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Skin in the Game

The September-October Castalia Library book is SKIN IN THE GAME by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It is an excellent work, second only to ANTIFRAGILE in my opinion. Subscribers will also be able to purchase the fourth book in the leather INCERTO collection, FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS, at the subscription price. All four books are being designed to work together as a set, in the mode of the three Aristotle books.

A few notes concerning Castalia Library.

  • A THRONE OF BONES I and II are currently scheduled to ship on 16 December from the bindery. We are attempting to get them moved up on the schedule; this is yet another reminder, as if any were needed, that we would really like to get these things under our control.
  • If you no longer subscribe to Castalia Library, you are not eligible for the discounted subscribers price. We would like to avoid issuing new discount codes for each book, but if the discounts continue to be used by ex-subscribers, we will have to do so.
  • The leather JUNIOR CLASSICS VOLS. 1-6 are complete. We’re going to confirm addresses next week, then get them out. We have 2-3 goatskin as well as an unknown number of cowhide sets remaining, and they will be made available to those who wish to buy them soon.
  • A dry washcloth will suffice to remove the extraneous gold foil speckling on ETHICS and will not harm the leather. We’re looking into what happened there.
  • There are 61 copies of ETHICS remaining.

EXCERPT: This book, while standalone, is a continuation of the Incerto collection, which is a combination of a) practical discussions, b) philosophical tales, and c) scientific and analytical commentary on the problems of randomness, and how to live, eat, sleep, argue, fight, befriend, work, have fun, and make decisions under uncertainty. While accessible to a broad group of readers, don’t be fooled: the Incerto is an essay, not a popularization of works done elsewhere in boring form (leaving aside the Incerto’s technical companion).

Skin in the Game is about four topics in one: a) uncertainty and the reliability of knowledge (both practical and scientific, assuming there is a difference), or in less polite words bull**t detection, b) symmetry in human aff airs, that is, fairness, justice, responsibility, and reciprocity, c) information sharing in transactions, and d) rationality in complex systems and in the real world. That these four cannot be disentangled is something that is obvious when one has . . . skin in the game. It is not just that skin in the game is necessary for fairness, commercial efficiency, and risk management: skin in the game is necessary to understand the world.

First, it is bull***t identification and filtering, that is, the difference between theory and practice, cosmetic and true expertise, and academia (in the bad sense of the word) and the real world. To emit a Yogiber-rism, in academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world, there is.

Second, it is about the distortions of symmetry and reciprocity in life: If you have the rewards, you must also get some of the risks, not let others pay the price of your mistakes. If you inflict risk on others, and they are harmed, you need to pay some price for it. Just as you should treat others in the way you’d like to be treated, you would like to share the responsibility for events without unfairness and inequity.
If you give an opinion, and someone follows it, you are morally obligated to be, yourself, exposed to its consequences. In case you are giving economic views:

Don’t tell me what you “think,” just tell me what’s in your portfolio.

Third, the book is about how much information one should practically share with others, what a used car salesman should— or shouldn’t— tell you about the vehicle on which you are about to spend a large segment of your savings.

Fourth, it is about rationality and the test of time. Rationality in the real world isn’t about what makes sense to your New Yorker journalist or some psychologist using naive first-order models, but something vastly deeper and statistical, linked to your own survival.

JUNIOR CLASSICS LEATHER EDITIONS 1-6

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French Government Isn’t Vaccinated

Isn’t that just a tremendous surprise…

« Je me suis fait vacciner car je ne voulais laisser le sentiment que je n’accomplissais mon travail en tant que député. Je ne savais pas qu’Emmanuel Macron n’était pas vacciné ainsi que la plupart des membres du gouvernement. Et je ne savais pas qu’un nombre important de mes collègues ne l’était pas non plus. Et lorsque j’ai dis que j’étais malade après la vaccination lors de la campagne électorale, personne ne m’a écouté et on a voulu me faire taire. »

La bombe de Jean Lassalle, 10 October 2022

Translation:

“I got vaccinated because I didn’t want to leave the feeling that I was not doing my job as a deputy. I didn’t know that Emmanuel Macron was not vaccinated and neither were most members of the government. And I did not know that a significant number of my colleagues were not vaccinated either. And when I said that I was sick after the vaccination during the election campaign, nobody listened to me and they wanted to silence me.”

Somehow, I doubt it’s only the French government officials who weren’t vaccinated.

UPDATE: In COVID hearing, #Pfizer director admits: #vaccine was never tested on preventing transmission. “Get vaccinated for others” was always a lie.

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What Comes Next

Pepe Escobar observes that the British Intelligence service IM6 appears to have some idea what is being decided in Moscow:

The Brits had warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the General Staff that the Russians would be launching a “warning strike” this Monday.

What happened was no “warning strike,” but a massive offensive of over 100 cruise missiles launched “from the air, sea and land,” as Putin noted, against Ukrainian “energy, military command and communications facilities.”

MI6 also noted “the next step” will be the complete destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. That’s not a “next step:” it’s already happening. Power supply is completely gone in five regions, including Lviv and Kharkov, and there are serious interruptions in other five, including Kiev.

Over 60 percent of Ukrainian power grids are already knocked out. Over 75 percent of internet traffic is gone. Elon Musk’s Starlink netcentric warfare has been “disconnected” by the Ministry of Defense.

Shock’n Awe will likely progress in three stages.

First: Overload of the Ukrainian air defense system (already on).

Second: Plunging Ukraine into the Dark Ages (already in progress).

Third: Destruction of all major military installations (the next wave).

We shall wait and see how events proceed before placing any confidence in the predictions. But they were certainly correct about the “warning strike” on Monday. And we now know that the air defenses in Ukraine are completely unable to offer a significant defense against Russian air strikes, even when warned they are coming.

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A Malevolent Presence

The British authorities are prosecuting a nurse for murdering infants:

A nurse accused of murdering seven premature babies – and trying to kill ten more – took up to three attempts to poison infants by injecting insulin, milk or even air into their tiny bodies, a court heard today. Lucy Letby, 32, is alleged to have gone on a year-long killing spree while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital – including one child who died less than 90 minutes after being handed into her care.

Today the specially trained ICU nurse was described as a ‘constant malevolent presence’ on the Cheshire children’s unit where she allegedly killed and injured many vulnerable children – including twins. She is accused of using night shifts to launch many attacks because she knew parents were off the neonatal ward.

Several babies were allegedly poisoned with insulin and one child – known as Baby E – was murdered when Letby allegedly injected him with air, Manchester Crown Court has heard. It caused what doctors call an air embolus, which leads to strokes or heart attacks. Letby is also accused of pumping dangerous levels of milk into the premature children via feeding tubes or veins.

Once justice is served, let’s hope they proceed with the Covid and vaccine nurses. This case proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that members of the medical community are entirely capable of intentional murder despite their training.

“But what doctor or nurse would ever be complicit in actually harming people?”

A year-long killing spree is a fairly reasonable description of the recent wave of mass vaccinations.

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Tolstoy on Maupassant

I’m always fascinated by one great mind’s take on another, which is one reason why I chose Machiavelli’s Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy for the Library subscription over his more famous works. So, this review of the work of one of my favorite writers – Guy de Maupassant – by another of my favorite writers – Leo Tolstoy – is of particular interest to me.

The author was endowed with that particular gift, called talent, which consists in the author’s ability to direct, according to his tastes, his intensified, strained attention to this or that subject, in consequence of which the author who is endowed with this ability sees in those subjects upon which he directs his attention, something new, something which others did not see. Maupassant evidently possessed that gift of seeing in subjects something which others did not see. But, to judge from the small volume which I had read, he was devoid of the chief condition necessary, besides talent, for a truly artistic production.

Of the three conditions:

1) a correct, that is, a moral relation of the author to the subject,
2) the clearness of exposition, or the beauty of form, which is the same, and
3) sincerity, that is, an undisguised feeling of love or hatred for what the artist describes

Maupassant possessed only the last two, and was entirely devoid of the first. He had no correct, that is, no moral relation to the subjects described. From what I had read, I was convinced that Maupassant possessed talent, that is, the gift of attention, which in the objects and phenomena of life revealed to him those qualities which are not visible to other men; he also possessed a beautiful form, that is, he expressed clearly, simply, and beautifully what he wished to say, and also possessed that condition of the worth of an artistic production, without which it does not produce any effect, — sincerity, — that is, he did not simulate love or hatred, but actually loved and hated what he described. But unfortunately, being devoid of the first, almost the most important condition of the worth of an artistic production, of the correct, moral relation to what he represented, that is, of the knowledge of the difference between good and evil, he loved and represented what it was not right to love and represent, and did not love and did not represent what he ought to have loved and represented. Thus the author in this little volume describes with much detail and love how women tempt men and men tempt women, and even some incomprehensible obscenities, which are represented in La Femme de Paul, and he describes the labouring country people, not only with indifference, but even with contempt, as so many animals.

Particularly striking was that lack of distinction between bad and good in the story Une Partie de Campagne, in which, in the form of a most clever and amusing jest, he gives a detailed account of how two gentlemen with bared arms, rowing in a boat, simultaneously tempted, the one an old mother, and the other a young maiden, her daughter.

The author’s sympathy is during the whole time obviously to such an extent on the side of the two rascals, that he ignores, or, rather, does not see what the tempted mother, the girl, the father, and the young man, evidently the fiance of the daughter, must have suffered, and so we not only get a shocking description of a disgusting crime in the form of an amusing jest, but the event itself is described falsely, because only the most insignificant side of the subject, the pleasure afforded to the rascals, is described.

In the same volume there is a story, Histoire d’une Fille de Ferme, which Turgenev recommended to me more particularly, and which more particularly displeased me on account of the author’s incorrect relation to the subject. The author apparently sees in all the working people whom he describes nothing but animals, who do not rise above sexual and maternal love, and so the description leaves us with an incomplete, artificial impression.

The insufficient comprehension of the lives and interests of the working classes, and the representation of the men from those classes in the form of half-animals, which are moved only by sensuality, malice, and greed, forms one of the chief and most important defects of the majority of the modern French authors, among them Maupassant, not only in this story, but also in all the other stories, in which he touches on the people and always describes them as coarse, dull animals, whom one can only ridicule. Of course, the French authors must know the conditions of their people better than I know them; but, although I am a Russian and have not lived with the French people, I none the less assert that, in describing their masses, the French authors are wrong, and that the French masses cannot be as they are described. If there exists a France as we know it, with her truly great men and with those great contributions which these great men have made to science, art, civil polity, and the moral perfection of humanity, those labouring masses, which have held upon their shoulders this France and her great men, do not consist of animals, but of men with great spiritual qualities; and so I do not believe what I am told in novels like La Terre, and in Maupassant’s stories, just as I should not believe if I were told of the existence of a beautiful house standing on no foundation. It is very possible that the high qualities of the masses are not such as are described in La petit Fadette and in La Mare au Diable, but these qualities exist, that I know for certain, and the writer who describes the masses, as Maupassant does, by telling sympathetically of the “hanches” and “gorges” of Breton domestics, and with contempt and ridicule the life of the labouring people, commits a great error in an artistic sense, because he describes the subject from only one, the most uninteresting, physical side, and completely overlooks the other, the most important, spiritual side, which forms the essence of the subject.

THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT, Leo Tolstoy, 1894

It’s interesting to see that Tolstoy criticizes Maupassant for precisely the same failing exhibited by even the most skilled authors of literature, fantasy, and science fiction today. The absence of a spiritual awareness on the part of the author intrinsically limits their works, and leaves them painting with a palette devoid of true colors, as if they were photographers who possess only monochromatic film.

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What Winning Looks Like

It’s intriguing to observe the constant whiplash between the Kiev regime crowing about its totally conclusive victories over Russia and crying about how Ukraine is about to be wiped off the map.

Multiple missile strikes targeted Ukrainian cities all across the country on Monday morning, according to local officials and media, which attributed the attacks to Russia. This comes two days after a bomb damaged the strategic Crimean Bridge – which Moscow called a Ukrainian terrorist attack.

President Vladimir Zelensky confirmed the attacks throughout the country in a video address, saying numerous parts of Ukraine had come under fire, and claimed that Russia was targeting the energy infrastructure. “They want panic and chaos,” he said.

Local officials in Lviv, Kharkov, and Odessa also reported that their cities came under fire.

“As of 11:00 a.m., 11 important infrastructure facilities in eight regions and Kyiv were damaged in Ukraine. Now some areas are de-energized. We need to be prepared for temporary interruptions in electricity, water supply, and communications.”

  • Denys Shmygal, Prime Minister of Ukraine

“By its actions, the Kiev regime has actually put itself on par with international terrorist formations, with the most odious groups. It is simply impossible to leave crimes of this kind unanswered. This morning, at the suggestion of the Ministry of Defense and according to the plan of the Russian General Staff, a massive strike was carried out with high-precision long-range air, sea and land-based weapons on energy, military administration and communications facilities of Ukraine. If attempts to carry out terrorist attacks on our territory continue, Russia’s responses will be tough and will correspond in scale to the level of threats posed to the Russian Federation.”

  • Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

The missile strike on the LAMEL cosmetics warehouse was particularly informative, being an object lesson in the price of virtue signaling one’s decision to take sides. Western leaders from America to Switzerland would be well-advised to contemplate the significance of that particular strike.

So, it appears we’re entering the “fuck around and find out” phase of the situation in the aftermath of the attacks on the pipelines and the Crimean bridge. However, the soonest a winter offensive would likely begin is November, so unless the Russians have decided it’s not worth waiting for colder weather to get things rolling, this is probably just a prelude of considerably more serious air campaigns to come.

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A Forward and Fragile Defense

The Germany Army has been effectively disarmed:

The German Army has enough ammunition for only one or two days of warfare, the German edition of news website Business Insider (BI) reported on Saturday, citing defense industry and parliamentary sources. According to BI, Berlin is significantly lagging behind the NATO requirement of maintaining stocks for at least 30 days of fighting. It was said that the problem “has been known for years,” as military drills have suffered from insufficient stores.

Stockpiles were further depleted after Germany, together with many other Western countries, began sending weapons and ammunition to Ukraine after Russia launched its military operation in the neighboring state in February. The deliveries included 53,000 rounds for self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, 21.8 million rounds for firearms, and 50 bunker-buster missiles, according to the German government.

The situation with the shortage “will not improve if ammunition is removed from the Bundeswehr stocks, while corresponding orders are not placed on the defense industry at the same time,” Hans Christoph Atzpodien, CEO of the German Security and Defense Industry Association (BDSV), told BI. The outlet’s sources, meanwhile, were quoted as saying that there have been “no significant orders” for defense companies to produce more armaments.

It appears Russia can roll over not only Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but Western Europe as well, if it happens to see fit once the inevitable winter offensive starts.

Duolingo has a Russian option, right?

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They Really Think You’re Stupid

After 24 hours of celebrating the US attack on the Crimean bridge, the shameless propagandists of the Occupied West are belatedly attempting to claim Russia bombed their own bridge:

A leading Ukrainian presidential aide claimed this morning the Kerch Strait crossing carnage may have been ordered by one of Vladimir Putin’s warring commanders. Mykhailo Podolyak alleged that Russia’s FSB secret service and the defence ministry are at loggerheads in a bitter dogfight over the botched war and are trying to undermine one another’s credibility. ‘Isn’t it obvious who made [the] explosion? Truck arrived from RF [Russian Federation],’ he said.

Meanwhile, a Western diplomatic source said the bridge attack could have been commissioned from inside the Russian establishment to fatally weaken Putin and trigger his toppling. ‘It might be the SBU [Ukrainian secret service] but it also could be the first major sign of a bid from within Russia to incapacitate the Kremlin tsar,’ the source said.

Sure. Just like the Russians shelled what is now their own nuclear plant, ineptly blew up three out of four of their own pipelines, and launched their own counteroffensive against themselves. Given the level of inversion and projection being demonstrated here, we can only assume the neocons are behind all of these attacks on Russia.

More importantly, the Russians know it. It will be interesting to see if their inevitable responses are limited to the territory of Ukraine or not.

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