Garrison States

I was listening to this diavlog recently and one of the participants (Daniel Deudney) remarked that the Wilsonian "Make the world safe for democracy" mantra of World War I was not so much referring to bringing democracy to monarchic parts of the world so much as making the world non-threatening enough so that America could maintain it's non-militaristic way of life and avoid becoming a "Garrison State".

I haven't thought about it for a while, but several years ago I thought that was the strongest argument for the Iraq war. Not sufficient on it's own, but a good reason. The threat in WWI was European militarism; now it's "The Gap" but the example still holds. The term "Garrison State" is a useful one to describe a militarized police state.

National brain drains and blog posts - the easy way

One of my grand unformed theories is that the 20th century's genocides and ethnic cleansings have acted as a categorical shift in evolution, both social and biological.

A significant part of that theory is that talent leaves one country for another (AKA - a brain drain, as part of the Ricardian Triangle of Land - Labor - Capital) but I've never formed the thoughts that much. I made a comment on Dan Tdaxp's blog on a related post noting that I was surprised he hadn't written anything about it either.

Imagine my surprise when a day later he writes The Consequences of Brain Drains in Developing Countries. Life is much easier when other people do all the work...

Sony VAIO customer service - an exploration

Jane Galt vents most eloquent on her frustration with the Sony Corporation, specifically Sony Vaio tech support. Short version; it's lame.

In the post she states

So instead, I'll try to change the cost-benefit analysis. With your help, I'd like to make this little incident as expensive for Sony as possible.

Let's remind Sony that sometimes, the dumb bitches have blogs. And friends with blogs.

So if you're reading this, and you have a blog, if you wouldn't mind linking to this post, preferably with the words "Sony VAIO customer service" in the link, I'd appreciate it awfully.

Sure, it's revenge. But revenge has positive social uses. If it gets expensive enough to screw over their customers, they'll stop doing it. To all of us.

We'll see what happens. It creates an interesting exercise in feedback, i.e. an advancement in the first of of the OODA loop.

That would be a good company to start - a service that monitors the blogosphere for mentions of a product and somehow differentiates the positive and negative threads so one could track the source and find hidden problems with the business process.

IQ and birth order

An interesting story on IQ and birth order appeared in the New York Times recently. It makes sense, and jibes with my experience. Money grafs:

The average difference in I.Q. was slight — three points higher in the eldest child than in the closest sibling — but significant, the researchers said. And they said the results made it clear that it was due to family dynamics, not to biological factors like prenatal environment.
...

“Like Darwin’s finches, they are eking out alternative ways of deriving the maximum benefit out of the environment, and not directly competing for the same resources as the eldest,” Dr. Sulloway said. “They are developing diverse interests and expertise that the I.Q. tests do not measure.”

This kind of experimentation might explain evidence that younger siblings often live more adventurous lives than their older brother or sister. They are more likely to participate in dangerous sports than eldest children, and more likely to travel to exotic places, studies find. They tend to be less conventional than firstborns, and some of the most provocative and influential figures in science spent their childhoods in the shadow of an older brother or sister (or two or three or four).

Interesting stuff. The older sibling is the best situated to take advantage of the existing structure, so they take advantage of that, and the younger sibling is shielded from the consequences of risk taking, so they consume more of it.

An interview with Charles Koch

A blogger was kind enough to post his transcription of this interview with Charles Koch of Koch Industries (the biggest company you've never heard of). Of particular liking to me

Studying business in school is way overrated. There seems to be absolutely no evidence suggesting that people with a business degree excel more than those without one. As you go to college, you don't want specifics on how to run a business; you will learn this as you go along in real life. You need to have fundamental tools, such as reading, writing, doing math and science, understanding reality, and having good values that enable you to work with people and create real value.

That has always been my gripe with the MBA's I've met. They're certainly more confident (which is important) but of the three main tasks of a business (moving it, making it, and selling it) they're not any more capable than they they would be without the MBA.

Much thanks to C.S. Hayden for posting the interview.

An interesting article from Zakaria

It meanders a bit, but Fareed Zakaria makes a good case for optimism in this Newsweek article. One bit that caught my eye was

To recover its place in the world, America first needs to recover its confidence. For those who look at the future and see challenges, competition and threats, keep in mind that this new world has been forming over the last 20 years, and the United States has forged ahead amid all the turmoil. In 1980, the U.S. share of global GDP was 20 percent. Today it is 29 percent.

It's a staggering thought. 20% is a huge chunk relative to population, and for that to increase is massive. It's an interesting tidbit.

We should be more confident; America has never been strong because of political leadership, but the average person here has room to excel. 15 million illegal immigrants can't be wrong!

Stigmergy and signalling

Stigmergy is defined as a method of communication in emergent systems in which the individual parts of the system communicate with one another by modifying their local environment. My Digital Tool Factory project has been evolving in that direction lately and it occurred to me that the internet is evolving that way too.

In the political blogsphere one can draw conclusions about an author from the use of the phrases "The fall of the Soviet Union" vs. "The fall of Communism". In the corporate realm the use of feathered graphics is a good indicator of the age of the designer and the focus of the company.


Food for thought.

Wellput from Julian Sanchez

In this post about full brains

Efficient brains need to know what they can afford to forget—probably quite a bit, now that it's so easy to outsource our recollections to rapidly-searched digital media. The interesting question for me is: When almost anything you might need to recall can be offloaded in this way, what's worth keeping in wetware memory? My first instinct is that you need to remember exactly enough to (1) make interesting connections, and (2) actually find the full information from the signpost you've remembered.

Quick link round

• Puzzles and Mysteries from ZenPundit
• The Captain America Syndrome at the Washington Monthly. - They don't actually call it that, but that's what they're talking about.
• This seems dirty, but it's mostly medical. Quite funny though.
  
• Yet more Stirling engines
  

Monday link roundup

• A useful post from CodingHorror.com on interface friction
• Al Gore, like Ann Coulter, seems to be a mac person
• A blog for women! And one of the editors might be someone I went to high school with.
• Kuler! The Adobe web color harmony tool - via this site
• Co-Mapping (mind mapping software) looks cool
• Properly bashing ethanol
• HiddenUnities and PurposeSlog have posts on the Wire and 24. I helpfully added the Shield in the comments. All excellent programs, though 24 is basically a commercial for the cell phone industry, not torture.
  

First thoughts on Brave New War

I just finished reading John Robb's Brave New War and I'm struck by how similar his vision of the future was to David Friedman's Machinery of Freedom.

I'll have my review of the book later. On the whole I liked it a lot.

Characterization of Environmentalism

A random thought: A useful way of distinguishing amongst environmentalism is that people see the world as a museum that can never be changed, and mankind must adapt their behavior to suit it, and not the other way around. A good example would be those who would have us reduce our carbon emissions rather than take positive steps to take carbon out of the air (for instance using the proposed carbon vacuums or the algae-iron flakes method).

I realize it's the views are seldom in stark conflict.

Tuesday Rapid Fire

• Networks, in Forbes
• Tin Can Stirling Engine - really cool, this would go nicely with the passive solar heating system that I blogged about last week.
• Global warming awareness reaches diminishing marginal returns, aptly explained by Instapundit. I'm still waiting for the Shotgun News green issue.
• Gauss vs Pareto, if you understand bell curves, you should read this.
• Robots, Robots, Robots, in Iraq and elsewhere
• An insightful article on internal migrations in the US. By Michael Barone
  

A telling point in the Boyd biography

I'm currently reading Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War and I read a telling passage that stated (approximately) that autodidacts crave approval from conventionally educated academics and professionals. For those who don't know fairly obscure word, it's Google defines the word as

Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) is self-education or self-directed learning. An autodidact is a mostly self-taught person (also known as an automath), or someone who has an enthusiasm for self-education, and usually has a high degree of self-motivation.

(tip, if you type in "Define:Word to be dined" into Google it defines the word for you.

This seems to be a good explanation for a lot of the tensions in the blogsphere. It also seems to be a natural healthy thing. As I put it in a previous post, science advances funeral by funeral. It follows that if left to their own devices, any field of thought or industry will spend it's time polishing the corpse of some grand new idea that is mutually agreeable to all (think of the US auto industry before the Japanese came along.

Funny and strange quotes

From this rather odd article about the future of Israel

As Peter O’Toole said as Lawrence of Arabia in the movie of that title, “Nothing is written.” However, it seems clear how to bet. As so often in history, bet on the horrible outcome.

I think the post is flawed as it assumes that the current Israeli situation will not change by several orders of magnitude in qualitative ways as the decades roll by. Of course, there is no reason for the changes to be good, but current trends seldom hold before Bit Rot settles in. Worth reading

Random theories I haven't thought through yet

Of fact-checked for that matter. Nonetheless, here are two bigthink ideas that have occurred to me recently:

• With the notable exception of Imperial Japan, America hasn't gone to war with any country that likes itself in the past 100 years. While I don't usually go for theories involving Constructivism, all of the countries we've had conflict with, Nazi Germany, North Vietnam and North Korea, et al, are all fighting to some degree for national pride. This is why I'm not particularly worried about Iran, because the Iranians seem to like being Iranian.
• The rise of dominant militaries can be summarized as discipline vs identity. By this I mean that the troops can be effective via skillful execution of a central plan, or simply by being themselves. The Romans were a good example of a disciplined group. They were able to carry out the will of their commanders due to training and tight organization. On the other hand, the Mongols required little central direction and usually just had to be their fearsome selves to successfully win wars. Most of the major conflicts through history can be characterized as a clash between these two tactics.
  

Random snapshot of my brain

Whilst waiting for a program to install I came across this article. Blurb:

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.

I then had the thought that there is no evidence that nature, though beautiful, likes us. Then I thought of the metaphor that everyone views the environment like it's their grandparent's house. "Oh, everything is so old and irreplaceable, let us gaze in rapt awe and try to be worthy of it someday". Mind you, what we do with it is another story.

Then I was reminded of an Ayn Rand line which goes something like "Technology is man's victory over nature". Then I Googled that trying to find the exact quote. That led me, somehow, to this page about one of my favorite thinkers, Albert Jay Nock. His excellent auto-biography Memoirs of a Superfluous Man is still one of my favorites. Then I started thinking of my other favorite social critics and came up with Eric Hoffer, H.L. Mencken, as well as Nock. All three of them have a distinctive, elegant style which I associate with urban living prior to the fifties. All three of them wrote from cities (San Francisco, Baltimore and New York) and two of them published all their work between 1900 and 1950. I'm also drawn to movies set in cities in that era.

I wonder why those circumstances have that appeal to me, then I decided to write it all down to clarify it in my head.

And there you go.

A rogue Core

Subadei has some interesting thoughts on the possibility of a new and hostile Core (shortly defined as a group of connected, interdependent nations) involving Iran, Venezuela. However, I think there is not much to be worried about. Assuming they do create/evolve into a second core, they would have enough incentives/core-like attributes not to do so.

I guess that raises the question, can there be two Cores? Wouldn't the opportunity cost of maintaining the divide between the two Cores? Wouldn't the opportunity cost of maintaining the divide between the two Cores become too costly for the divide to be sustainable?

Update:Edited for clarity

Current Iraq thoughts

To update my many readers of my thoughts on Iraq, here they are.

Short and Medium Term Recommendation:

• Accept the fact that a multi-ethnic democracy with strong group loyalties and a medium to high population density that has no overriding equalizer, (i.e. a market economy, strong religion, nation of uprooted immigrants, cult like leader, animosity towards some other country or religion etc) is a very bloody affair.
• Let the country break apart into a very loose confederation, - There will probably be one to 3 Shia distinct regions in the South, 6-12 distinct Sunni regions and one distinct Kurdish region. Withdraw to the friendly areas, i.e. Kurdistan and probably a couple of Sunni areas and let the various sides fight it out. They're doing this anyway and there is no need for American troops to get caught in the crossfire.
• Accept the fact that there will be massive ethnic cleansing with the above option, much is happening already. Do as much as possible within some give time frame, say 10 months to let the ethnic cleansing be as bloodless as possible and not verge into genocide. This is going to happen anyway, many lives could be saved if we do it on our terms.
• Drop the 60s idealism (called nation-building/neoconservatism, or whatever baby boomer term you want to label it) and admit that what is happening in Iraq IS democracy, it's just bloody and ugly. Diversity only works if no one cares about the differences between people. Primary loyalties are primary.
• I think Robert Kaplan thought of this first, but the proper metaphors for the current Middle East is not WWII, but the Barbary Pirates and the Indian Wars. I.E. it's time to think small, and act small. Also, let the military get back to what it's good at, i.e. killing people and breaking things.
  
• Reward our friends and punish our enemies, but above all, be clear in our foreign policy. We would be well served by coming off of our high horse (bringing democracy, enlightenment, etc) and admitting that we're in pursuit of our own interest, just like everyone else. We've long believed our own hype about our own greatness. While largely true domestically (thank you founding fathers and your division of power) it is much less true internationally due to the way our system is set up. Most of the good things we do are diffused in the form of trade and a myriad of private charities. It's time to say less and to behave much more predictably. Cross cultural communication is hard enough without adding nuance and tone into the equation.
  

Long Term Recommendations

• Get out. The Coase theorem applies to the Middle East just like everywhere else. We're buying our oil now and we'll be buying it in the future. And contrary to popular belief, it will be less important in the future. Plus, it's quite likely the Kurds will be very pro-western and peaceful. Their primary loyalty is not divided and it's not against us.
  
• Be honest in our dealing with Israel - we don't have that many common interests, but we are friends - it's less like the US and the USSR in WWII and more like the US and Japan in the present day (excepting North Korea)
  

Consequences of The Above

• Lots of blood will be shed - but it will be shed anyway. The key is minimizing it
• People will be uprooted and new vendettas will be started that will last for centuries.
• The Sunni and the Shia factions of the Middle East will have a battleground to fight their proxy wars, much like the Nazis and the Soviets had a battleground in the Spanish Civil War. Then again, they have that now.
  
• American troops will be used in raids and attacks in the loose confederation of what we'll still call Iraq.
• Turkey will be quite angry - but that is manageable and can be minimized by the use of carrots and sticks.
  

I'll have my post on what I was right and wrong about (regarding Iraq that is) later.

Thoughts?

Put very succinctly

From the Ethical Spectacle

However, I suspect that the real reason we haven't gone after Bin Laden is because we know he is living in the lawless part of Pakistan near the Afghan border, where the resurgent Taliban are also based. This has rapidly become a new rogue state, not really under any kind of Pakistani military or political control. In addition, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are allegedly sheltered and supported by renegade elements of Pakistani intelligence who originally worked with them on the anti-Soviet effort and haven't given them up in the post-9/11 world.

If this part of Pakistan had been a completely independent state, it would have made a lot of sense to invade it instead of Iraq (I believe we don't have a large enough military to do both). I suspect that the reason we can't do this is that the minute US troops land on Pakistani territory (even such independent and lawless territory) there would be a huge popular uprising in Pakistan, overthrowing our nominal ally the weak dictator-president Musharraf. The result of the incursion would be to drive a huge country with nuclear weapons over to the other side, giving Al Qaeda a large powerful playground instead of a small weak one.