realized that there was comedic potential in the subject and he brought in writer Terry Southern. Kubrick was concerned that Fail-Safe, in production as a film at the same time as Dr Strangelove, could hurt ticket sales for his film and encouraged a lawsuit against Burdick and the producers of the film alleging that Fail-Safe was plagiarized from Red Alert, the source novel for Dr Strangelove.
  - dhosek 7y ago
    Incidentally, in addition to the Sidney Lumet–directed version of Fail-Safe, there was a live TV version of Fail-Safe directed by Stephen Frears and starring George Clooney. The two filmed versions of the novel have different endings.
zwieback 7y ago
Good tip - added to my Goodreads list.
pavel_lishin 7y ago
There's a lot of parallels here to Neal Stephenson's Interface, which also features a computer assigning potential voters a sub-group to which they belong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  Wow! You commented just as I did. I'd echo what others have said about it-- Interface is an under-appreciated book. I am going to be really interested read The 480 having really enjoyed Interface.
- at_a_remove 7y ago
  I absolutely loved the microstereotypes invented for people in it. I cackled every time I ran across one.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sebastianconcpt 7y ago
A novel on gamification of politics. Very interesting. Sidenote: makes me think that the populist game precedes computing by a long run, but the introduction of computing democratized access to consciousness manipulation. Peer to peer influence got atomized and scaled.
- nickbauman 7y ago
  For a very literary novel on a dubious populist politician, read All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Ironic use of the term "democratized" there!
mistermann 7y ago
> The novel criticizes the socio-political effects on society at large from the use of computers to run massive simulations, which predict the public reaction to certain (proposed) political moves before implementing them. Such simulations make it easy to manipulate the public consciousness. This last sentence seems flawed. Is it not describing the ability of a computer to predict the future with high accuracy, and if so it isn't the public consciousness that's being manipulated, but rather the course of history? Which is still bad of course, and somewhat similar, but is a distinctly different situation. Directly acting upon the public consciousness itself would require different actions different than making predictions about the future, it would require actions in the present, right? One such action is propaganda (fake news, etc) - this one has been around forever, we all know about it. Another one that's been making the news a lot lately are the infamous "Russian" (I don't buy the story personally, but that's a different discussion) trolls. Let me tell you about something very weird that I've been noticing for quite some time now. I am a huge political junkie. And for this upcoming election, here's my current ranking of the candidates: 1. Sanders 2. Trump 3. Biden (well, more like 999. Biden). I don't think it's too hard for us here to accept mine as a valid political stance. Perhaps it seems weird, but it's not crazy. Simultaneously, we have this situation where Bernie supporters have two battles to win: first they must beat the (corrupt) DNC organization, before moving on to the big boss, DJT. So, of course, we do indeed see them attacking both Trump (and his racist/hyper-capitalist/misc-other-stereotype supporters) and the DNC/Biden. Nothing strange yet. But here's the weird thing: being a political junkie, I have been interacting (primarily on Reddit) with Democrats supporters now and then over the last several weeks/months. In near every single conversation, there is this unmistakable, uncanny pattern in the discussions, where it seems like these people are so blinded by rage, that they literally can't fathom the idea that a person could hold my stance. Or even that a single Trump supporter could hold any belief that does not perfectly line up with the stereotypes of what a Trump supporter "is". Like, it's not like you have a back and forth with them and then they decide "you know what, I think you're lying", but they just cannot believe, as if they have lost control of their conscious mind and free will, like there is some sort of a cognitive malfunction. Essentially, a real world actual manifestation of the NPC meme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) > NPC, derived from Non-Player Character in video games, is an meme to express the idea that individuals of the political left do not think for themselves; it is also known as NPC Wojak. The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the image-hosting website 4chan, where also the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced. The NPC meme has gained widespread attention and been featured in numerous news outlets, including The New York Times,[4] The Verge,[3] BBC,[7] and Breitbart News Network. Media coverage of the NPC meme has been politically biased according to the news watchdogs Accuracy In Media[8] and Media Research Center.[9] Now, the average person is not very good at rational thinking. So, one should expect a fair amount of this behavior, especially under the stress of modern day politics. No problemo. But my issue is that firstly, this scenario isn't really all that complicated (is it?), and more importantly, this behavior seems to occur in at least 90% of my interactions. I can understand a lot of people being dumb, but almost all of them? (I should also note: I'm not taking only my personal conversations into account here, much of my confidence level derives from observing similar behavior in the conversations of others). Which leads me to my question: what are the odds that there is some entity out there that happens to posses "AI chat" technology that is way beyond what is considered to be the current state of the art (like how the NSA is reputed to be <x> years ahead), and that this technology is now in the wild? It seems like an outlandish theory, but on a technical basis, is it really that far out there? I suppose I should note two other explanations that come to mind: - rather than bots, these entities could just be paid trolls (with the sums of money thrown around in an election, this could be done at very significant scale) - if a given ~environment can invoke ~insanity in one person, it may also be able to invoke the same thing in millions of people simultaneously; but the problem with this is, could it reach 90% levels? Although, Redditors are not a representative sample, so it would only have to make that subset crazy, which seems much more plausible. Anyways, this question has been on my mind for a while so thought I'd just throw it out there and see what others think. EDIT: Thinking a bit more about it: "90% of Redditors are literally incapable of high-skilled rational thought" actually feels about right, so maybe nothing nefarious is afoot. Although, I'm not sure which of these is the scarier scenario. And if it's both (which it actually kinda is, with respect to fake news), God help us all. So perhaps I've answered my own question, but would really like to hear what others think. The degradation in the quality of thinking and discourse in the Western world is beyond out of control in my opinion, and I am legit worried that if some sensible special interest groups outside the formal political process don't set aside their differences and unify to set us back on the right path, I actually think tyranny (the serious kind) may be inevitable. One year ago I would have dismissed such claims as hyperbolic, but considering planet earth is currently on a near total lockdown due to a literal global pandemic, that could have easily (at least relatively speaking) been prevented/managed, I think erring on the side of extreme caution is warranted. The next event could end industrialized human civilization, and I almost feel like I am the only person that seems concerned about the mass psychology aspect of it. Everyone's focusing on "the Russians", when they should be focusing on the mental health of people who are exposed to a historically unprecedented stream of incoming information, much of it sophisticated propaganda.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gumby 7y ago
Burdock was also one of the authors of “The Ugly American”. Unlike popular usage of that phrase, the “Ugly American” was the hero, out working with people in the field, not getting dressed up, or showered, and not hanging out in the diplomatic circuit. It was a strong condemnation of the kind of out of touch foreign policy and operations that lead to the viet Nam war and countless foreign policy disasters that have followed since. Written in 1958, discussed widely, and yet made zero impact.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nickbauman 7y ago
  Another critique of the same war from a more famous author, Graham Greene, with a similar title, published three years earlier than Burdock, The Quiet American , set the narrative for future generations of political analysts and pundits for years to come. Greene, himself a former member of the intel community, penned this to explain that no matter how "in touch" your politicians are, if your intel services are secretly sowing discord and playing dirty tricks preying on the politics of a client nation, they can make war seem inevitable. In hindsight the Bay of Tonkin Incident seems the flimsiest casus belli there ever was for Viet Nam. At the time we seemed primed for a fight that never was what we thought it was. We were manipulated then. We were manipulated on Iraq under Bush, too. The only difference this time was the weapon is turned on Americans (and increasingly many other nations) to serve a foreign power.
BryantD 7y ago
Interface, co-authored by Neal Stephenson, is also in this vein.
toomuchtodo 7y ago
https://smile.amazon.com/480-Eugene-Burdick/dp/B000OPIUOO/ https://smile.amazon.com/480-Eugene-Burdick/dp/B000OPIUOO/ (Amazon) https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6664375W/The_480 https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6664375W/The_480 (OpenLibrary)
IgorPartola 7y ago
For those who have expertise in this area, how difficult would it be to actually model different political interests and their interplay? Also, would this eventually end up being a level 2 chaotic system where calculating the predictions affects the real world inputs, making the whole thing akin to the stock market? Or would it be slow moving enough that you could actually extract something useful out of this?
TylerE 7y ago
Can we please stop it with these mystery meat titles?
- DiabloD3 7y ago
  And, what, break HN's well known rules that differentiate us from other websites? Hogwash!
  - TylerE 7y ago
    Dumb rules are dumb.
- oftenwrong 7y ago
  The first sentence of the article should have been adapted into a descriptive title: "The 480: a political fiction novel by Eugene Burdick (1964)"
- swilliamsio 7y ago
  I prefer it. It encourages reading the article as opposed to just reading the title and assuming the articles content.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    It encourages skipping everything. Life's too short.

148 points by Hooke 7y ago

So during JFK times the candidates would shape their campaign around the voter's beliefs. These days they shape the voters beliefs around themselves. Reality is more dystopian than fiction.

microcolonel 7y ago
> ...during JFK times... Not "during JFK times", but in the JFK campaign. Not so much shaping campaigns around beliefs, but assessing who matters to your campaign as a pure technical pursuit. As for your jab, if you think that the President has somehow foisted his campaign on the electorate, rather than the other way around, that is the sort of profound misapprehension that doomed his opponent. The fact that voters can be convinced to agree or disagree with the candidate is more or less orthogonal. Do you think that JFK never influenced a voter by speaking?
- seph-reed 7y ago
  I read somewhere that the percentage of conservatives who believe that Covid is a threat dropped from 70% in Feb to like 30% now. Not sure if that's true, but if it is, it would indicate their beliefs are vastly more dependent on his words, than his words on their beliefs.
  - moojd 7y ago
    Are you sure those numbers aren't reversed? I'm in a red state and while most people I know were in denial a month ago most now at least have moderate concern. It's pretty hard to deny that COVID-19 is a threat when our hospitals are full and the empty shelves in our grocery stores are a signal that people are panicking.
    - dhosek 7y ago
      There seems to be some whiplash effect. Also the geographic sorting of voters leads to a not insignificant number of people deciding that it's an urban/blue state problem.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
mcv 7y ago
Yeah, I'd say adapting your political agenda to what the people want, is vastly preferable to changing what the people want to fit your political agenda. Yet that's the reality of the US political system of today. Especially with the influence of media outlets like Fox and others.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  I had a "discussion" with a Trump supporter who attacked Hillary Clinton because she used to be anti-gay-marriage, then "conveniently" changed her tune when it became popular, thus revealing her true nature as a flip-flopper, while at the same time defending Trump for his current anti-gay-marriage stance, which was simply excusable political expediency to appeal to Republicans, because he actually has a history of being pro-gay (if having an unhealthy obsession with Elton John (and Roy Cohen!) can be considered being pro-gay), and his true nature was pro-gay but he was just pretending to be anti-gay for convenience, to get the Republican nomination, and now to stay in power by bribing Republican Senators with red meat for their bigoted constituencies. As if his "actual beliefs" were what mattered (and he knew what they were for sure), and that superseded his actual behavior and its effect on the lives of actual gays. That was all just horse trading, you understand. https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/09/donald-trump-elton-john/ https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/09/donald-trump-elton-jo... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-cohn-relationship https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-roy-coh... It didn't matter to him that Hillary used to be "bad" then went "good" ("evolved"), while Trump use to be "good" then went "bad" ("devolved"). For him, it was both of their original positions that mattered, not their trajectory or where they ended up, or even the effects of their words and deeds. He wouldn't give her the room to improve, because improving was only "politics", but he gave him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't really mean the anti-gay things he said and did, or actually agree with the anti-gay people he chose as vice president, supreme court judges, cabinet members, etc, because selling out his actual beliefs to the right wing in exchange for power was only "politics". People know very their politicians are lying to them and everyone else, but they pick and choose which lies to believe and which not to believe, because they think the politicians are nodding and winking at them personally, because they're in on the game, and it's justifiable to lie for power because the ends justify the means, at least for their team. That's why dog whistles work so well.
nickbauman 7y ago
Never more than now do I feel we are in an actual dystopia with Trump.

jimbob45 7y ago

Burdick also wrote Fail-Safe, which was essentially the no-nonsense complement to Strangelove. Decent book if you have nothing else to read and you're willing to trust a stranger's opinion on the internet.

Lammy 7y ago
Decent movie adaptation too.
mcguire 7y ago
Whoa. I ran across that in a library in junior high, when I was 12-15, and I still remember the plot and various incidents. It is a very affecting book.
dhosek 7y ago
Dr Strangelove was originally planned as a serious film until Kubrick realized that there was comedic potential in the subject and he brought in writer Terry Southern. Kubrick was concerned that Fail-Safe, in production as a film at the same time as Dr Strangelove, could hurt ticket sales for his film and encouraged a lawsuit against Burdick and the producers of the film alleging that Fail-Safe was plagiarized from Red Alert, the source novel for Dr Strangelove.
- dhosek 7y ago
  Incidentally, in addition to the Sidney Lumet–directed version of Fail-Safe, there was a live TV version of Fail-Safe directed by Stephen Frears and starring George Clooney. The two filmed versions of the novel have different endings.

zwieback 7y ago

Good tip - added to my Goodreads list.

pavel_lishin 7y ago

There's a lot of parallels here to Neal Stephenson's Interface, which also features a computer assigning potential voters a sub-group to which they belong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)

EvanAnderson 7y ago
Wow! You commented just as I did. I'd echo what others have said about it-- Interface is an under-appreciated book. I am going to be really interested read The 480 having really enjoyed Interface.
at_a_remove 7y ago
I absolutely loved the microstereotypes invented for people in it. I cackled every time I ran across one.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sebastianconcpt 7y ago

A novel on gamification of politics. Very interesting. Sidenote: makes me think that the populist game precedes computing by a long run, but the introduction of computing democratized access to consciousness manipulation. Peer to peer influence got atomized and scaled.

nickbauman 7y ago
For a very literary novel on a dubious populist politician, read All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren.
DonHopkins 7y ago
Ironic use of the term "democratized" there!

mistermann 7y ago

> The novel criticizes the socio-political effects on society at large from the use of computers to run massive simulations, which predict the public reaction to certain (proposed) political moves before implementing them. Such simulations make it easy to manipulate the public consciousness. This last sentence seems flawed. Is it not describing the ability of a computer to predict the future with high accuracy, and if so it isn't the public consciousness that's being manipulated, but rather the course of history? Which is still bad of course, and somewhat similar, but is a distinctly different situation. Directly acting upon the public consciousness itself would require different actions different than making predictions about the future, it would require actions in the present, right? One such action is propaganda (fake news, etc) - this one has been around forever, we all know about it. Another one that's been making the news a lot lately are the infamous "Russian" (I don't buy the story personally, but that's a different discussion) trolls. Let me tell you about something very weird that I've been noticing for quite some time now. I am a huge political junkie. And for this upcoming election, here's my current ranking of the candidates: 1. Sanders 2. Trump 3. Biden (well, more like 999. Biden). I don't think it's too hard for us here to accept mine as a valid political stance. Perhaps it seems weird, but it's not crazy. Simultaneously, we have this situation where Bernie supporters have two battles to win: first they must beat the (corrupt) DNC organization, before moving on to the big boss, DJT. So, of course, we do indeed see them attacking both Trump (and his racist/hyper-capitalist/misc-other-stereotype supporters) and the DNC/Biden. Nothing strange yet. But here's the weird thing: being a political junkie, I have been interacting (primarily on Reddit) with Democrats supporters now and then over the last several weeks/months. In near every single conversation, there is this unmistakable, uncanny pattern in the discussions, where it seems like these people are so blinded by rage, that they literally can't fathom the idea that a person could hold my stance. Or even that a single Trump supporter could hold any belief that does not perfectly line up with the stereotypes of what a Trump supporter "is". Like, it's not like you have a back and forth with them and then they decide "you know what, I think you're lying", but they just cannot believe, as if they have lost control of their conscious mind and free will, like there is some sort of a cognitive malfunction. Essentially, a real world actual manifestation of the NPC meme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) > NPC, derived from Non-Player Character in video games, is an meme to express the idea that individuals of the political left do not think for themselves; it is also known as NPC Wojak. The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the image-hosting website 4chan, where also the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced. The NPC meme has gained widespread attention and been featured in numerous news outlets, including The New York Times,[4] The Verge,[3] BBC,[7] and Breitbart News Network. Media coverage of the NPC meme has been politically biased according to the news watchdogs Accuracy In Media[8] and Media Research Center.[9] Now, the average person is not very good at rational thinking. So, one should expect a fair amount of this behavior, especially under the stress of modern day politics. No problemo. But my issue is that firstly, this scenario isn't really all that complicated (is it?), and more importantly, this behavior seems to occur in at least 90% of my interactions. I can understand a lot of people being dumb, but almost all of them? (I should also note: I'm not taking only my personal conversations into account here, much of my confidence level derives from observing similar behavior in the conversations of others). Which leads me to my question: what are the odds that there is some entity out there that happens to posses "AI chat" technology that is way beyond what is considered to be the current state of the art (like how the NSA is reputed to be <x> years ahead), and that this technology is now in the wild? It seems like an outlandish theory, but on a technical basis, is it really that far out there? I suppose I should note two other explanations that come to mind: - rather than bots, these entities could just be paid trolls (with the sums of money thrown around in an election, this could be done at very significant scale) - if a given ~environment can invoke ~insanity in one person, it may also be able to invoke the same thing in millions of people simultaneously; but the problem with this is, could it reach 90% levels? Although, Redditors are not a representative sample, so it would only have to make that subset crazy, which seems much more plausible. Anyways, this question has been on my mind for a while so thought I'd just throw it out there and see what others think. EDIT: Thinking a bit more about it: "90% of Redditors are literally incapable of high-skilled rational thought" actually feels about right, so maybe nothing nefarious is afoot. Although, I'm not sure which of these is the scarier scenario. And if it's both (which it actually kinda is, with respect to fake news), God help us all. So perhaps I've answered my own question, but would really like to hear what others think. The degradation in the quality of thinking and discourse in the Western world is beyond out of control in my opinion, and I am legit worried that if some sensible special interest groups outside the formal political process don't set aside their differences and unify to set us back on the right path, I actually think tyranny (the serious kind) may be inevitable. One year ago I would have dismissed such claims as hyperbolic, but considering planet earth is currently on a near total lockdown due to a literal global pandemic, that could have easily (at least relatively speaking) been prevented/managed, I think erring on the side of extreme caution is warranted. The next event could end industrialized human civilization, and I almost feel like I am the only person that seems concerned about the mass psychology aspect of it. Everyone's focusing on "the Russians", when they should be focusing on the mental health of people who are exposed to a historically unprecedented stream of incoming information, much of it sophisticated propaganda.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gumby 7y ago

Burdock was also one of the authors of “The Ugly American”. Unlike popular usage of that phrase, the “Ugly American” was the hero, out working with people in the field, not getting dressed up, or showered, and not hanging out in the diplomatic circuit. It was a strong condemnation of the kind of out of touch foreign policy and operations that lead to the viet Nam war and countless foreign policy disasters that have followed since. Written in 1958, discussed widely, and yet made zero impact.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nickbauman 7y ago
Another critique of the same war from a more famous author, Graham Greene, with a similar title, published three years earlier than Burdock, The Quiet American , set the narrative for future generations of political analysts and pundits for years to come. Greene, himself a former member of the intel community, penned this to explain that no matter how "in touch" your politicians are, if your intel services are secretly sowing discord and playing dirty tricks preying on the politics of a client nation, they can make war seem inevitable. In hindsight the Bay of Tonkin Incident seems the flimsiest casus belli there ever was for Viet Nam. At the time we seemed primed for a fight that never was what we thought it was. We were manipulated then. We were manipulated on Iraq under Bush, too. The only difference this time was the weapon is turned on Americans (and increasingly many other nations) to serve a foreign power.

BryantD 7y ago

Interface, co-authored by Neal Stephenson, is also in this vein.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

https://smile.amazon.com/480-Eugene-Burdick/dp/B000OPIUOO/ https://smile.amazon.com/480-Eugene-Burdick/dp/B000OPIUOO/ (Amazon) https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6664375W/The_480 https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6664375W/The_480 (OpenLibrary)

IgorPartola 7y ago

For those who have expertise in this area, how difficult would it be to actually model different political interests and their interplay? Also, would this eventually end up being a level 2 chaotic system where calculating the predictions affects the real world inputs, making the whole thing akin to the stock market? Or would it be slow moving enough that you could actually extract something useful out of this?

TylerE 7y ago

Can we please stop it with these mystery meat titles?

DiabloD3 7y ago
And, what, break HN's well known rules that differentiate us from other websites? Hogwash!
- TylerE 7y ago
  Dumb rules are dumb.
oftenwrong 7y ago
The first sentence of the article should have been adapted into a descriptive title: "The 480: a political fiction novel by Eugene Burdick (1964)"
swilliamsio 7y ago
I prefer it. It encourages reading the article as opposed to just reading the title and assuming the articles content.
- TylerE 7y ago
  It encourages skipping everything. Life's too short.