Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
4hr ago
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I don’t think it would be kumbayh in the Middle East if Israel suddenly disappeared, but historically the most common political arrangement in the Arab world is for there to be a large caliphate or empire dominating the region. Geographically, Israel splits the Arab world in two, preventing such an entity from forming. It might be good for the current great powers to keep the Arabs from coalescing into a single world power, but it does increase regional instability.
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You’re right that Israel is not committing a genocide. I do think it’s apartheid though. Maybe apartheid is okay in certain circumstances (ending it didn’t work out particularly well for white South Africans), but this is not a political system that is typically tolerated in the civilized world. Something like the Gaza War would have happened if one of the apartheid-era bantustans had openly declared war on White South Africa.
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I think there is an option for South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation. It would be difficult after October 7 and the Gaza War, but I think it is still possible. Israelis don’t want to do this, for understandable reasons, but they could if they collectively wanted to.
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Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination didn’t fall out of a coconut tree. He was killed by an Israeli for the explicit reason that he was willing to make peace with the Palestinians and hand over occupied land to them. This and the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre by Baruch Goldstein were massive escalations by Israeli extremists to torpedo the peace process.
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I was a lot more sympathetic to Israel as an ethnostate proof-of-concept before they dragged my country into a major war. There is a criticism of ethnonationalism that since every ethnic group considers itself God’s gift to humanity, ethnostates will be especially prone to lash-out and start wars when they don’t get the respect they think they deserve. Israel has spectacularly failed to disprove this criticism.
Quantumfreakonomics
5hr ago
$250 million to learn not to park warships in the Persian Gulf was money well spent.
Quantumfreakonomics
8hr ago
Wait, Sarker, Shrike, and Shakes are three different people?
Quantumfreakonomics
11hr ago
The Ultra-Orthodox are remarkably simple. They want to maximize the observance and study of Torah. Right now, they assess (correctly) that the State of Israel is capable of defending itself without Ultra-Orthodox soldiers. This means that Torah study and observance is maximized by staying in yeshiva and learning Torah all day. If the Ultra-Orthodox became such a large fraction of Israel’s population that the state needed them to serve in the IDF, then they would enlist/relent to conscription, because getting driven out of the Land of Israel is bad for Torah observance and study.
Venezuela signed law allowing privatization of oil companies
American oil companies are private, yes.
Political prisoners released
Oil company executives are political prisoners.
Foreign investment returning to Venezuela
Foreign investment in oil infrastructure.
Opposition leaders shown on TV again
The opposition loves oil companies.
Enemies of the state coming out of hiding
Oil companies are enemies of the state.
EDIT: A big difference between Venezuela and Iran is that capitalist “exploitation” of Venezuela’s resources will improve the lives of the people living there, but continuous US/Israeli air strikes and CIA/Mossad-backed civil unrest will not.
Quantumfreakonomics
16hr ago
Another view is that given the conditions, this isn't really the Iran war, it's the Lebanon war and the Iran war is a sideshow and a distraction. The casualties are higher in Lebanon, there are troops on the ground in Lebanon, Israel is considering expanding its territory into Lebanon, occupation will inevitably result in settlements which will not be removed, etc. Perhaps the purpose of the Iran war never had anything to do with Iran herself, which is why the goals against Iran never seemed achievable, but were instead more local to protecting the Israeli homefront against Hezbollah. The USA distracts Iran and forces it to accept Hezbollah's defeat.
Wow, another Middle East war where the Israeli interests were real but the American interests were illusory.
Quantumfreakonomics
16hr ago
My modal guess is that Trump’s negotiations rhetoric is market manipulation to buy time. He’s hoping that a surprisingly easy ground victory on one or more gulf islands will either buy political will for a larger operation or convince the regime to surrender.
Of course, that is contingent on the ground operation going well.
Quantumfreakonomics
1d ago
Is this the greatest vaguepost in Twitter history?
Quantumfreakonomics
1d ago
What’s his X handle?
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
It's possible that this is a very specific failure; that arbitrary video generation has no meaningful commercial use cases, and very limited recreational use cases. I used Sora very briefly when it came out, and I found it quite limited, with the substantial cost preventing me from toying-around to figure out what works.
It's also possible that OpenAI is strapped for cash as the AI financial bubble approaches a tipping point. OpenAI's compute committments are based on forcasted exponential revenue growth. If growth is linear or only barely superlinear, then the whole thing falls apart, with everyone holding on as best they can until the next equity sale.
NVIDIA stock is flat over the last 18 months by the way.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
It’s important to keep in mind that a sizable plurality of the actual population of these countries is seething with rage that their own governments are Western puppets siding with Israel. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. Bahrain is a “constitutional” monarchy that needed Saudi troops to put down a popular uprising. Iraq is under the control of pro-Iran militias, partially because they are locally popular and partially because they defeated the previous ruler, literal ISIS. Egypt is once again a military dictatorship because for the two years we let them try democracy they elected an Islamist government (see also: Algeria).
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
If you define Hezbollah as, “the entire Shia population of Lebanon,” then probably not. If you define Hezbollah as, “people engaging in or directly supporting militant operations,” then yes, a whole lot of innocent people got exploding pagers.
I have no idea how this didn’t kill the export market for Israeli electronics. For all we know, Mossad has the capability to kill anyone anywhere in the world with an Israeli-made chip in their car at any time.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
One point I’ll make here is that the culture of occupational safety is a lot different now than it was back in the 80s during the Tanker War. A 1% chance of someone onboard dying is not an acceptable level of risk for a civilian-crewed merchant vessel in 2026.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
I sort of feel like the same thing is happening with Clavicular. He looks like what dudes think women find attractive. Do women actually find him particularly attractive? I have no idea.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
How it started:
”Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.
For many years, you have asked for America's help. But you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let's see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
How it’s going:
”We’re going to turn your entire country into Gaza lol”
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
If you insist on a military solution, the effects of a strait closure could have been substantially mitigated.
Refilling the strategic petroleum reserve is the obvious one in hindsight.
We could have pressured the gulf countries to invest in pipeline infrastructure to bypass the strait.
We could have waited for Venezuelan oil production to ramp up (or better yet, used the added oil security to stop worrying about the Middle East for good).
We could have brought-in Ukrainian experts to teach our forces about drone warfare before we got into another conflict.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
What those who don't remember politics before Trump miss is that the people hyping-up the Mueller investigation still thought we were in the Watergate era of political scandals. Their mindset was that they just needed a fancy report in PDF format formally accusing Trump of firing Comey to cover up the Russia investigation, and then Trump would be finished.
The Supreme Court has since ruled that this is constitutionally protected conduct, but no one back in 2017 would have considered such a ruling to be possible.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
This is a fully-general counterargument that can be used to defend any bad plan.
The fact is, the things that are currently going wrong in the Middle East were not unknown unknowns. They were not even known unknowns. These were well-known pitfalls that have been discussed for years. My high-school history teacher told us in a very stern voice that the Strait of Hormuz was a massively important trade route and that the reason Iran is so dangerous is that they control it.
It was not unforseeable that Iran would close the strait. It was not unforseeable that Israel would try to force America to commit by cutting-off deescalation pathways. It was not unforseeable that a ground invasion of a Middle Eastern country would turn into a quagmire.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
This led to a hilarious examination where a female officer cries on the stand as "Licc'em Low Lisa" plays.
Why are the court exhibits uncropped screencaptures from YouTube? Did the cops think that having Penguinz0 thumbnails about the case in the sidebar would help them?
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
The doctor shortage is so bad that Emory University ended up hiring the daughter of the Iranian defense minister.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
There is a difference between a uranium enrichment program and a nuclear weapons program, but there’s not that much of a difference.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
and then sit on our thumbs when they renege on those promises 6-monthes later.
Is this a reference to anything? Was Iran in violation of the JCPOA prior to Trump pulling out? It looks to me like the USA was the one who reneged on their promise.
There is a trend I'm noticing where all of the "good" arguments for the war in Iran would also have applied to the war in Iraq.
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Vague suspicions of WMD-related wrongdoing.
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We've already been at war for years. We just need to finish the job.
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Killing our enemies is good actually.
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State-sponsored terrorism.
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The regime oppresses its own people.
I want to know why these arguments were wrong when applied to Iraq circa 2003, but right when applied to Iran in 2026. In the alternative, I want the case for why the Iraq War was a good idea.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
I'm glad you brought up the Kharg Island thing, because it is the perfect example of showy tactical dominance that acomplishes zero strategic objectives.
All of the oil on Kharg Island is Iranian oil. The only purpose the garrison on Kharg serves is to protect the island's oil infrastructure. Drones from the mainland can still reach the Kuwaiti shipping lanes. The strategic situation before and after the airstrikes is... exactly the same.
It’s actually worse than that. There is no viable Palestinian state that consists of a tiny densely-populated coastal exclave, plus a much larger landlocked region with no navigable waterways.
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