Author: VD

Game theory and the US-China war

I’m not what you would call a devotee of Generational Dynamics, but it’s an interesting perspective and I have read it from time to time. However, I was a little troubled after reading his post last month concerning the recent Pentagon report on China:

There’s never been any doubt that China has been focused for years on invading and taking control of Taiwan. They said that themselves many times, as I’ve reported in dozens of reports on this web site. Furthermore, the Chinese consider a preemptive invasion of Taiwan to be a “defensive” military action.

But the difference is that China now has the military capacity to do that, despite defense by the U.S., according to the report:

“Although the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] is contending with a growing array of missions, Taiwan remains its main strategic direction. China continued modernizing its military in 2010, with a focus on Taiwan contingencies, even as cross-Strait relations improved. The PLA seeks the capability to deter Taiwan independence and influence Taiwan to settle the dispute on Beijing’s terms. In pursuit of this objective, Beijing is developing capabilities intended to deter, delay, or deny possible U.S. support for the island in the event of conflict. The balance of cross-Strait military forces and capabilities continues to shift in the mainland’s favor.”

The reports describes deployment of thousands of missiles specifically directed as U.S. naval capabilities in defending Taiwan, including numerous ballistic and cruise missile programs that can attack Taiwan and attack and disable any aircraft carriers or other U.S. naval vessels in the region.

China has deployed dozens of surface and submarine naval attack vessels, supported early-warning aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and other surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, capable of launching nuclear missiles from the sea.

China has also deployed space and cyber warfare capabilities. China has developed the capability to attack and kill America’s communication satellites. Each week there are news stories about Chinese “hackers” stealing enormous amounts of military technology and defense-related secret information.

In addition, China is developing a number of capabilities that can directly attack the U.S.:

“China is modernizing its nuclear forces by adding more survivable delivery systems. In recent years, the road mobile, solid propellant CSS-10 Mod 1 and CSS-10 Mod 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A) intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) have entered service. The CSS- 10 Mod 2, with a range in excess of 11,200 km, can reach most locations within the continental United States.”

This is the fulfillment of several threats made by China in years past. In 2005, top-level Chinese army officer General Zhu Chenghu threatened America with nuclear war if America interfered with Taiwan:

“If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We … will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds … of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

In 2005, Zhu’s remarks were an empty threat. Today, they’re a real threat.

I was idly wondering why Generational Dynamics would read this report and conclude that “an attack within the next 12-18 months is a reasonable expectation”. So, as I usually do when contemplating these things, I put myself in the perspective of the players and mentally gamed it out.

USA: War makes zero sense. We’re already engaged in six smaller conflicts and are facing an economic depression and a financial crisis. Correct strategy: avoid if possible.

China: War makes zero sense. The long-term trend of the balance of power is in China’s favor. Why start a war now when one can be fought on more favorable terms ten years from now? Correct strategy: avoid if possible.

The problem is that there is a third player.

Taiwan: The ability of the USA to fight a war over the Straits peaked in the 1990s and is now rapidly trending downward. The relative military might of China vis-a-vis the Americans is increasing. Fighting a war now would be dreadful, and yet is probably much more winnable/survivable than fighting one five or ten years from now, especially if the USA ends up melting down due to its economic depression and loses its capacity to project power across the Pacific.

Correct strategy: provoke war as soon as possible.

Fortunately, it’s not up to Taiwan, right? They can’t just attack China to kick things off. However, they can declare independence, which China has always vowed will be met with a declaration of war. So, Taiwan presently holds both the means and the motive to launch a US-China war, and game theory suggests that they should do so as soon as possible. That doesn’t mean they will actually do it; the natural human tendency is to put off the unpleasant as long as possible even the prospects for the future look worse.

But if there are any influential game theorists in Taiwan these days, I tend to suspect that they have been observing events in the USA and China over the last decade and have advised a declaration of independence as soon as the defensive preparations for the promised retaliation are ready. I’m not making any specific predictions here, as I don’t have anywhere nearly enough information to do so. But I will say that the “reasonable expectation” of war in the Taiwanese Straits in the next two years is, in fact, alarmingly reasonable.

The decline and fall of the EU

One of the things that I always find amusing is the way that those who openly mock my seemingly crazy predictions at the time I make them never seem to surface again later when the unthinkable and supposedly impossible finally becomes the topic of mainstream debate. It’s a reliable pattern that we’ve seen three times this year already, first with the “double-dip” aka depression, second with the growing “Obama steps aside in favor of Hillary” theme in the press, and now with the breakup of the EU being openly discussed in the mainstream media. All three predictions could still ultimately turn out to be incorrect, but that’s almost beside the point, which is that the trend was correctly identified long before it became readily apparent:

Until recently, the idea that the 27-nation European Union might disintegrate would have been unthinkable, for uniting a continent ripped apart by two World Wars was considered a rousing diplomatic success. But the EU’s two most cherished achievements — a common currency and the free movement of people across borders — are under threat. And the possibility that the decades-long experiment that is the EU might not survive in its present form has now entered mainstream debate.

Now, I don’t mind being held accountable when my predictions are incorrect. In the last U.S. Presidential round, my prediction was that it would be Pataki vs Hillary with Hillary winning election. Obviously, neither nomination came to pass since Pataki didn’t even run and Hillary blew the nomination with her failure to read the rules. Fine, I got those wrong. But what those who like to bring up that election cycle forget is that Giuliani didn’t come anywhere near the Republican nomination – it may look obvious now, but I predicted that when “America’s Mayor” was the widely anointed frontrunner – and the Republicans did end up going with what I suggested would be the alternative to Pataki, namely, a moderate Senator in the Dole mode who would be served up as a sacrificial lamb. Which, of course, is exactly what McCain was.

In retrospect, I should have realized that Pataki wouldn’t run against Giuliani. But I would still have gone with Hillary, there is no way I would have believed she would run such a strategically inept campaign after the way she simply strolled into the New York Senate seat without breaking a sweat. Either way, I’m not concerned about being wrong about these things since I don’t play it like Nate Silver and make 100 different “predictions”, the last one as people are actually voting. If you compare my predictions with his at the same distance out from the event, I think you’ll find that mine tend to be rather better. By way of example, look how long it took him to realize that the Republicans would win the House in 2010.

And, of course, I was the only political observer out of 50 or so writers surveyed by the Right Wing News to nail the Palin pick as the Republican VP selection. I don’t remember who the flavor of the month was back then, but it was obvious that McCain was going to pick a woman since he was going up against a half-black man. I didn’t make a prediction on the Democratic side because I had no idea what Obama would do, but I will admit that his choice of Biden absolutely astonished me. It still astonishes me.

Getting back the EU, the only question concerning the eventual breakup is if it happens now or after the politicians openly attempt to abandon democracy altogether and play the full totalitarian card. I don’t think they ultimately will, for the simple reason that they don’t have the necessary military and police resources to pull it off. As one European wag has noted, the last time an unpopular political structure was rammed down an angry German populace’s throat by other European nations, the subsequent results weren’t exactly what one would consider to be positive.

Even if Merkel manages to twist enough arms to force the $500 billion expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility through the Bundestag today, the German courts have clearly signified that enough is enough and no further European institutions will be permitted to encroach upon German financial sovereignty. The EU political elite can pontificate all they like about how further political integration is necessary to prevent fragmentation, but most of the European people would now clearly prefer the breakup of the EU and the return of their national currencies. But regardless of what happens this fall, the banks and the politicians are going to lose in the end since the global economy is going to continue to get contract, it’s not going to start growing any time soon, and the EU was always a project that required economic sunshine.

The demise of equalitarianism

Logic is now beginning to lead others to conclude something I asserted here long ago. And that assertion should never have been any more controversial than a statement that water is wet or increasing the labor supply reduces wage rates. Sexual equality is not societally viable:

The question becomes: what are we going to give up? Family formation? Sexual equality? Sexual liberty? (By sexual equality I mean the presumption that women should be legally, economically, and educationally equal to men. By sexual liberty I mean both an absence of formal legal sanctions and an absence of guilt and psychological repression.) It looks very much as through we can’t have all three of those sustainably, and (this is the thought that really disturbs me) we may not even get to have more than one.

If we give up family formation it’s game over; we’ll be outbred by cultures that don’t. So that’s off the table. Following out the logic, the demographic future will belong to cultures that give up either sexual liberty or sexual equality, or both.

But those options aren’t symmetrical. Because, remember, the problem with today’s sexual economics is not symmetrical. It’s not women who are bailing out of the marriage market in droves, it’s men. Accordingly (as the author of the NY Post recognizes) the odds of rolling back sexual liberty are close to nil. Men don’t have to play on those terms for fundamental bioenergetic reasons (release of semen is cheap), and women post-Pill are demonstrating an unwillingness to try to make them. Because, you know, more sex (see “miswiring”, above).

I am led to a conclusion I don’t like. That is: Sexual equality is unstable. If women can’t buy marriage with sex, they’ll have to bid submission instead. This tactic also combines well with hypergamic desire – if the mean social power of men is automatically higher than that of women, more potential pairings constitute marrying up.

I don’t have a submissive wife and never wanted one. I like strong and independent women. It therefore horrifies me to reach the conclusion that sexually repressive patriarchies may after all be a better deal for most womens’ reproductive success than the relative equality they have now is. But that’s where the logic leads.

I don’t have a problem with it myself, since I don’t believe in the nonexistent fairy tale called equality. But Raymond’s logic is correct. It’s all about the demographics and the future belongs to those who show up for it. The feminist version of equality was never any more viable than the Communist one.

Killer Game

I don’t believe I could recommend this as a strategy for most men, but it is surely educational to learn that raping and killing a woman is demonstrably more attractive to women than behaving like a gentleman. And women, before all the inevitable snowflaking commences, please note that there is absolutely nothing to argue about here. It is an established empirical fact.

I would go so far to argue that if you are being introduced to a woman you find attractive, she will be more attracted to you if you slap her in the face without warning and walk away without explanation than if you smile and tell her that you are very pleased to meet her. Now this, being a mere hypothesis, can be argued. And tested, if you’re feeling especially scientific this weekend.

Now, please note that I am not saying that women dislike men behaving like gentlemen, it’s only that they don’t find it attractive. It’s irrelevant. It’s analogous to the male perspective on a woman having a good job or an impressive degree. Men don’t dislike these things, they just don’t have anything to do with whether a man is attracted to the woman possessing them or not.

A silver lining in the economic cloud

The consequences of the global depression aren’t all bad; more women might actually stay home to raise their children. But once it becomes clear that a working mother doesn’t actually make any net profit from her job, it should be readily apparent that she is only “working” in order to socialize and avoid the harder work of raising her children:

Every day, dozens of middle-class mothers decide they cannot afford to return to work after having a baby. It’s not because they believe a woman’s place is in the home — many love their jobs and want to return to well-paid careers — but because it’s cheaper to stay at home.

In the past 12 months, on average, household bills have soared by 20 pc, National Insurance has risen by £70 a year, £545 in child tax credits has been taken away, and child benefit was frozen. Childcare costs have rocketed, too. According to children’s charity the Daycare Trust, parents pay 25 per cent more to send a two-year-old child to nursery than five years ago.

And the situation is going to get worse. From next year many families earning more than £25,000 will be stripped of even more child tax credits because of Government cuts. And from January 1, 2013, any household with a higher-rate taxpayer paying 40 per cent tax will lose child benefit worth £1,752 a year.

Figures Aviva has compiled for Money Mail show the cost of childcare is already so high that a mother of two children earning £25,000 a year — and with a husband earning £43,000, just over the higher tax threshold — would have just £300 left a month once childcare and the commuting costs have been taken into account.

And after child benefit is stripped away next year for families with a higher-rate earner she will have just £153 a month left from a month of full-time work — a figure which will drop further if childcare costs and fuel prices keep rising. Her husband’s salary must cover all bills, housing costs, clothes and food and savings.

This article highlights something I pointed out some years ago, which is that about half the female participation in the workforce is detrimental to society. It lowers wages, it harms the development of children, it decreases the quality of marriage, it increases infidelity and divorce, and it reduces workplace productivity. And all for nothing. There are no positive societal consequences from the increased involvement of women in the workforce; many suffer and no one benefits except for four relatively small groups.

1. Daycare providers. An industry exists where one wasn’t required before.

2. Corporations. The increased supply of labor has pushed media male wages down to a level last seen in 1968.

3. Divorce lawyers. “Compared to non-working women, those with a full-time job have a 29 per cent higher odds of divorce.”

4. Retired old men. In 1950, 45.8 percent of men over 65 worked. In 2000, 17.5 percent did. In 1950, 86.9 percent of men 55-64 worked. In 2000, 67.3 percent did. Young mothers are leaving their children in daycare and working in order to pay for old men to play golf. This is not the most sustainable of societies, and as Instapundit likes to say, that which cannot continue won’t.

There are exceptions to every rule and about 30 percent of women have always worked. But society needs middle class young women to marry, stay home, and raise children. It doesn’t need them making Powerpoint demonstrations and having affairs with the married sales manager.

Fat Bastard stays out

Someone in his camp must have a lick of sense. Christie still isn’t running:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie hasn’t changed his mind: He reaffirmed in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Tuesday that he’s not running for president….

Nonetheless, the speech — delivered at a shrine to America’s 40th president, with former first lady Nancy Reagan in the audience — was likely to stoke fresh speculation about his presidential ambitions. The Republican governor warned that the nation’s credibility abroad was being damaged by troubles at home. He charged that an indecisive White House has deepened the nation’s economic pain, and he accused President Barack Obama of preparing to divide the country to win re-election next year.

Christie didn’t spare Congress: In a scathing indictment of Beltway politics, he said the failure to compromise, along with Obama’s lack of leadership, had set the country dangerously off course.

In Washington “we drift from conflict to conflict, with little or no resolution. We watch a president who once talked about the courage of his convictions, but still has yet found the courage to lead,” Christie said.

“We watch a Congress at war with itself because they are unwilling to leave campaign-style politics at the Capitol’s door. The result is a debt-ceiling limitation debate that made our democracy appear as if we could no longer effectively govern ourselves,” he said.

The main problem with Christie is easily seen in his speech. As a politician, he’s just another guy, just another member of the bifactional ruling party. An unwillingness to compromise is not the problem with Congress. They LOVE to compromise and pat themselves on the back for their bipartisanship. If they could get away with it and still get re-elected, they’d play patticakes with each other all day.

Establishment logic

As I expected, Rick Perry is rapidly sinking in the polls thanks to the exposure of his radical support for open immigration. He’s lost 20 points and now trails Herman Cain, 28% to 18%. He’s effectively done. So, what is the solution of the Republican Establishment that backed his belated entry? Naturally, it is to encourage a less conservative and even more radical supporter of open immigration to enter the race:

Former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, who has known Chris Christie since he was a teenager and remains an informal adviser, tells National Review Online that the governor is “very seriously” considering a presidential bid.

“It’s real,” Kean says. “He’s giving it a lot of thought. I think the odds are a lot better now than they were a couple weeks ago.”

Christie remains undecided, Kean says, but is listening closely to pleas from party leaders. The chance for a “Jersey guy” to rise, Kean says, is not something Christie has sought. But now, with the field up for grabs, he is actively mulling a late entry.

If he makes the mistake of throwing his hat in the ring, Christie will melt down even faster than Perry did. Conservatives love seeing his fat, bellicose persona attacking the New Jersey teachers unions. They won’t like it half so much when he starts directing his attacks at them in defense of his moderate to liberal policies.

TIA: it is science

Okay, you can all stop sending this to me now. Look, I don’t think anyone should have been terribly shocked by news of the scientific link between atheism and autism which supports my original hypothesis from four years ago:

People with ‘mild’ forms of autism are more likely to be atheists, according to a controversial new study – and more likely to shun organised religion in general. The study, which looked at posts on autism forums, focused on people with high-functioning autism such as Asperger’s. The study, from University of Boston, speculates that common autistic spectrum behaviours such as ‘a preference for logical beliefs’ and a distrust of metaphor and figures of speech, could be responsible.

The amusing thing about the vehement reaction by many atheists to my description of their observable tendency towards socially autistic behavior is that it was not only based on my personal observations over the years, but also by the Asperger’s Quotient results proudly reported by dozens of the Internet’s most militant atheists. But the link should have always been obvious because it is logically inevitable. Even if one believes that a god is nothing but a social construct, it should not be hard to grasp that a degree of social dysfunction would tend to inhibit one’s understanding of those constructs.

Now, obviously god-blindness will take a variety of forms, just as color-blindness does. My belated discovery of my own very mild color-blindness has, in some ways, helped me understand what Brent Rasmussen once described as a missing sense more than my longtime agnosticism ever did. You can explain it to me all you like, you can walk me slowly and patiently through all the lines on the image, but I am still not going to see it. Even if I trust that it is there, I simply cannot see it and no amount of desire allows me to detect it. It is perhaps worth recalling that just as my color-blindness is totally undetectable by others whereas the total or red-green versions are readily observable to anyone paying attention to the individual’s behavior, god-blindness is not going to automatically translate into full blown New Atheist social autism.

What is slightly misleading about the article’s description of these socially autistic individuals is that what is described as a “preference for logical beliefs” should actually be phrased as a “preference for beliefs that appear to be logical”. For, as we have repeatedly seen, socially dysfunctional atheists tend to be extraordinarily illogical, to such an extent that they will deny the existence of straightforward dictionary definitions in use for hundreds of years in order to cling to their pseudo-logic.

It’s not so much logic as static rules that appeal to them. Where the cognitive deficiency is revealed is in their inability to understand that the decision tree they have adopted with quasi-religious fervor is insufficiently dynamic. I suspect it is somehow related to their concomitant emotional immaturity, as I see a similar problem with static decision trees all the time in children’s soccer.

For example, you might tell a young defender to closely mark #12 because he is the most dangerous striker on the other team. Then you will watch in disbelief as that defender obediently stays wide and out of the play at #12’s side instead of moving into the center and attacking the other striker who has the ball and is heading for a shot on goal. What the young defender doesn’t understand that the order to mark the one player is a conditional one and that the order should no longer be considered in effect once a greater danger to the goal presents itself. So, it’s necessary to keep building more and more complex decision trees as the player develops until the light bulb goes off, the logical bases underlying all the various trees are finally understood, and the defender can begin thinking and analyzing the situations for himself rather than simply attempting to identify which branch of the decision tree applies to the present situation.

An inability or dislike for processing dynamic if-then situations has nothing to do with logic per se, it is simply a need for clear-cut rules that remove any necessity for active thinking. To the socially autistic, both “Science” and “Reason” are perceived as The Legitimate Rulegivers and they represent far more than the simple tools they are to the neurotypical. Of course, it is more than a little ironic that those who claim to be freethinkers and paragons of logic are actually exhibiting illogical behavior that is fundamentally based on an aversion to thinking.

VPFL Week Three

106 Greenfield Grizzlies (2-1-0)
54 RR Redbeards (2-1-0)

72 Moundsview Meerkats (2-1-0)
51 MS Swamp Spartans (2-1-0)

52 GroverBeach Quixotes (1-2-0)
49 Bane Sidhe (1-2-0)

88 Green Reverends (1-1-1)
37 Macau Marauders (1-2-0)

83 Bailout Banksters (1-1-1)
62 Cranberry Rhyneauxs (1-2-0)

It looks as if the Redbeards used up all their roster magic against the Meerkats last week, as the Grizzly put a serious beatdown on them. As for the Piranha of the Serengeti, they managed to overcome the absence of their WR1, RB1, RB3, the severe devaluation of their WR2 (Reggie Wayne), and the disappearance of the Dream Team Philadelphia DEF thanks to the six combined TDs of the Aaron Rodgers-Jermichael Finley connection. Can you say 43 combined points? Yes, yes you can.

Of course, it’s hard to take too much pleasure in that high-performance connection when you realize that your NFL equivalent is Donovan-McNabb-Jim Kleinsasser. I’m not entirely convinced that Leslie Frazier can’t coach in The National Football League yet, but the entrails are looking rather dire. Stupid penalties and stupid players are seldom the sign of an intelligent coach, nor is an apparent inability to anticipate an opponent’s halftime adjustments. McNabb isn’t throwing interceptions or fumbling the ball, which is an improvement over The Tarvaris Jackson Experiment, but he’s also not throwing balls anywhere near his receivers. And I simply cannot understand what the Vikings offensive coordinator has against play-action passing; McNabb is still mobile enough for roll-outs to be an effective tactic when the defense is keying on AD. That’s not going to prevent him from throwing his patented worm-burners or keep the ball in-bounds on deep balls, but the occasional 12-yard out or 15-yard crossing pattern should still be viable.

It is beginning to look as if Denny Green, not Tony Dungy, is the best case scenario for Frazier. But if they can’t beat a terrible and poorly coached Kansas City team next week, even that scenario will look optimistic and one can expect the drums to begin beating in earnest.

I note in passing that Yahoo Sports appears to have granted half-credit for last week’s tie game between the Banksters and the Reverends without even asking me, the league commissioner, about it. But a team that is (1-1-1) obviously should not have a “winning percentage” of .500 when it has only won one game out of three! It should be in the same place in the standings at .333 as one that is (1-2-0). That makes me so angry! It just cheapens the whole thing and I am seriously considering resigning as league commissioner.

The Jew tax

I suppose that’s one way for the Obama administration to address the budget deficit. Question: do they have to wear Yellow Stars of David on their sleeves too?

If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a Jew, uh, as a janitor makes me a warrior for the working class, I wear that with a badge of honor. I have no problem with that.

It’s really rather cruel of Obama’s teleprompter to mess with him that way. Of course, it couldn’t possibly be easier for the Democratic Party elders to force him to announce that he won’t be running for president in 2012. Just arrange for a few minutes with the teleprompter prior to his speech and he’ll not only announce his decision to sit out the election in order to spend more time with his family, he’ll admit to being on the grassy knoll in 1963.