91–100 of 101 posts
So-called Cold War and Arm-racing is the most recent examples.
Continuous competition for everything, not just survival and reproduction, is what makes evolution (biological or social) possible.
The older I get, the more it strikes me that civilization is inherently unstable. It may be metastable, in the way that a predator-prey relationship is stable. A technological civilization like ours is not stable. It's a conflagration . It's subject to a number of exponential processes. Our economy is based on exponentiation. If progress is based on war, then that's just another nail in the coffin. This makes for a p…
As you may know, chimpanzees wage wars, some being territorial, some more resource-targeted. They even pick fighting grounds, do all kinds of dirty tricks(set traps, prepare stones-to-throw etc) - but to the point. Whenever a "chimp tribe" is threatened, whether its by resource shortage or a competing tribe, they "pick"(as in "tolerate") the most aggressive, asocial, psychopathic chimp of their own to lead them since thats what increases their chances of survival. That chimp may and usually does commit, at wimp, all kinds of atrocities, towards enemies and even his own _but_ when the danger is over, when that tribe no longer competes for their territory, whenever there is enough resources - they simply get rid of him.
We are in a state of prosperity, technologically, environmentally, there is nothing hindering our civilization to live in peace .. except, we are suffering under the same hierarchical [] power-structure we know from medieval(or even much older) periods. Yes, they are still here(structure, not necessarily blood-lines whatever some may want to tell them selves) .. they are not visible, you may not feel their presence, but they are here, creepy version of Asimov's Foundation, there were here all the time(when incl. turbulences within their ranks), now largely consolidated, mostly united, metastasizing across the planet, leading humanity into its abyss, effectively into a 2 species society .. Pharaos as immortal gods, few layers of abstractions(with its own nobelity) and as much slaves as they need for whatever they need, kept in the dark, with no chance to revolt, ever ..
Now I wont be angry when this one gets flagged but I hope at least some of you young minds do get the chance to read and dismiss the claims above .. because they might come handy in the (near) future
Things liberals won't like to hear.
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Remote resources are hard to defend but unlikely to be occupied by an enemy early, by conserving resources in a local protected area you have more accessible reserves when the main settlement is under siege later.
Basically describes the US oil reserves strategy
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This is why it's critical to become starfaring as soon as possible . Every year we delay carries tremendous risk.
Do you think we can get rid of this once we leave the planet and go multi-planetary? We will bring our gray matter with us. May a few generations grow up and they will repeat our mistakes. Possibly the only solution is to get way smarter by gene editing and preserve as much data as we can from our age.
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Washington Thinktanks are a good start (though they still tend to 'flourish' things in nationalist language). I prefer their publications to their press events, though the latter is easier to consume. The press briefings at the State Department are pretty good from a reporting side, but you need to follow for a long time before you see the forest instead of the trees. A good direct source is the Strategic Studies Ins…
> But let's put that out to Hacker News: what are your sources? As a German reader, I was surprised about how good "Foreign Policy" is to get a coherent understanding of certain viewpoints in geostrategy. Such publications would be the exception here, because they are not very "journalistic". I think it doesn't necessarily satisfy parents question about "what really is going on", because what's going on is dependent…
I also follow Foreign Policy but despise their editorializing, since it takes the meat out of the reporting and skews it toward PR.
You will get "more important" news on the international front from ForeignPolicy, but it's going to remain in the format of news journalism. They will include cheesy pictures of world leaders “we don’t like” and nice pictures of the ones we do. They occasionally use Buzzfeedlike headlines like “Will Russia drop a nuclear weapon?” and report in a one sided manner on a number of issues (“Russia flew near NATO with a nuclear bomber” but never “US flew near the Caucauses with a nuclear bomber”).
Overall I would rate FP a solid 5 out of 10. But that’s in comparison to venues like CNN that might get a 2 or 3.
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> A layman equipped with some of this knowledge, for example, will be much more able to understand current events in... Any recommendations on good places to learn / keep abreast of this kind of info? I'd love to read news that was more high-level about what's really going on, but it's hard to find. Many years ago, Stratfor had a free weekly newsletter that had excellent info along these lines, but after they got hac…
I have found the Caspian Report tremendously useful for improving my understanding of global dynamics - https://www.youtube.com/user/CaspianReport/videos
Though I never made any recommendation to read military history, which should have made my list.
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> But let's put that out to Hacker News: what are your sources? As a German reader, I was surprised about how good "Foreign Policy" is to get a coherent understanding of certain viewpoints in geostrategy. Such publications would be the exception here, because they are not very "journalistic". I think it doesn't necessarily satisfy parents question about "what really is going on", because what's going on is dependent…
Interesting. I also follow Foreign Policy but despise their editorializing, since it takes the meat out of the reporting and skews it toward PR. You will get "more important" news on the international front from ForeignPolicy, but it's going to remain in the format of news journalism. They will include cheesy pictures of world leaders “we don’t like” and nice pictures of the ones we do. They occasionally use Buzzfeed…
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Interesting. I also follow Foreign Policy but despise their editorializing, since it takes the meat out of the reporting and skews it toward PR. You will get "more important" news on the international front from ForeignPolicy, but it's going to remain in the format of news journalism. They will include cheesy pictures of world leaders “we don’t like” and nice pictures of the ones we do. They occasionally use Buzzfeed…
I think I was a bit bit sleepy this morning, what I meant was "Foreign Affairs". I always mix them up. You're right about FP.
Their subscription model really isn't that bad, yet I think prevents many people from linking their articles, etc.