Pigeon
coo coo
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User ID: 237
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
I think it was reasonably easy to infer that given the text in the original argument --
5/5! I had a similar fear of "this seems too easy I must be missing something" for some of these.
I do think for #3,
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
Guerilla warfare is a defensive strategy against symmetrically matched opponents.
Surely you mean "asymmetrically"?
That said, I agree. I was more quibbling with this part of an above comment.
That last one is the most important. No "guerrilla" or "terrorist" insurgency has ever won a civil war against a domestic enemy.
If we take "no guerrilla or terrorist insurgency has ever won a civil war" as "no group has won a civil war while still being guerrillas" rather than "no group starting out as guerrillas has won a civil war", the number of eligible groups you could apply this to changes.
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
For what it is worth, the diction and grammar makes this seem less likely to be AI to me.
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
As an aside, see this r/askhistorians comment about a Song dynasty literati who got domesticated by his cat.
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
Yeah, no disagreement — it’s as benign as it can get, really. I actually thought this sort of habit came from the West though!
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
The close analogue to that might be med students who are tempted to take them to cope with the enormous amounts of coursework, but I have not heard of abuse at rates >> than any other class of students.
I think the most unique and widespread-enough example I can think of with medics “misusing” a drug more than other professions would be beta-blockers prior to interviews and exams.
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
Mao probably counts. The Houthis count. The Syrian rebels probably count.
I think it depends heavily on what it sounds as "guerrilla or terrorist insurgency" -- do they have to stay guerrilla the whole time?
Pigeon
coo coo
11mo ago
Whatever the reputation of their leaders today, clearly many rank-and-file Soviets and Nazis of the time also weren't averse to harming civilians, punishing prisoners and acting in a non-chivalrous manner...
For example, if the distinction between wheat- and rice-growing parts of China really exists, that's fascinating.
My guess is that the specific statement -- that rice-farmers are more interdependent, holistic, less prone to creativity, etc., while wheat-farmers are the reverse -- is from some highly cited papers from Thomas Talheim. You might find similar speculation in previous decades about how rice-farming promotes a culture of hard work and incremental progress (etc etc.) compared to wheat farming which is less rewarding per joule of human effort spent, invoked in a similar manner as how the Protestant ethic used as a rationale for differences in development in European/Euro-descended countries.
Outside of that, there are definite stereotypes -- both premodern and modern -- about the differences between northern and southern Chinese, but usually seem to be of the vein that northerners are more honest and hardy and brash (and uncultured etc.), while southerners are more savvy and shrewd (and more effete and cowardly etc.)
(I make no comment on the validity of either.)
Likewise, I never thought of the fact that Europe suffered the Black Plague while China remained saturated, and what effect that might have had on their respective trajectories.
This is a partial hypothesis for the Great Divergence: The Black Death, + other 14th century wars and calamities, wiped out >33% of Europe's population, which lead to a significant increase (almost double?) in wages and the decline of feudalism. During this time, higher wages, lower rents, higher costs to trade e.g. compared to intra-China trade, and other factors produced large-scale supply/demand disequilibria after the Black Death that increased the demand for labour-saving technology as well as the incentives for innovation from each class of society e.g. from people no longer being serfs.
On the other hand, it would be negative EV for a Chinese merchant or industrialist -- who had lower labour costs to deal with and more efficient internal markets -- to spend a lot on innovation, when you could just spend more money on hiring more people. And this is before we add in things like the shift to neo-Confucianism in the Ming period, awful early-Ming economic policy, Qing paranoia etc.
For what it's worth, I don't find this to be anywhere near a complete explanation. There is a corresponding divergence within Europe of countries that maintained that level of growth in per capita income and those who didn't. China also has had its share of upheavals and famines without a corresponding shift in this sense (although arguably none were as seismic population-wise as the Black Death was for Europe), and more recent reconstruction of historical Chinese wages does see them near their peak at the start of each dynasty and dropping off gradually as the dynasty goes on, which both kinda confirms the supply/demand effect of reduced population on wages after social turbulence but also doesn't seem to really map neatly onto any bursts of innovation. Additionally, the period of time associated with rapid innovation in imperial China, the Tang-Song period, is associated with a population increase.
But even if it doesn't explain China, I think it at least explains the European story partially, about how potential preconditions for industrialisation and scientific development were met.
I thought this was the med reg's job in the UK?
Is this scope creep?!?!
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