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Every potential enemy is also a potential friend or a potential neutral. By definition. Besides you don't get to wipe 1B people off the planet (which way back

by GDC7 5y ago

Every potential enemy is also a potential friend or a potential neutral. By definition. Besides you don't get to wipe 1B people off the planet (which way back then represented 35% of the global population), and have as only consequence the fact that you "won" the prisoner's dilemma. Such "victories" emerge as such after centuries when scientists would be studying the DNA remains and see who survived and who perished. But such great filter doesn't produce anything good for those living through it. Even the "winners" There was no quality of life to be gained by the US and USSR in nuking each other, still there isn't today between US and Russia.Russia and the US can only be baited into nuking each other. And that's the danger we must be really careful about. Thank god "normal" people like JFK and Kruschev who enjoyed the pleasures of life like cigars, alcohol and women were at the helm and not some guy who was paranoid about "winning" a game. As far as predictive capabilities on this matter...Tom Clancy > John Von Neumann

selimthegrim 5y ago
Tom Clancy eventually turned into the worst kind of paint by numbers right wing kook. I have no doubt he'd be slavishly and unquestioningly supporting Trump if he were still alive.
philwelch 5y ago
Von Neumann's advocacy of a preemptive strike, to my knowledge, took place in the 1950's, when the Soviet Union was still under the rule of Stalin and did not yet have the ability to effectively strike back at the US. It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death--it was sort of like hoping that, if Germany won WWII, that the Nazis would moderate after Hitler's death. Behold your "potential friend": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
- GDC7 5y ago
  > It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death. Getting involved in a conflict on the other side of the world is not exactly something a moderate would do. Germany had a spirit of revenge after WW1. What did the US have to do on the other side of the world...once again? No matter the other side of the world argument, countries which decided to be moderate were never involved even as they were right there where the disaster went down: Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Greece, Norway... If you adjust for education, quality of life and also hunger, then the US didn't look so moderate after all.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    > That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death. No, it isn’t. FDR didn’t have tens of millions of people murdered in cold blood.
    - GDC7 5y ago
      But he had camps for immigrants. Let's talk about Indian Americans? Again.....adjust for wealth , education, quality of life, etc. The US was really not that moderate if you adjust for the aforementioned conditions. Switch cultures and systems between the US and the USSR...also switch standards of living etc. and the USSR would have been just as "moderate". Perhaps a tad harsher or a tad softer. But humans are humans, their aggressivene/moderate behavior is modulated by standards of living, age, sex, male to female ratio...and not much else. For sure it's not capitalism vs. communism which are essentially the same thing. Modern day religions propagated by the church of the state with the head of state as Pope. Make people believe you have found a system to turn a 300 tons oil tanker into a cruise liner (and/or viceversa), and convince them to elevate you socially to implement (or conserve) such system. At the end of the day that social elevation is the only thing that's real and the ship...well nobody really knows what happens to it, except for some BS metrics such as GDP which aren't metrics anymore, they became the objective. When a metric becomes the objective..it ceases to be a good metric.

by GDC7 5y ago

selimthegrim 5y ago

Tom Clancy eventually turned into the worst kind of paint by numbers right wing kook. I have no doubt he'd be slavishly and unquestioningly supporting Trump if he were still alive.

philwelch 5y ago

Von Neumann's advocacy of a preemptive strike, to my knowledge, took place in the 1950's, when the Soviet Union was still under the rule of Stalin and did not yet have the ability to effectively strike back at the US. It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death--it was sort of like hoping that, if Germany won WWII, that the Nazis would moderate after Hitler's death. Behold your "potential friend": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

GDC7 5y ago
> It was far from a guarantee that the Soviets would moderate after Stalin's death That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death. Getting involved in a conflict on the other side of the world is not exactly something a moderate would do. Germany had a spirit of revenge after WW1. What did the US have to do on the other side of the world...once again? No matter the other side of the world argument, countries which decided to be moderate were never involved even as they were right there where the disaster went down: Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Greece, Norway... If you adjust for education, quality of life and also hunger, then the US didn't look so moderate after all.
- philwelch 5y ago
  > That is the same of saying that there was no reason to suspect that the US would moderate after FDR's death. No, it isn’t. FDR didn’t have tens of millions of people murdered in cold blood.
  - GDC7 5y ago
    But he had camps for immigrants. Let's talk about Indian Americans? Again.....adjust for wealth , education, quality of life, etc. The US was really not that moderate if you adjust for the aforementioned conditions. Switch cultures and systems between the US and the USSR...also switch standards of living etc. and the USSR would have been just as "moderate". Perhaps a tad harsher or a tad softer. But humans are humans, their aggressivene/moderate behavior is modulated by standards of living, age, sex, male to female ratio...and not much else. For sure it's not capitalism vs. communism which are essentially the same thing. Modern day religions propagated by the church of the state with the head of state as Pope. Make people believe you have found a system to turn a 300 tons oil tanker into a cruise liner (and/or viceversa), and convince them to elevate you socially to implement (or conserve) such system. At the end of the day that social elevation is the only thing that's real and the ship...well nobody really knows what happens to it, except for some BS metrics such as GDP which aren't metrics anymore, they became the objective. When a metric becomes the objective..it ceases to be a good metric.