Thanks for the mention of 'Legacy of Ashes', sounds interesting, I'm buying a copy now.
On some levels, I wish I had the mindset to exploit people like Andrew Bustamante. I don't know if I'd be happier, I suspect not, but...it's tempting. Success is tempting. But I was raised otherwise.
Likewise empathy is something that comes naturally to me, love (in a Christ way) is harder but I'm working at it. But at the same time, I can have empathy for a person but I can (or have to?) turn that off to do what I have to do. I can feel empathy for someone who's so fucked up that they decided their best plan for that day is shoot up a school, but I'm still going to drop them if I get line of sight on them.
A lot of your discussions of 'fairness' and 'justices' reminds me a lot of what C. S. Lewis wrote about such universal moral laws in 'Mere Christianity'. Interesting to see it echoed here.
Andrews perspective can't help but be colored by the fact that it was his job to do bad things to "bad" people. That part of the skillset doesn't transfer to civilian life, and I have the temerity to think that it doesn't work for the IC outside of a war zone either, hence their track record of abysmal failure that they paper over with compartmentalization, secrecy, and arguments that the other side is worse. He can be a huge asset to the world and it would only take a small change of perspective, or so I'm optimistic enough to think.
If you didn't watch the Chris Voss video, I would check out the second half of it. When I use the word empathy, I mean it the way he uses it. All it is... is understanding. Sympathy is more what you reference in terms of school shooters. I don't sympathize with school shooters, but I can definitely empathize, at least in some of the cases. Doing so is the only way to understand the problem and have any hope of taking actions to prevent future catastrophe that isn't merely reactive.
I've never read C.S. Lewis, but I'm not surprised that we've ended up in the same place. I take these instances of convergence to be a good indicator that we are appreciating the same underlying reality, even if we get there from radically different places and view it from different perspectives. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Apr 9, 2023·edited Apr 9, 2023Liked by Grant Smith
Consilience is the word Bret Weinstein fancies. [I think; or is it Gad Saad?] When research from disparate fields—with their radically different frameworks, methods, tools et al—happens to ultimately agree about a phenomenon, you can be damn sure you're onto strong something. As close to 'science is settled' as it gets, no chance for more 😊
I saw Lorenzo Warby use consilience and I assumed it simply meant agreement. I reference the concept from the idea of convergent evolution so it makes sense that an evolutionary biologist would use a term to describe. That's also the first time I'm seeing ineluctably below, you and Mark are beefing up my vocabulary!
re: footnote 2 "To this day I am deeply skeptical that the IC does anything to promote American national security, and am, in fact, quite convinced that the American people would be better off without it. "
Celine's First Law readeth thusly: "National security is the chief cause of national insecurity."
In part, this is the result of incompetence. But this is also because, without a Scary Enemy, the IC would no longer have jobs.
That is what all incentives suggest we should expect, and exactly how it appears from my perspective. I learned all about PATCON a couple decades ago and its wild to see figures like Merrick Garland still kicking around. 9/11 hijackers being confirmed as CIA assets just a couple weeks ago fits this picture as well.
"There is an assumption that these two influential men have that speaks to a weakness of character. They allow this weakness to seduce them into seeking unfair advantage over their fellow man while consoling themselves that doing so is only natural. Perhaps for beasts, but we are men, and our ability to parlay with one another in a direct and candid manner towards mutual profit is what sets us apart."
As a cat, such behavior is hardly natural for beasts. Rather, it is the province of humans.
Lena the Corporate Raider (long story, that) commented that the difference between adults and children, and or, for that matter, people and animals, is that adult humans are able to conceal their feelings.
I see your point, but I'm only trying to contrast the ability of humans to engage in long term cooperation compared to animals. In most circumstances animals will result in coercion if it gives them a short term survival advantage. Humans have the capacity to be above that.
In war; WIN. proportionally resisted sounds like proportionate response, if you’re going 🦇💩 now (and you are) wait until you see ROE in real life.
In line with your wise guidance to be a better person, I will resist as long as I can the totally just impulse to not use unfair, trained advantage to castrate JAG et al, with my boot heel, although they could study anatomy and hand to hand too.
These idiots are blank as to how they sound , BTW. Lex, Bustamante, they’ll get they did something wrong too late or never.
Ashendon stories should be required reading for IC - “all we have done is destroy people weaker than ourselves.” Somerset Maughm was describing his own WW1 Secret Service. It was once understood these were regrettable and immoral necessities. To apply in business? The same level as Boeing Bombing Raytheon- we’d call that Murder.
Intelligence are the tools of war and should have the same moral thresholds.
I thought about trying to expand on that, but as you note there is a lot to unpack once conflict becomes kinetic. In a violent altercation everything essentially becomes fair. The reason I say 'proportionally resisted' is to account for if someone say, threatens you with physical violence, but not in such a way that it poses a reasonable risk to life, limb, or eyesight then it would be inappropriate to impose that risk on them with your response. Once that threshold is crossed, though, I agree 100% that everything needs to go into winning/ceasing hostility on favorable terms and overwhelming violence of action is an important component of that. The point of intelligence being a tool of war is exactly what I was getting at. What I'm talking about with proportional resistance is also already covered by our legal system (you know, the one that is under attack by political ideologues). When it comes to war a whole lot of other stuff comes into play as you know all too well. The only way this framework applies in war is in that this concept of fairness doesn't apply. It applied before hand, it doesn't after things get kinetic. Winning as quickly as possible using every tool you have becomes the most ethical COA because it limits the death and destruction. That said, I reserve plenty of judgement for the people responsible for letting things get kinetic in the first place...
“A Man Called Intrepid” an excellent first source to read on the setting up of the Anglo American Intelligence apparatus that exists to this day. Those were wartime measures.
That became permanent.
Moreover in the book Stephenson makes clear that the agents had to be of the highest moral caliber, that’s gone it seems.
It’s not an unresolvable paradox to find people of the highest moral caliber to be trusted with such terrible license to do bad things- they’re just hard to find.
From unorthodox—at least it strikes me as not exactly mainline, or rarely articulated as such in lucid manner—Christian perspective, the relationship is not that the why just feeds back, rather it fully & ineluctably determines the how 😵 --> apokekrummenain.substack.com/p/breaking-the-habits-of-western-thinking
--
💬 let go of the idea that it is impossible to blur the lines
Thanks for sharing and for the edit! When talking consciousness, meaning, purpose, and action things get recursive really fast... Hey, are you ever going to come hang out at deimos station?
Apr 10, 2023·edited Apr 10, 2023Liked by Grant Smith
I’ve self-diagnosed with severe case of plan avoidance. Stuff just happens, and I [mostly] like it that way. Happily rolling along the path of least resistance 🤸
Thanks for the mention of 'Legacy of Ashes', sounds interesting, I'm buying a copy now.
On some levels, I wish I had the mindset to exploit people like Andrew Bustamante. I don't know if I'd be happier, I suspect not, but...it's tempting. Success is tempting. But I was raised otherwise.
Likewise empathy is something that comes naturally to me, love (in a Christ way) is harder but I'm working at it. But at the same time, I can have empathy for a person but I can (or have to?) turn that off to do what I have to do. I can feel empathy for someone who's so fucked up that they decided their best plan for that day is shoot up a school, but I'm still going to drop them if I get line of sight on them.
A lot of your discussions of 'fairness' and 'justices' reminds me a lot of what C. S. Lewis wrote about such universal moral laws in 'Mere Christianity'. Interesting to see it echoed here.
Lots to think on, thanks man.
Andrews perspective can't help but be colored by the fact that it was his job to do bad things to "bad" people. That part of the skillset doesn't transfer to civilian life, and I have the temerity to think that it doesn't work for the IC outside of a war zone either, hence their track record of abysmal failure that they paper over with compartmentalization, secrecy, and arguments that the other side is worse. He can be a huge asset to the world and it would only take a small change of perspective, or so I'm optimistic enough to think.
If you didn't watch the Chris Voss video, I would check out the second half of it. When I use the word empathy, I mean it the way he uses it. All it is... is understanding. Sympathy is more what you reference in terms of school shooters. I don't sympathize with school shooters, but I can definitely empathize, at least in some of the cases. Doing so is the only way to understand the problem and have any hope of taking actions to prevent future catastrophe that isn't merely reactive.
I've never read C.S. Lewis, but I'm not surprised that we've ended up in the same place. I take these instances of convergence to be a good indicator that we are appreciating the same underlying reality, even if we get there from radically different places and view it from different perspectives. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Consilience is the word Bret Weinstein fancies. [I think; or is it Gad Saad?] When research from disparate fields—with their radically different frameworks, methods, tools et al—happens to ultimately agree about a phenomenon, you can be damn sure you're onto strong something. As close to 'science is settled' as it gets, no chance for more 😊
I saw Lorenzo Warby use consilience and I assumed it simply meant agreement. I reference the concept from the idea of convergent evolution so it makes sense that an evolutionary biologist would use a term to describe. That's also the first time I'm seeing ineluctably below, you and Mark are beefing up my vocabulary!
re: footnote 2 "To this day I am deeply skeptical that the IC does anything to promote American national security, and am, in fact, quite convinced that the American people would be better off without it. "
Celine's First Law readeth thusly: "National security is the chief cause of national insecurity."
In part, this is the result of incompetence. But this is also because, without a Scary Enemy, the IC would no longer have jobs.
That is what all incentives suggest we should expect, and exactly how it appears from my perspective. I learned all about PATCON a couple decades ago and its wild to see figures like Merrick Garland still kicking around. 9/11 hijackers being confirmed as CIA assets just a couple weeks ago fits this picture as well.
"There is an assumption that these two influential men have that speaks to a weakness of character. They allow this weakness to seduce them into seeking unfair advantage over their fellow man while consoling themselves that doing so is only natural. Perhaps for beasts, but we are men, and our ability to parlay with one another in a direct and candid manner towards mutual profit is what sets us apart."
As a cat, such behavior is hardly natural for beasts. Rather, it is the province of humans.
Lena the Corporate Raider (long story, that) commented that the difference between adults and children, and or, for that matter, people and animals, is that adult humans are able to conceal their feelings.
I see your point, but I'm only trying to contrast the ability of humans to engage in long term cooperation compared to animals. In most circumstances animals will result in coercion if it gives them a short term survival advantage. Humans have the capacity to be above that.
Animals cooperate all the time, and it's not as if I can meow for the cops.
“proportionally resisted”
In war; WIN. proportionally resisted sounds like proportionate response, if you’re going 🦇💩 now (and you are) wait until you see ROE in real life.
In line with your wise guidance to be a better person, I will resist as long as I can the totally just impulse to not use unfair, trained advantage to castrate JAG et al, with my boot heel, although they could study anatomy and hand to hand too.
These idiots are blank as to how they sound , BTW. Lex, Bustamante, they’ll get they did something wrong too late or never.
Ashendon stories should be required reading for IC - “all we have done is destroy people weaker than ourselves.” Somerset Maughm was describing his own WW1 Secret Service. It was once understood these were regrettable and immoral necessities. To apply in business? The same level as Boeing Bombing Raytheon- we’d call that Murder.
Intelligence are the tools of war and should have the same moral thresholds.
I thought about trying to expand on that, but as you note there is a lot to unpack once conflict becomes kinetic. In a violent altercation everything essentially becomes fair. The reason I say 'proportionally resisted' is to account for if someone say, threatens you with physical violence, but not in such a way that it poses a reasonable risk to life, limb, or eyesight then it would be inappropriate to impose that risk on them with your response. Once that threshold is crossed, though, I agree 100% that everything needs to go into winning/ceasing hostility on favorable terms and overwhelming violence of action is an important component of that. The point of intelligence being a tool of war is exactly what I was getting at. What I'm talking about with proportional resistance is also already covered by our legal system (you know, the one that is under attack by political ideologues). When it comes to war a whole lot of other stuff comes into play as you know all too well. The only way this framework applies in war is in that this concept of fairness doesn't apply. It applied before hand, it doesn't after things get kinetic. Winning as quickly as possible using every tool you have becomes the most ethical COA because it limits the death and destruction. That said, I reserve plenty of judgement for the people responsible for letting things get kinetic in the first place...
Yes, yes and yes.
“A Man Called Intrepid” an excellent first source to read on the setting up of the Anglo American Intelligence apparatus that exists to this day. Those were wartime measures.
That became permanent.
Moreover in the book Stephenson makes clear that the agents had to be of the highest moral caliber, that’s gone it seems.
It’s not an unresolvable paradox to find people of the highest moral caliber to be trusted with such terrible license to do bad things- they’re just hard to find.
Guess that’s low headcount and lower budgets.
Excellent.
Thanks!
💬 the why perpetually feeds back into how
From unorthodox—at least it strikes me as not exactly mainline, or rarely articulated as such in lucid manner—Christian perspective, the relationship is not that the why just feeds back, rather it fully & ineluctably determines the how 😵 --> apokekrummenain.substack.com/p/breaking-the-habits-of-western-thinking
--
💬 let go of the idea that it is impossible to blur the lines
*possible 🤔
Thanks for sharing and for the edit! When talking consciousness, meaning, purpose, and action things get recursive really fast... Hey, are you ever going to come hang out at deimos station?
I’ve self-diagnosed with severe case of plan avoidance. Stuff just happens, and I [mostly] like it that way. Happily rolling along the path of least resistance 🤸
Ah! Well... then let me promise to harass you until you join us there!