Tag: philosophy

On the Correction of Others

Dear Smart Boys,

Stop correcting people who aren’t requesting criticism, comments, or correction. Literally no one appreciates unsolicited correction, even on the off-chance that it is entirely, 100-percent, correct, which it usually isn’t. As a general rule, if they want editorial, they’ll ask for it. If they haven’t, they didn’t.

Sometimes people are just wrong, and that’s okay. In fact, that’s to be expected. Remember MPAI and file them away as people to ignore in the future. You’re not the Truth Police.

If you ever wondered why people don’t like you, this is why.

It’s really not that hard to allow stupid people to say stupid things, or to permit smart people to say strange and confusing things that you don’t understand, without interference.

UPDATE: To precisely no one’s surprise, least of all mine, the Gabtards didn’t hesitate to demonstrate their literal retardery.

You literally just did what you said you didn’t want other people to do.

Since apparently it is necessary to spell out the obvious, because MPAI, I will note that a general expression of one’s opinion about comportment is not criticism, commentary, or correction concerning any particular individual, and therefore is clearly not part of the set of irritating behaviors I am addressing.

DISCUSS ON SG

This Could Not Be Verified

Not only is it impossible to verify Ukraine’s claims of Russian losses in the Special Military Operation, it is impossible to take them seriously on a statistical basis.

The scale of Russian troop losses in Ukraine has tipped 21,000 as Putin’s war rumbles into its third month today.

The latest statistics, published by the Ukrainian Land Forces this morning, suggest 21,800 Russian fighters have been killed amid bitter resistance from Ukraine’s armed forces and territorial defence units – though this figure could not be verified.

Meanwhile, the land forces claim to have dealt massive damage to Russia’s military equipment and machinery.

A total of 873 tanks are said to have been destroyed, along with 2238 armoured vehicles, 179 planes, 154 helicopters and 408 artillery systems.

According to the same article, “On February 24, Russia’s land army consisted of 280,000 full-time active soldiers compared with Ukraine’s 125,600.”

Now, the number of casualties in war is always a multiple of the number of fatalities. For example, the USA lost 407,316 KIA during WWII and 671,846 WIA out of 16.4 million troops, for a Cas/Fat ratio of 1.65. As medical science improved, this ratio increased over time, to 2.6 for Vietnam, 7.2 for Iraq, and 8.6 for Afghanistan.

So, if the most recent US war is a reasonable comparative, the Ukrainian claims would indicate an additional 180,600 wounded Russians for a total of 201,600 Russian casualties, which would mean that the Russian casualty rate of 72 percent exceeds that of the German, Japanese, and Soviet militaries during the entirety of World War II. And at 7.5 percent, the fatality rate is three times the US WWII fatality rate of 2.5 percent in just two months.

In other words, we can state with certainty that these reports are highly improbable, and logically conclude that they are false.

Clown World as Crucible

AC contemplates a thought that I, too, have thought before. What if we’re not the targets of clown world?

One of our greatest weaknesses is we tend to ascribe so much to stupidity. They have even fed us the meme, “Never ascribe to malice that which can be ascribed to stupidity.” But those we face have very smart people in very high places, telling all the idiot puppets in positions of power that we see what to do. More often than not, I think the planners and the puppet string pullers know exactly what they are doing. However if this is the case, it does not make sense in the context of the farmer looking to breed more docile, complacent sheep. It might make sense however if there were a farmer looking at the current crop of obese trannies, skinny manlets, and ultra-left NPCs, and deciding he needed to do some major selective breeding to salvage his herd’s reproductive viability.

Why do we assume that the elite want the fat, mindless, degenerate, and self-sterilizing subhumans that their policies are producing in such quantities lately? Of what possible use can they be to anyone? If we are ruled by an arrogant and aesthetic elite that values bloodlines, intelligence, and talent, is it not at least possible that clown world is a crucible intentionally designed to eliminate the weak, the stupid, and the ugly?

And isn’t that more in keeping with the beliefs and behaviors of the pagan elites of the past? I’m not saying that’s necessarily the case, I’m simply observing that almost every aspect of clown world appears to be designed to lure the susceptible into the consensual destruction of their selves and their genetic lines.

Regardless, our responsibility to resist and refuse to submit to it remains the same.

DISCUSS ON SG

That’s An Easy One

For anyone asking me “Maybe you should give up Crimea and Donbas in exchange for peace?” Before asking this question, name me the specific region in your country you would be willing to give up if Putin started bombing your cities.

Certainly. In order of preference:

  1. New York City
  2. Hollywood and Los Angeles
  3. Washington D.C.
  4. San Francisco
  5. New Jersey
  6. Miami

And if Mr. Putin would be so good as to bomb them before the USA handed them over, so much the better.

DISCUSS ON SG

We Never Needed Them

The Big Bear drops some hard truths on us.

It dawned on me this morning that @realdonaldtrump is the last significant gatekeeper before Nationalism. They’ve invested so much into his brand that they can’t let him ride off into the sunset post 2020 and they desperately need him to hold the line for disillusioned Americans.

He couldn’t get Gab to submit to kushner’s (((speech codes))), Parler & GettR were duds and Truth Social is the laughing stock of the internet.

This is the last, best move to gatekeep Nationalism. Another branded investment ‘hero’ (Elon) swoops in to save the day & restore the Don on twitter.

You don’t need these false idols, fake heros. They don’t have the power to save you & even if they did there’s no chance they would. They don’t care about your interests.

The good news is, you can build your own future. You never needed them.

Putting one’s faith in a media celebrity because he says one or two things that you like is always going to end in disappointment. Every single time.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Four Eras of Villainy

Alexander Macris provides a typically astute analysis of the evolution of the concept of the villain from ancient to postmodern:

In the introduction to his magisterial opus After Virtue, Alasdair Macintyre describes postmodern society as having fallen into a dark age, a post-apocalyptic state. But this is not the apocalypse of Mad Max. The apocalypse has destroyed, not our technology, but our morality: “We possess simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have… lost our comprehension of morality,” he explains. Postmodern society does not know what good is.

Being unable to understand good leaves society unable to understand evil; and so instead society pathologizes it. Evil becomes a psychological state that results from personal trauma, from some crucial moment when the world failed to show someone compassion, empathy, or trust, or left them exposed to the world’s cruelty. Every postmodern villain is a victim. Behind every figure of terror we find a terrorized figure.

Darth Vader appears as a towering tyrant in Star Wars IV. But the prequels reveal that Anakin Skywalker was a victim: enslaved as a child, separated from his mother, forbidden to marry the woman he loved, rejected in his aspirations by the Jedi council, dismembered by his former mentor, and then involuntarily made into a cyborg by his new one.

Hannibal Lechter appears in Silence of the Lambs as the quintessence of villainy, brilliant, cold, manipulative, remorseless. In the sequel Hannibal, we learn that he’s a victim: During World War II, the kind and gentle young Hannibal was forced to eat his sister by cannibal soldiers.

Lord Voldemort appears in Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone as the most powerful and evil sorcerer in the Wizarding World. But later we learn Tom Riddle was a victim, the product of abandonment by his mother. J.K. Rowling even says “everything would have changed if Merope [his mother] had survived and raised him herself and loved him.”

Kylo Ren enters Star Wars VII as a dark Jedi so powerful that he can halt a blaster bolt in mid-air. But Star Wars VIII reveals Ben Solo was a victim who felt abandoned by his father and betrayed by the paranoia of his mentor, Jake Skywalker.

The Joker, most infamous and vile of all of Batman’s foes, is revealed in his eponymous 2019 movie to have been a victim, too. Arthur Fleck is a mentally ill bastard rejected by his birth-father and humiliated by his coworkers.

Postmodern culture stops at nothing in its relentless transformation of villain into victim. Cruella de Vil is the most recent example. She appears in One Hundred and One Dalmations as a wealthy socialite whose life goal is to murder puppies so she can wear their skins. But the 2021 movie Cruella reveals that she, too, is a victim: Her birth-mother abandoned her and her adopted mother was killed by a pack of vicious dalmations. (I’m not making this up.)

The postmodern villain, then, is just a moral cripple. Psychological trauma has ruined the villain’s ethical system just as spinal trauma might ruin a person’s nervous system. We are meant to feel bad that they do bad. It’s not their fault.

I have to admit, I’m naturally prone to writing medieval villains, although I tend to put a modern spin on their self-perception. Anyhow, read the whole thing, it’s an interesting piece that will provide you with a useful analytical reading tool.

DISCUSS ON SG

Why Trump Failed

Donald Trump’s failure to cross the Rubicon is explained by his reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Former President Donald Trump admitted he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin was only trying to ‘negotiate’ when he sent troops to the Ukraine border and was ‘surprised’ when the Kremlin leader actually invaded the country.

‘I’m surprised — I’m surprised. I thought he was negotiating when he sent his troops to the border. I thought he was negotiating,’ Trump told the Washington Examiner during a Tuesday evening phone interview from his Mar-a-Lago estate. ‘I thought it was a tough way to negotiate but a smart way to negotiate.’

Trump, who seemingly developed a close working relationship with Moscow during his presidency, said Putin has ‘very much changed’ since the pair last worked together.

‘I figured he was going to make a good deal like everybody else does with the United States and the other people they tend to deal with — you know, like every trade deal. We’ve never made a good trade deal until I came along,’ Trump said. ‘And then he went in — and I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed. It’s a very sad thing for the world. He’s very much changed.’

I’ve mentioned this observation before, but Trump’s character has never been demonstrated more clearly than by this comment about Vladimir Putin. Trump’s strength is that he is a legitimately great negotiator. However, as with all successful men, his weaknesses are related to his strengths. Trump is a talker, not a doer. He is a negotiator, not a warrior. He conflates speech with action. He’s not a fighter, and never having been punched in the face or thrown down another man in the judo ring, he doesn’t understand men who are.

Of course he thought Putin was negotiating by mobilizing the Russian Army, threatening an invasion, and issuing an ultimatum, because he thinks everything is a negotiation. Hence his failure to take action after the fraudulent election of 2020; there probably wasn’t any chance of him actually doing so even if the US military could have been relied upon to obey its Commander-in-Chief – something we can’t know either way despite what various people claim – because for him even an approach to the Rubicon would have been a negotiating point rather than the beginning of a military action.

Remember, the Senate was massively surprised when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome, because despite his military successes on the Mediterranean and in Gaul, they knew him to be a skilled politician and negotiator. And negotiators always prefer jaw-jaw to war-war.

So Trump is a negotiator and Putin is a fighter. What, one wonders, is Xi Xinping?

DISCUSS ON SG

One in Thirty

It’s almost certain that someone you know is going to die of the long-term adverse affects of the vaxx, if Karl Denninger’s calculations are anywhere close to the mark.

One in thirty. That’s my latest “best guess” when it comes to people who took the jabs for permanent and material impairment of their health.

One in thirty.

Incidentally that might be conservative; I would not be surprised if its worse than that.

My estimates in this regard keep going the “wrong” way; what was a couple months ago one in a couple hundred is now close to ten times worse than that.

This is yet another data set, this time from Israel and Pfizer which was intentionally suppressed and is still being intentionally suppressed.

1 in 30 is about 3% of all recipients. There will be a skew but exactly where it lands is not yet known. There is a furious attempt at present to deflect the most-obvious and outrageous examples of harm, specifically cardiac damage in young men, with the claim that “its transitory.”

That’s flat-out BS; heart damage is nearly always both cumulative and permanent.

What’s also in the data and extremely serious is this:

Roughly 24% of people with pre-existing autoimmune disorders, and 5%-10% of those with diabetes, hypertension, and lung and heart disease, also reported a worsening of their condition.

That’s not 1 in 30 — its anywhere from one in 20 to one in FOUR!

These are not transient problems folks; they’re disability-enhancing or even disability-causing health problems.

Nor is the one in ten women under 54 reporting menstrual changes. This is not normal and again is wildly greater than one in thirty.

This isn’t an abstract thing and it isn’t a joke. A member of my family – fully vaxxed and boosted – died at the age of 42 ten days ago of a pulmonary edema. And while the jury is still out concerning the official cause of death and we don’t actually know it was the vaxx… we all know it was the vaxx.

So, it’s important to be tranquil and mentally prepared about the transience of life, because the chances are pretty high that you know more than 30 people.

How admirable!
to see lightning and not think
life is fleeting.

DISCUSS ON SG

Reflections on Organizational Success

Dominic Cummings shared some practical thoughts on his commenter’s notes on the obstacles that organizational Machiavellians always pose to the core objectives of the organization:

  1. Boris types [self-servers with zero interest in the mission – VD] are everywhere.
  2. difference with Groves, Mueller, Bob Taylor et al is that they align talent with a goal and squeeze Boris types out, with extreme prejudice. some of those environments are relatively civilised, some (e.g S Jobs) less so, no doubt.
  3. near everybody is calculating about themselves but the situation around them changes calculations – if people think ‘leadership is great and i agree with the goal and i love being here and others are here for the mission’, like at PARC, then selfish calculations shrink (not disappear) to being overwhelmed by what’s important
  4. the organisations that really change the world POSITIVELY have other things that dominate – boris d stuff was in no10 in 2020 when i was there, but people knew there was something else. now they know there’s nothing else.
  5. think you’re right about a tendency to entropy! as you say… groves, mueller, taylor… all pushed out… and the succession problem…
  6. the widespread failure even to see these problems provides opportunity, but… if it were easy everyone would do it…

The succession problem to which he refers is tremendous, and it is one to which I have given considerable thought over the years. The three primary challenges that I have identified concerning it are as follows:

  1. The loyal lieutenants are never candidates to succeed the leader. The skills involved in building and leading an enterprise seldom have anything whatsoever to do with being an effective long-time loyal subordinate. History has demonstrated this again and again and again, and yet very few loyal lieutenants ever grasp that they are literally some of the worst possible successors or that their skill set is entirely inadequate for the task to which they aspire. It is imperative that they understand this: deserve’s got nothing to do with it.
  2. The leader must not hang on too long. I’ve personally witnessed several organizations go down the tubes because the leader simply couldn’t bear to give up the status of being in control, even though he observably no longer had any interest in being responsible for actively running things.
  3. Equality among successors is futile, dangerous, and counterproductive, in both management and ownership terms. About the only thing more destructive a man can do than divide the ownership of an organization equally among his heirs is to leave it to his wife or to a charity organization.

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