Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired • Hacker News Board

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#41

Post by kybernetikos » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #18

kybernetikos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a dumb saying. Good times are created by weak people working together to defeat strong people. Most hard times are created by "Strong Men" fighting each other. Just take a look around the world - is it countries under the sway of warlords that have the best times? Or is it countries where the institutions are stronger than the individuals, where rulers have been limited or deposed by groups of individual…

You don't understand the saying. If you want to find some of the most anti-war people there are, speak to veterans who have lived through such. If you want to find some of the most pro-war people there are, talk to people who have never experienced the consequences of such. Out of curiosity I just looked up 'us warmonger political advisor guy' because his named temporarily escaped me, and search delivered - John Bolt…

I like your philosophy, but I think this phrase is a horrible way to express it. You should try to come up with a different pithy way of saying what you mean.

Perhaps

Beware those who make hard decisions easily.

Or

Hard times come when decision makers pay no part of the cost of their decisions.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#42

Post by kybernetikos » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 4:52 PM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #25

kybernetikos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a dumb saying. Good times are created by weak people working together to defeat strong people. Most hard times are created by "Strong Men" fighting each other. Just take a look around the world - is it countries under the sway of warlords that have the best times? Or is it countries where the institutions are stronger than the individuals, where rulers have been limited or deposed by groups of individual…

You're missing the point. The strong men are the ones building roads and sewers and buildings and exploring and policing and making safe and guarding and inventing and transporting, and the weak men are the ones deferring and allowing things to slide into safety and overly generous (with someone's money) social programs and overseas programs and politeness laws, and when things go wrong, populism, and the circle cont…

I'm really struggling to match your definitions of weak and strong here to anything like normal usage.

I think you're saying that it's strong to be employed? I'm not really sure how that matches up to being against the things you mention in connection with "weak".

Incidentally, I don't know if you intended this, but building roads and sewers and policing are, in most countries, socially funded programs.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#43

Post by divbzero » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

pupppet wrote: post #9

With the quotes in the article title I was thinking dang how have I never heard of that anime.

That’s an anime that should be made.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#44

Post by mantas » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

kybernetikos wrote: post #38

mantas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When famine hits or you get attacked by another country, it’s not about weak being protected from the strong. It’s about one society getting into trouble.

And perhaps this is the core of our disagreement - you see a country being attacked by another and you blame those hard times on the victim while I blame it on the attacker. I say it's a problem of unrestrained strength, of strength misapplied, not a problem of some people being weaker than others. And an enormous number of famines are caused by conflict, or historically by dumb central government by overly strong ty…

> famines are caused by conflict

And conflicts are frequently caused by the victim getting weak.

> historically by dumb central government

That's what I pointing at.

> overly strong tyrants

They're not strong. Unless you want to define strong in a very narrow sense which simply dumb.

> you see a country being attacked by another and you blame those hard times on the victim while I blame it on the attacker

Such is nature. When a sugar lover gets diabetis, you don't blame diabetis. If a society wants to stay afloat, it has to be able to defend from outsiders.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#45

Post by kibwen » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

kop316 wrote: post #26

taneq wrote: post #3

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times. This guy is all of those men, like 10 times over.

Assuming this is what you truly believe, I recommend you read: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

I think it's a dumb aphorism, but ACOUP's article isn't really a good refutation, instead it's mostly an excuse for him to elaborate upon some specific historical misconceptions.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#46

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 6:55 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #18

kybernetikos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a dumb saying. Good times are created by weak people working together to defeat strong people. Most hard times are created by "Strong Men" fighting each other. Just take a look around the world - is it countries under the sway of warlords that have the best times? Or is it countries where the institutions are stronger than the individuals, where rulers have been limited or deposed by groups of individual…

You don't understand the saying. If you want to find some of the most anti-war people there are, speak to veterans who have lived through such. If you want to find some of the most pro-war people there are, talk to people who have never experienced the consequences of such. Out of curiosity I just looked up 'us warmonger political advisor guy' because his named temporarily escaped me, and search delivered - John Bolt…

It isn’t a good saying, in the sense that what the speaker means by “good times,” “bad times,” “strong men,” and “weak men,” is so open to interpretation as to be meaningless. I like your interpretation. But I think the expression is often interpreted with “strong” implying a certain sort of roughness/propensity toward violence.

Anyway, it is clearly not accurate—“good times” and “bad times” must at least be opposite, however we define them, right? But we see all sorts of countries in history that have multi-generational reinforcing stretches of excellency. And we see many countries that suffered from many-generation-long stretches of bad times. These good and bad men don’t seem to pop up anywhere near as reliably as the expression claims.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#47

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 7:04 PM UTC

stormfather wrote: post #12

kybernetikos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a dumb saying. Good times are created by weak people working together to defeat strong people. Most hard times are created by "Strong Men" fighting each other. Just take a look around the world - is it countries under the sway of warlords that have the best times? Or is it countries where the institutions are stronger than the individuals, where rulers have been limited or deposed by groups of individual…

I don't see how anyone can look at the generation that survived the great depression, and look at boomers/millenials/gen Z and not see the truth of it

I agree Boomers have made a real mess of things, but mostly millennials and gen Z seem worn out. I don’t think it’s obvious that we’re going to be the “strong men” predicted by the expression, to create good times.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#48

Post by noisy_boy » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

WildRyc wrote: post #2

The writing style has me in stiches, it feels at odds with the layout and imagery, but completely fits the character of the story in question. I wonder how well a Real Housewives-style show would work set in the Sengoku-era.

Or an action-comedy.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#49

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #14

kybernetikos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a dumb saying. Good times are created by weak people working together to defeat strong people. Most hard times are created by "Strong Men" fighting each other. Just take a look around the world - is it countries under the sway of warlords that have the best times? Or is it countries where the institutions are stronger than the individuals, where rulers have been limited or deposed by groups of individual…

> This is such a dumb saying. It can be aptly applied throughout history, so while maybe not the best word choice, the spirit of the message can't be dumb.

This is not true, we see plenty of long stretches of misery and success in various countries throughout history. It isn’t particularly cyclical, instead we see strengths sometimes reinforcing, sometimes collapsing, and often just regressing to the mean.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#50

Post by Kon5ole » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 7:37 PM UTC

kybernetikos wrote: post #42

philipallstar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. The strong men are the ones building roads and sewers and buildings and exploring and policing and making safe and guarding and inventing and transporting, and the weak men are the ones deferring and allowing things to slide into safety and overly generous (with someone's money) social programs and overseas programs and politeness laws, and when things go wrong, populism, and the circle cont…

I'm really struggling to match your definitions of weak and strong here to anything like normal usage. I think you're saying that it's strong to be employed? I'm not really sure how that matches up to being against the things you mention in connection with "weak". Incidentally, I don't know if you intended this, but building roads and sewers and policing are, in most countries, socially funded programs.

It's a metaphor, "strong" and "weak" refers to the ability to overcome the "hard times", whatever that may be.

Basically if you experienced the direct consequences of a "hard time" (a demagogue, a famine, a recession or financial crisis, SCRUM, or whatever) you will be more aware and resilient to allowing the things that caused that to happen than if you never experienced it. That's "strength".

It is of course true, we see it everywhere in nature, but it's perhaps often more due to hard times eliminating weakness than actually creating strength.

Good times tend to increase the number of people who don't know how serious bad times can get, don't realize the importance of principles that were obvious to the people who survived the bad times.

So "strong people" can perhaps be "created" equally in good times as well, but they are increasingly outnumbered. During hard times the "weak" are eliminated.

This being Ycombinator one can consider the example of how any crazy idea gets funding during good times but during hard times the ideas that actually have legs remain. ;-)