Left vs Right Options

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Listen, you could worse for mythology than classic Trek, Twilight Zone, and Outer Limits. These were my generation's Homer. And half of them are STILL better tales than most of Homer. And 95% of the bible.

Concerning the Baby Boomers, I now rest my case.

[radek]

There is an old problem of always holding that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend." Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is (or should be) my enemy also, since they're both evil, like Hitler and Stalin. A shame we didn't let Stalin be overthrown in 1941-2, in retrospect. That was the stupidity of FDR, who thought (then and later) that he could charm a monster.

Good luck trying to win the war without the Soviets. What FDR should've done is listen to Churchill and employ a realist stance instead of an idealist stance towards Stalin. Work with the Soviets, but keep them in check at the same time. FDR should've listened to Churchill and invaded Yugoslavia and the Balkans before the Red Army took them (FDR missed the entire point of invading Italy). They should've worked together in order to pressure the Soviets into abandoning their designs on Poland and the German border.

That's actually more or less right.

What? Italy was hardly a gateway to the Balkans. Both Churchill and the US commanders were wrong about Italy, which was, and is, a horrid place to attack and a great place to defend. It should have been bypassed after North Africa and Sicily had been taken (which gave the allies aircover over the Mediterranean, which was the whole point of opperations Torch and Husky). Or perhaps just southern Italy should have been taken for the airfields, and things left at that point. Taking Rome to the North was no more than symbolic; the costs to do anything more than take just southern Italy were horrible, and not worth the gain (which was small). After all, southern Italy would have been as easy for the allies to defend, as it was for them to break out of, once they had it.

As it was, Rome didn't fall till a couple of days before the "D-Day" Normandy invasion. Ridiculous.

If you want the Balkans, take them more directly, perhaps starting by a retaking of Greece. The problem is the Allies in 1943 needed something to do for the next year (before the D-Day thing was ready) and in the meantime they were sucked by Churchill's rhetoric about the soft underbelly of Europe (which supposedly was Italy and not Greece-- one is supposed to forget the Alps), and of course they didn't trust Churchill about anything to with the Balkins more directly, and he even got critcized for trying to finally put right his old Galipoli idea, as it was. So all that was politically more or less impossible. The neutrality of Turkey was a major problem against going in from the other direction (in a reverse of the Alexander the Great route). The British had taken Iraq and parts of Iran from the Persian Gulf in 1941 before America entered the war, but there was Turkey in the way.

In retrospect, the allies could have won WW II without the Soviets, but it would have taken the atomic bomb, which nobody could count on until late 1945. So I suppose that in most cases the Allies did what they had to do. But they didn't have to be so enthusiastic about it. From Potsdam on it was clear that the Soviets were going to be a major problem. Unfortunately, Truman's handling of Stalin wasn't a lot better than FDR's had been, and less excusable since Truman DID have The Bomb. Eisenhower, at least, knew which end up up. By the time he was president in 1953, though, it was too late and the Soviet cat was out of the bag. The next two generations' Cold War struggle was by then already a foregone conclusion, nothing that anybody could do anything about, at least on the US side.

Again, this is also mostly right. When michael above made the comment about Italy I assumed he was saying the same thing that most people who talk about WWII usually say, which is that invading Italy was a pretty dumb idea. Maybe I misunderstood.

But yes, given that D-Day really was not going to be ready for awhile Greece was probably the right place to go. Churchill WAS wrong about the whole underbelly thing (and as far as underbellies go it was anything but soft - spitting bullets, screaming "yo mama" and slapping you around at the same time as they found out in WWI at Galipolli) but given absence of other realistic options it was where they should've gone. The other possible option was southern France which, once they got hold of Mediterranean islands wasn't that crazy of an idea. But they took the dumbest option of them all (even waiting a little to let the Soviets ground the Nazis down and then invading with a more concentrated force would've been better) and invaded mainland Italy (Sicily by itself might have made some sense) giving Hitler a few extra months or even a year or so. From that point of view, I can understand why Stalin was pissed. And the sad thing is that this kind of talk we're having here isn't just armchair-general-ing but stuff that was pretty obvious to many people on the ground at the time it's just that a good portion of the general stuff for both the UK and US really were very very incompetent (never mind folks like FDR)

The other part of it is of course that at Tehran, Potsdam and Yalta they, FDR in particular, really were ENTHUSIASTIC about giving Stalin everything he wanted. It was a case of a "you want the Baltics ... well... ok BUT ONLY IF YOU TAKE POLAND and HALF OF GERMANY TOO!!! Or else!" Churchill grumbled but at that point UK didn't matter at all, half of FDR's adviser's really WERE Soviet spies and the man, given his aristocratic pretensions, hugely overestimated his own intelligence and was quite susceptible to flattery. Cue 45 wasted years for a good chunk of Europe's population.

[Kelly Martin]

You haven't been reading. My views on this are not that simple. As a RACE (genetically) I have a suspicion that the Chinese might actually be (at least intellectually) superior. If only they could get rid of their damned government! At the same time, I have met only a few rabble-rousing Chinese (yes, I know they exist; maybe they'll all waiting to have their organs harvested after execution). But as a "breed," I suspect (cannot prove) that the Chinese have been bred for willingness to take orders, rather like Laborador Retrievers. What Nietzsche said about master-races and slave-races (bred for docility, or least for anti-revolt) might have a germ of truth in it.

Jared Diamond touches on this indirectly in Guns, Germs, and Steel. After setting out his thesis explaining why Europeans rose to dominance, he points out that most of the same conditions that fostered European dominance also obtained in China, and therefore his theory cannot explain why China did not rise to world domination, even earlier than Europe did. Obviously, China did not rise to dominate the world economically and technologically, and he freely admits that he doesn't know exactly why. As I recall, he suggests that it has something to do with Chinese culture and their apparently ingrown tendency to obey rather than question authority.

Disclaimer: It's been some years since I read Diamond. My recollection may not be entirely accurate.

[Milton Roe]

Again, this is also mostly right. When michael above made the comment about Italy I assumed he was saying the same thing that most people who talk about WWII usually say, which is that invading Italy was a pretty dumb idea. Maybe I misunderstood.

But yes, given that D-Day really was not going to be ready for awhile Greece was probably the right place to go. Churchill WAS wrong about the whole underbelly thing (and as far as underbellies go it was anything but soft - spitting bullets, screaming "yo mama" and slapping you around at the same time as they found out in WWI at Galipolli) but given absence of other realistic options it was where they should've gone. The other possible option was southern France which, once they got hold of Mediterranean islands wasn't that crazy of an idea. But they took the dumbest option of them all (even waiting a little to let the Soviets ground the Nazis down and then invading with a more concentrated force would've been better) and invaded mainland Italy (Sicily by itself might have made some sense) giving Hitler a few extra months or even a year or so. From that point of view, I can understand why Stalin was pissed. And the sad thing is that this kind of talk we're having here isn't just armchair-general-ing but stuff that was pretty obvious to many people on the ground at the time it's just that a good portion of the general stuff for both the UK and US really were very very incompetent (never mind folks like FDR)

The other part of it is of course that at Tehran, Potsdam and Yalta they, FDR in particular, really were ENTHUSIASTIC about giving Stalin everything he wanted. It was a case of a "you want the Baltics ... well... ok BUT ONLY IF YOU TAKE POLAND and HALF OF GERMANY TOO!!! Or else!" Churchill grumbled but at that point UK didn't matter at all, half of FDR's adviser's really WERE Soviet spies and the man, given his aristocratic pretensions, hugely overestimated his own intelligence and was quite susceptible to flattery. Cue 45 wasted years for a good chunk of Europe's population.

Agree, except that Southern France alone in 1943 wasn't really an option (Eisenhower was enthusiastic about it, but not until it could be a part of Overlord in 44). First, they really had no good aircover for such a thing, as they did at D-day. Gibralter wasn't big enough and North Africa was too far. The other reason was lack of tank carriers. Thus in 1943, a (necessarily) much smaller invasion, Operation Dragoon-style ( but without D-Day two months before to draw off the Germans) would have probably resulted in another Dunkirk.

One thing that wasn't as clear to anybody in 1940-43 as it should have been, was that the days of large-scale amphibious invasions NOT supported by armor, were over by WW II. The previous WW I had shown that large scale non-armor supported infantry attacks were finally and forever dead. The Turks with a few machine guns just chewed up the Brits at Galipolli. And a tank can go over trenches, but not the 21-mile wide tank trap called the English Channel (Mediterranean would serve even better).

So if you're going to do amphibious invasions, it had better be a LONG away away from the enemy's armor (like the Torch landings) or else it had better include a lot of armor to the beach head fairly quickly, as on D-Day. Problem: before 1944 there weren't enough armor-transport ships, what we later learned to call an LST (Landing Ship, Tank). The idea starts in late 1941, but there's a long way between the idea and having enough of these to support a 5-division amphibious invasion. As it was, they were there from the beginning on D-day, and in quantity. But this had to wait for 1944-- it couldn't have been done in 1943.

http://www.tanksinworldwar2.com/usa-myths-dd-tanks.php

The thing about the tanks was good news for the Brits, BTW. They keep thinking of William the Conquerer and worried about a German invasion of Southern England from 1940 to at least 1942. But the day of the unsupported infantry was (again) gone, and Hitler had no large number of LST's either. Nobody did. Without them, the UK was totally safe from any sort of ground invasion, even if they lost their air-cover. They probably should have WISHED that Hitler would try one without much armor-- this would have been very good for the English. Think of the Somme. But Hitler didn't like water and so his fears helped him find wisdom, at least in that particular decision (he made many other bad ones in Russia to make up for it, and also in declaring war on the US, which was really, really stupid).

I'm still amazed how much time the Brits spent fearing such an invasion across the Channel. Even Churchill, apparently, though he of all people on Earth should have known better. Everything I said above was totally obvious to the Allies when THEY thought of invading. But when it came to the idea of repelling one, they seem to have forgotten everything (though it worked as much to their favor as against them).

[GlassBeadGame]

You haven't been reading. My views on this are not that simple. As a RACE (genetically) I have a suspicion that the Chinese might actually be (at least intellectually) superior. If only they could get rid of their damned government! At the same time, I have met only a few rabble-rousing Chinese (yes, I know they exist; maybe they'll all waiting to have their organs harvested after execution). But as a "breed," I suspect (cannot prove) that the Chinese have been bred for willingness to take orders, rather like Laborador Retrievers. What Nietzsche said about master-races and slave-races (bred for docility, or least for anti-revolt) might have a germ of truth in it.

Jared Diamond touches on this indirectly in Guns, Germs, and Steel. After setting out his thesis explaining why Europeans rose to dominance, he points out that most of the same conditions that fostered European dominance also obtained in China, and therefore his theory cannot explain why China did not rise to world domination, even earlier than Europe did. Obviously, China did not rise to dominate the world economically and technologically, and he freely admits that he doesn't know exactly why. As I recall, he suggests that it has something to do with Chinese culture and their apparently ingrown tendency to obey rather than question authority.

Disclaimer: It's been some years since I read Diamond. My recollection may not be entirely accurate.

Sigh. While you stayed away from "breed," "master-race," "superior," and even "Labador Retriever" the "ingrown" part is disappointing. I read the book too. I'm certain that Diamond would not see this as biologically determined and thus does not lend any support to that (Milton's) rant.

[radek]

You haven't been reading. My views on this are not that simple. As a RACE (genetically) I have a suspicion that the Chinese might actually be (at least intellectually) superior. If only they could get rid of their damned government! At the same time, I have met only a few rabble-rousing Chinese (yes, I know they exist; maybe they'll all waiting to have their organs harvested after execution). But as a "breed," I suspect (cannot prove) that the Chinese have been bred for willingness to take orders, rather like Laborador Retrievers. What Nietzsche said about master-races and slave-races (bred for docility, or least for anti-revolt) might have a germ of truth in it.

Jared Diamond touches on this indirectly in Guns, Germs, and Steel. After setting out his thesis explaining why Europeans rose to dominance, he points out that most of the same conditions that fostered European dominance also obtained in China, and therefore his theory cannot explain why China did not rise to world domination, even earlier than Europe did. Obviously, China did not rise to dominate the world economically and technologically, and he freely admits that he doesn't know exactly why. As I recall, he suggests that it has something to do with Chinese culture and their apparently ingrown tendency to obey rather than question authority.

Disclaimer: It's been some years since I read Diamond. My recollection may not be entirely accurate.

Sigh. While you stayed away from "breed," "master-race," "superior," and even "Labador Retriever" the "ingrown" part is disappointing. I read the book too. I'm certain that Diamond would not see this as biologically determined and thus does not lend any support to that (Milton's) rant.

The whole point of the Diamond book is to argue for geographic reasons for why certain places developed technology which allowed them to take over other places and to specifically argue against any notion of 'innate' differences. Basically taking the world up to 1790 or so most of his explanations make a lot of sense - Eurasia got ahead of the Americas and Africa due to the fact that it had good geography; a east-west orientation (which makes it easier for technological ideas to diffuse since climate doesn't change as much as going north-south), lots of domesticatable animals (which also had the side effect of conferring lots of disease immunity) and plants etc. For the pre-industrial world his thesis works pretty well in terms of explaining why Europeans took over the Americas and Africa (in Asia it was a close call until AFTER the industrial revolution was underway, in Africa they were limited by the disease environment). But.

The main thing that he stumbles upon is trying to explain why Europe got ahead of Asia. Either China or India or even other smaller vibrant countries/regions like Korea. All these places were more technologically advanced than Europe pretty late in the game. But then some kind of a "singularity" happened in the Midlands of England (very small region in a very small part of the European SUB-continent and, at least at first, in only one industry (textiles - or you could get even more specific, cotton)) somehow ushered in the era of ever growing incomes. If you were standing there in, say 1675 and an omnipresent being came down from the heavens and told you "an Industrial Revolution is going to happen, try to guess where", the best guess would've been China, or at least some other part of Asia.

The thing is, this - why England, Midlands, rather than China or some other place in Asia (hell, Silesia looked like a pretty good candidate too if you know your micro economic history) is like the 1 million dollar question in Economic History. There's oodles of explanations and theories and most of them totally unconvincing. It really does get Sci-Fi when you start to think about it. Before the Industrial Revolution, incomes (of peasants) fluctuated within a range of something like 2 - in other words in the best of times the people were about twice as rich as they were in the worst of times. Since the Industrial Revolution the incomes in the "developed countries" have increased something like 40-100 times over. Before the Industrial Revolution the richest economies (essentially Classical Athens, Netherlands at the peak of the Black Death, perhaps a few others) were about ... 2 times richer than the poorest economies. Today the per capita income of a country like US is about 60 times the per capita income of the poorest country, like Chad. Back in the day, the best you could hope for was that a plague or a rampaging army would come through and kill off most of your neighbors while sparing you and so leave more land for your children to farm and hence their standard of living would go up by ... 10%, maybe 20% (in the aftermath of the 30 years War, one of the most destructive ones, incomes actually went up) .It really was just a completely different world - a different planet - before the Industrial Revolution. So it's not all that surprising that Diamond can't explain it. Nobody can.

But - to get back to the original point - in so far as he is able to explain economic development pre-Industrial Revolution, yes, the whole point of the book is that there was nothing "innate" about it. Some regions/people just got lucky. And he's convincing in that regard.

(My own theory of the Industrial Revolution and why it happened to have happened in Midlands of England is that ... it had to happen somewhere (given enough time even low probability "singularities" will eventually occur) and pure chance, or a hand of God, happened to draw a piece of paper labeled "Manchester" from some black hat somewhere in some corner of the Universe, and everything else is ad hoc rationalization of a phenomenon which was essentially random, but because it was so important in human history, just begs for some kind of a casual, deterministic explanation. Hence much spilled ink. I think this relates to some other conversation we were having here.)

[Milton Roe]

You haven't been reading. My views on this are not that simple. As a RACE (genetically) I have a suspicion that the Chinese might actually be (at least intellectually) superior. If only they could get rid of their damned government! At the same time, I have met only a few rabble-rousing Chinese (yes, I know they exist; maybe they'll all waiting to have their organs harvested after execution). But as a "breed," I suspect (cannot prove) that the Chinese have been bred for willingness to take orders, rather like Laborador Retrievers. What Nietzsche said about master-races and slave-races (bred for docility, or least for anti-revolt) might have a germ of truth in it.

Jared Diamond touches on this indirectly in Guns, Germs, and Steel. After setting out his thesis explaining why Europeans rose to dominance, he points out that most of the same conditions that fostered European dominance also obtained in China, and therefore his theory cannot explain why China did not rise to world domination, even earlier than Europe did. Obviously, China did not rise to dominate the world economically and technologically, and he freely admits that he doesn't know exactly why. As I recall, he suggests that it has something to do with Chinese culture and their apparently ingrown tendency to obey rather than question authority.

Disclaimer: It's been some years since I read Diamond. My recollection may not be entirely accurate.

Sigh. While you stayed away from "breed," "master-race," "superior," and even "Labador Retriever" the "ingrown" part is disappointing. I read the book too. I'm certain that Diamond would not see this as biologically determined and thus does not lend any support to that (Milton's) rant.

Diamond has many times suggested that human beings sometimes do things for reasons other than cultural programming. That they are not necessarily tabula rasa and their behavior is actually sometimes influenced by things like genes, hormones, environmental effects on the structure of the brain, and so on. The genetics part of this is called sociobiology or (more often) evolutionary psychology. A discipline which burns like holy water when sprinked onto Leftists, who (at least since Franz Boas) have taken it as an article of faith that all humans are born tabula rasa, and are entirely a product of nurture rather than nature.

If you want to see some howling commies take on Diamond for merely suggesting that the people of Papua New Guinea (where Diamond has spent a huge amount of time) have any problems that aren't due to Western imperialism, you can look at:

http://redstomp.org/forums/showthread.php?...ew-race-science

Diamond is a pretty moderate guy from my own personal experience with him at UCLA. But not moderate enough for the Commies. They may never have ever actually been to Papua New Guinea, but they know what's politically correct. And therefore, what is true about people in Papua New Guinea!

So convenient! These days Marxists never have to travel. Boas did it all for them, looong ago.

If you want to read more Commies being burned (aaaaarrrhhhh) by science, you might check out Steven Pinker's book Blank Slate

Sample: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0622.pdf

And what the commies had to say about it:

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/category...ary-psychology/

[Rhindle]

You haven't been reading. My views on this are not that simple. As a RACE (genetically) I have a suspicion that the Chinese might actually be (at least intellectually) superior. If only they could get rid of their damned government! At the same time, I have met only a few rabble-rousing Chinese (yes, I know they exist; maybe they'll all waiting to have their organs harvested after execution). But as a "breed," I suspect (cannot prove) that the Chinese have been bred for willingness to take orders, rather like Laborador Retrievers. What Nietzsche said about master-races and slave-races (bred for docility, or least for anti-revolt) might have a germ of truth in it.

Jared Diamond touches on this indirectly in Guns, Germs, and Steel. After setting out his thesis explaining why Europeans rose to dominance, he points out that most of the same conditions that fostered European dominance also obtained in China, and therefore his theory cannot explain why China did not rise to world domination, even earlier than Europe did. Obviously, China did not rise to dominate the world economically and technologically, and he freely admits that he doesn't know exactly why. As I recall, he suggests that it has something to do with Chinese culture and their apparently ingrown tendency to obey rather than question authority.

Disclaimer: It's been some years since I read Diamond. My recollection may not be entirely accurate.

China was self-sufficient and didn't need to explore for more resources at the time. The Europeans wanted to trade with them but they were not interested...until the Euros gave them opium

[GlassBeadGame]

You haven't been reading. My views on this are not that simple. As a RACE (genetically) I have a suspicion that the Chinese might actually be (at least intellectually) superior. If only they could get rid of their damned government! At the same time, I have met only a few rabble-rousing Chinese (yes, I know they exist; maybe they'll all waiting to have their organs harvested after execution). But as a "breed," I suspect (cannot prove) that the Chinese have been bred for willingness to take orders, rather like Laborador Retrievers. What Nietzsche said about master-races and slave-races (bred for docility, or least for anti-revolt) might have a germ of truth in it.

Jared Diamond touches on this indirectly in Guns, Germs, and Steel. After setting out his thesis explaining why Europeans rose to dominance, he points out that most of the same conditions that fostered European dominance also obtained in China, and therefore his theory cannot explain why China did not rise to world domination, even earlier than Europe did. Obviously, China did not rise to dominate the world economically and technologically, and he freely admits that he doesn't know exactly why. As I recall, he suggests that it has something to do with Chinese culture and their apparently ingrown tendency to obey rather than question authority.

Disclaimer: It's been some years since I read Diamond. My recollection may not be entirely accurate.

Sigh. While you stayed away from "breed," "master-race," "superior," and even "Labador Retriever" the "ingrown" part is disappointing. I read the book too. I'm certain that Diamond would not see this as biologically determined and thus does not lend any support to that (Milton's) rant.

Diamond has many times suggested that human beings sometimes do things for reasons other than cultural programming. That they are not necessarily tabula rasa and their behavior is actually sometimes influenced by things like genes, hormones, environmental effects on the structure of the brain, and so on. The genetics part of this is called sociobiology or (more often) evolutionary psychology. A discipline which burns like holy water when sprinked onto Leftists, who (at least since Franz Boas) have taken it as an article of faith that all humans are born tabula rasa, and are entirely a product of nurture rather than nature.

If you want to see some howling commies take on Diamond for merely suggesting that the people of Papua New Guinea (where Diamond has spent a huge amount of time) have any problems that aren't due to Western imperialism, you can look at:

http://redstomp.org/forums/showthread.php?...ew-race-science

Diamond is a pretty moderate guy from my own personal experience with him at UCLA. But not moderate enough for the Commies. They may never have ever actually been to Papua New Guinea, but they know what's politically correct. And therefore, what is true about people in Papua New Guinea!

So convenient! These days Marxists never have to travel. Boas did it all for them, looong ago.

If you want to read more Commies being burned (aaaaarrrhhhh) by science, you might check out Steven Pinker's book Blank Slate

Sample: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0622.pdf

And what the commies had to say about it:

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/category...ary-psychology/

I believe your racist nonsense about Nietzschean Master and Slave Races has been pwnd by Diamond's science. It doesn't "have a grain of truth" but instead maybe the truth is grain. You're just looking desperate. Next time you chat with Diamond thank him for me. I have no problem with notion that more or less random chance in crop availability, animal domestication, food surplus for labor specialization etc established some threshold for which societies might industrialize first. Once this was achieved there is lots of room left for rapacious exploitation.

[Milton Roe]

The main thing that he stumbles upon is trying to explain why Europe got ahead of Asia. Either China or India or even other smaller vibrant countries/regions like Korea. All these places were more technologically advanced than Europe pretty late in the game. But then some kind of a "singularity" happened in the Midlands of England (very small region in a very small part of the European SUB-continent and, at least at first, in only one industry (textiles - or you could get even more specific, cotton)) somehow ushered in the era of ever growing incomes. If you were standing there in, say 1675 and an omnipresent being came down from the heavens and told you "an Industrial Revolution is going to happen, try to guess where", the best guess would've been China, or at least some other part of Asia.

The thing is, this - why England, Midlands, rather than China or some other place in Asia (hell, Silesia looked like a pretty good candidate too if you know your micro economic history) is like the 1 million dollar question in Economic History. There's oodles of explanations and theories and most of them totally unconvincing. It really does get Sci-Fi when you start to think about it. Before the Industrial Revolution, incomes (of peasants) fluctuated within a range of something like 2 - in other words in the best of times the people were about twice as rich as they were in the worst of times. Since the Industrial Revolution the incomes in the "developed countries" have increased something like 40-100 times over. Before the Industrial Revolution the richest economies (essentially Classical Athens, Netherlands at the peak of the Black Death, perhaps a few others) were about ... 2 times richer than the poorest economies. Today the per capita income of a country like US is about 60 times the per capita income of the poorest country, like Chad. Back in the day, the best you could hope for was that a plague or a rampaging army would come through and kill off most of your neighbors while sparing you and so leave more land for your children to farm and hence their standard of living would go up by ... 10%, maybe 20% (in the aftermath of the 30 years War, one of the most destructive ones, incomes actually went up) .It really was just a completely different world - a different planet - before the Industrial Revolution. So it's not all that surprising that Diamond can't explain it. Nobody can.

Don't you mean "Netherlands at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age" circa 1600? The way you paint things, since this is almost a century and a half before the start of the industrial revolution, the Dutch were just hardscrabbling around in their fields looking like Van Gogh's potato eaters. But that's not exactly true. They were getting rich on trade. Not all, but some. We're well out the middle ages here. We have ships crossing oceans, we have the printing press and double-entry bookkeeping and use of roman numerals to do it all with.

The world of the English restoration (think of all that science) is still 80 years away. And the industrial revolution has yet to arrive, even then. "Cotton" techniques start in (what) 1734? The world and trade are pretty advanced in 1734. Ben Franklin in America is already publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1734. Isaac Newton, who ushered in a fully modern world view of physics, has died of old age by 1734. Come on.

Before the Netherlands there was Portugal and before then, Venice. Venice had 3000 ships in the 15th century. And was rich. Are you going to tell me that the average Venetian made only twice what the average European farmer did? Nonsense.

I do think that some groups of people "got lucky" by means of geography, but I think the principal ways they did are being near fertile rivers (agriculture) and then latter, being in reach of the Mediterranean, which served as a playground to learn shipbuilding. Once you could sail the Mediterranean, you were ready to go through Gibraltar and play in the big world. And that's how the pre-industrial-revolution renaissance Westerners did it. China had no such inland sea.

I once spoke to Diamond while was writing Guns, Germs and Steel, and tried to get him to spend more time on the advantages to a culture of having BOTH a phonetic alphabet AND a moveable type printing press that used paper. He admitted this, but didn't think it was pivotal. Obviously, I disagree. Printed books went sailing around the Mediterranian after the middle of the 15th century, and those who read them were those who traded, and all those same powers were the centers of the industrial revolution when it finally arrived 300 years later. It didn't just spring out of Manchester with no preparation.

Paper was invented in China as we all know, and modern papermaking dates from several centuries before the printing press. But it was the printing press after 1450 that drove creation of papermaking factories. After this, paper was everywhere. The Bouchon mechanical loom (1725) long preceeded the famous Jacquard loom of 1800. And it ran on paper tape, something what would have inconcievable without the paper production necessary for printing books from paper. This stuff is all of a whole. No paper books, no paper controlled looms. Parchment-controlled looms? Papyrus-controlled looms? Somehow, I don't think so.

[The Joy]

Now for the most difficult part. The politics of Wikipedia, in which there are many paradoxes. Jimmy is an 'Objectivist', and many of the people who he assembled around him in the early days at Bomis were from the Objectivist mailing list.

An Objectivist (as I understand) is an extreme form of Right wing-ism. They are followers of Ayn Rand, who believed that history is determined by a small number of remarkable and intelligent individuals who by strength of personality and intelligence and good-lookingness make lots of money and become rich. They can only do this in America. No one in Europe has heard of Objectivism.

However, Wikipedia grew up rapidly after July 2001, when people like The Cuncator joined from Slashdot. Slashdot (as explained to me by Eric) is a website almost entirely populated by devotees of Linux and the 'open software movement'. This is a sort of ideology of crowdsourcing, which elevates the mob, and not the individual, to a position of supreme importance. It is a form of Leftism (although it is also a form of free-marketism, which is not really a form of Leftism at all). Furthermore, the general politics of Wikipedia is left-leaning.

How do we explain this paradox? Is it really a paradox?

From what I understand of "Objectivism," Wikipedia is not a good environment for it. Objectivists believe that making one's self happy should take precedent over everyone else's happiness. An Objectivist might gain personal satisfaction and an ego-boost from editing Wikipedia, but then others would come and take the glory away. The fruit of your labors that should give you happiness and the reason for engaging in the labor in the first place is taken away by others wanting to placate their own egos and "labor for happiness." I suppose a diligent Wikipedian thinks that his efforts will work out in the end, but with Wikipedia, there is no end. So why bother? I do not see how Objectivists could gain long-term pleasure from editing Wikipedia unless they find an area no one cares about and leaves he/she alone. But then, that means nobody cares about your subject, so you are laboring for nothing.

As a political system, I would say Wikipedia follows Anarcho-syndicalism (T-H-L-K-D) which can combine a mixture of libertarianism and communism.

[EricBarbour]

As a political system, I would say Wikipedia follows Anarcho-syndicalism (T-H-L-K-D) which can combine a mixture of libertarianism and communism.

With a stiff dose of Extropianism (T-H-L-K-D) on top for extra misery for the non-Believers. Another bizarre belief you find on Slashdot in large quantities.

The irony: I would expect most "Extropians" to die of heart disease and/or complications of diabetes, long before Technology Magically Saves Their Asses.

Seen Moeller's ass lately? Last year, he was pregnant!


This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Thu 13th October 2011, 5:39am

[Herschelkrustofsky]

From what I understand of "Objectivism," Wikipedia is not a good environment for it. Objectivists believe that making one's self happy should take precedent over everyone else's happiness. An Objectivist might gain personal satisfaction and an ego-boost from editing Wikipedia, but then others would come and take the glory away. The fruit of your labors that should give you happiness and the reason for engaging in the labor in the first place is taken away by others wanting to placate their own egos and "labor for happiness." I suppose a diligent Wikipedian thinks that his efforts will work out in the end, but with Wikipedia, there is no end. So why bother? I do not see how Objectivists could gain long-term pleasure from editing Wikipedia unless they find an area no one cares about and leaves he/she alone. But then, that means nobody cares about your subject, so you are laboring for nothing.

I think we have some other threads around here somewhere on the topic of MMORPGism, which I think provides the best psychological model for understanding Wikipediocy. The game player knows that he always stands a chance of losing, but he considers himself a top-flight player and he just can't resist the adrenaline rush of charging into combat. There are stories of online gamers who collapse after playing WOW or some other game for 72 hours straight, chugging energy drinks and peeing into a cup or whatever it takes. Does that remind you of any Wikipedians we have discussed here?

[timbo]

Your intellect is nowhere as well. Your ego is everywhere; not least of all at WR. By the way, since you like talking about yourself so much, how come you're so coy about revealing your true WP identity?

I am Jayjg (T-C-L-K-R-D) . And I will thank you to stay away from my Polish Judaica articles. Also, anything to do with Katyn massacre, which Volunteer Marek (T-C-L-K-R-D) , also here on WR (as you may guess from his Modigliani), has covered.

Ooooooo, a former member of Arb-Con. A WP muckity muck!

Commence sledgehammer attack, haters...


t

[Herschelkrustofsky]

China was self-sufficient and didn't need to explore for more resources at the time. The Europeans wanted to trade with them but they were not interested...until the Euros gave them opium

And then they still weren't interested, so the Brits went to war against them.

[Peter Damian]

Maybe you disagree, and think there were other principles on which Wikipedia was based, but you have provided zero evidence for this.

I’m starting with the question of whether opensourcism (i.e. the ideology of the open source movement) is based on altruistic principles. Usually no question, being a request for information, requires evidence to be provided.

I was basing one of my assumptions on the Wikipedia article says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_movement “The open source movement is a broad-reaching movement comprised both officially and unofficially of individuals who feel that software should be produced altruistically [citation needed].” My question then is whether that is correct.

Actually you have helped me with answers to a lot of these questions with the links you have provided. For example, this was a gem http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html .So I am grateful, though I don’t altogether like the way you ‘charge’ for the answers.

I have some questions about Rand. There is a sense of ‘altruism’ in which people subordinate their will and purpose and concern to the will and purpose and concern of the community. Subordination to the ‘will of the people’ or to the ‘common good’ if you like. My research on the mailing lists and Wikipedia suggests that this principle underscores the way Wikipedians think. What I know of Rand suggests she would have detested this idea as a form of group think.

First of all, you are the one who is mistaken.

The mistake I referred to was your seemingly thinking of the word ‘contradiction’ as referring to some impossible state of affairs signified by a contradiction, rather than a linguistic item asserting such a state of affairs. The etymology (contra + dictio, literally ‘speaking against’) surely tells you this. Thus contradictions exist because linguistic items exist, not in the fictional sense that Santa Clause exists, but in the non-fictional sense that Obama exists.

no contradictory state of affairs exists

Category mistake. The qualification ‘contradictory’ applies to linguistic items (statements), not states of affairs.

[anthony]

Maybe you disagree, and think there were other principles on which Wikipedia was based, but you have provided zero evidence for this.

I’m starting with the question of whether opensourcism (i.e. the ideology of the open source movement) is based on altruistic principles.

I didn't realize it was a question.

The free software movement is based on altruistic principles. Specifically, RMS argued that it would be immoral for him to make improvements to software and not share them freely, therefore proprietary software is immoral.

The open source movement is based on the free software movement, but one of the purposes of it was to remove the moral argument, and instead present open source software as the practical solution, for both businesses and consumers alike.

In any case, Wikipedia is not based on the open source movement or the free software movement. The GFDL seems to have been chosen primarily to shut RMS up and stop him from supporting the Gnupedia project.

I was basing one of my assumptions on the Wikipedia article says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_movement “The open source movement is a broad-reaching movement comprised both officially and unofficially of individuals who feel that software should be produced altruistically [citation needed].” My question then is whether that is correct.

It is, at the least, incomplete. Not all individuals in the open source movement feel that software should be produced altruistically.

You shouldn't base your assumptions on Wikipedia articles. Especially not when there is a citation needed tag.

I have some questions about Rand. There is a sense of ‘altruism’ in which people subordinate their will and purpose and concern to the will and purpose and concern of the community. Subordination to the ‘will of the people’ or to the ‘common good’ if you like. My research on the mailing lists and Wikipedia suggests that this principle underscores the way Wikipedians think. What I know of Rand suggests she would have detested this idea as a form of group think.

I think that the principle underscores the way most Wikipedians think. I don't think that was Wales' intention, though. (On the other hand, Wales knew it, and chose to work with such people anyway, even to the point of misleading them into thinking he was on their side. I believe this was a failing on Wales' part, akin to that of the Rand character Gail Wynand. I would think that Rand would see Wales as a real life Gail Wynand, "who rose from a destitute childhood in the ghettoes of New York City to control the city's print media", "the man who could have been", "who seeks power over others", and whose "success is dependent upon his ability to manipulate public opinion". But as I don't know the details of Wales' intent, I can't say for sure. Maybe Wales is actually a real-life Francisco d'Anconia, whose "actions were designed both to 'trap' looters into relying upon his worthless ventures in order to disrupt their schemes and to try to show the inevitable consequences of looting".)

It's certainly possible that the choice to use an FSF license, which was based on the principle of altruism, led to this situation. That would be something interesting to explore.

First of all, you are the one who is mistaken.

The mistake I referred to was your seemingly thinking of the word ‘contradiction’ as referring to some impossible state of affairs signified by a contradiction, rather than a linguistic item asserting such a state of affairs. The etymology (contra + dictio, literally ‘speaking against’) surely tells you this.

The word "contradiction" has multiple meanings. The way I used the word is consistent with one of those meanings.

But look, this argument is silly. I think you misunderstood me. You think I used the wrong word. Either way, it's just a minor error of language. Unless you have a question for me, let's just agree to disagree about whether I misspoke or you misread. (You certainly don't seem to have gotten the joke/reference. My comment was at least partially tongue-in-cheek.)

no contradictory state of affairs exists

Category mistake. The qualification ‘contradictory’ applies to linguistic items (statements), not states of affairs.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Statements can contradict each other, but only if one or both statements are false (or meaningless). No contradictory state of affairs exists.

This post has been edited by anthony: Thu 13th October 2011, 1:54pm

[communicat]

"Idiotic level of Wikipedia"? At last, something accurate and convincing from you; but still, it's pretty rich coming from a bemedalled wikipedian like yourself. If you haven't done your homework on Central Europe in the Cold War, don't expect me to do it for you. It's all well-documented, but don't look for the citations anwhere on WP with its dominant politics of exclusion and excretion. Not to mention its bitter and twisted EEML-type rightwing Polish cabalists.

Rightwing Polish cabalists!

I suppose that would be anybody living in Poland or hailing from Poland, and generally anybody who actually knows anything ABOUT Poland?

Since such people generally loathe the "left wing." Or if not, at least loathe Russia.

You claim to be from South Africa. Are you going to sit down there and tell central Europeans what to think about central European history? That's certainly bold.

I bow to your superior reasoning, namely: you have to live on the moon in order to access and understand information about the moon. Brilliant. Classic Roe/WP stuff.

[lilburne]

"Idiotic level of Wikipedia"? At last, something accurate and convincing from you; but still, it's pretty rich coming from a bemedalled wikipedian like yourself. If you haven't done your homework on Central Europe in the Cold War, don't expect me to do it for you. It's all well-documented, but don't look for the citations anwhere on WP with its dominant politics of exclusion and excretion. Not to mention its bitter and twisted EEML-type rightwing Polish cabalists.

Rightwing Polish cabalists!

I suppose that would be anybody living in Poland or hailing from Poland, and generally anybody who actually knows anything ABOUT Poland?

Since such people generally loathe the "left wing." Or if not, at least loathe Russia.

You claim to be from South Africa. Are you going to sit down there and tell central Europeans what to think about central European history? That's certainly bold.

I bow to your superior reasoning, namely: you have to live on the moon in order to access and understand information about the moon. Brilliant. Classic Roe/WP stuff.

[communicat]

I withdraw my earlier comment that Radek (like Roe) is persistently off-topic. In so far as he actually embodies, exemplifies/typifies the politics of WP, he's very much on-topic. Nice work Radek.

Separately:

Radek: "If you want to find instances where the CIA really was responsible for some nasty stuff then Guatemala or Nicaragua are better examples."

Not forgetting Afghanistan, Angola, Congo, China/Taiwan, Czechoslovakia, El Salvador, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Tibet, Somalia, Sudan, Vietnam, among others.

Czechoslovakia???? Hungary???? Just please please please shut up already. You are so stupid it just hurts to look at the things you're writing. Please stop dragging these discussions down to the idiotic level of Wikipedia or other internet forums you've been kicked out of.

For Radek's edification, since he's too lazy and/or stupid/incredulous to connect the dots for himself. Czechoslovakia and Hungary: The CIA (and MI5) via inflammatory broadcasts on the CIA-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) -- staffed largely by former Nazis and war criminals recruited by the West in exchange for immunity from prosecution -- provoked uprisings in both countries with promises that the West would intervene militarily and diplomatically on the side of the dissidents if/when they rose up against the communists. When the uprisings finally occurred, the West naturally reneged on its earlier promises; the uprisings were quelled violently and predictably. CIA/MI5 had been monitoring closely the movement of Soviet troops in the build-up to invasion, but did nothing to warn the dissidents to cool it and thus prevent bloodshed. Instead, RFE/RL continued to pour petrol on the flames. The Soviet invasion and military crackdown represented a major success for the CIA/MI5 insofar as the Soviet actions had a desired effect of substantially alienating support for the USSR on the part of formerly pro-Soviet leftists around the world. All this is well documented. What does it have to do with the politics of WP? Quite a lot. It's conspicously absent from WP's fairy tale version of 20th century Central European history, nor is it ever likely to be included/corrected neutrally, as evidenced and exemplified by Radek's apparent incredulity, mindless prattle and bellicose mudslinging above.

This post has been edited by communicat: Thu 13th October 2011, 3:20pm