WestphalianPeace
No bio...
User ID: 184
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I think we need to make a clear demarcation between race vs ethnicity even if the one often incorporates the other. The old Yamato Nadeshiko trope is a clear example of something that's like 90% behavior, 10% physical attributes.
So personally I think ethnicity groups are constructive/useful. I think a physical attribute description like race is only useful when it correlates with ethnicity with such overlap that it's meaningful information at a glance. People want the ethnicity information so badly that in monoracial societies people often play shibboleth games to figure out what someone's sub-identity is. Naming conventions/accent is a common one. My sister worked in a town that specifically renamed itself so that anyone who pronounced it as it's naturally read would be immediately outed as an outsider. To pronounce it 'correctly' you had to pronounce it incorrectly. Done after the American Civil War to identify Yankees. And I've heard that in Ireland a way to checking if someone is protestant or catholic is ask them what school they went to growing up. No idea if that information is outdated or just rumor though. But it illustrates the point.
On a racial level if a 3rd generation japanese-american visited Japan I think it's perfectly reasonable for the local Japanese to initiate conversation with him in Japanese after a quick glance and then be surprised when he only speaks English. But it would also be reasonable if the native Japanese looked at the 3rd gen, had a second to process all the other information, the manner of dress, hair style, posture, gait, social manners, nearby company, and concluded 'I bet that's an American'
There is also one other issue of identity groups being useful. And that is the tragedy of victimization on the basis of ones attributed race/ethnicity by others. As illustrated in the movie Operation Finale. A young woman is unknowingly courting the son of Adolf Eichmann. When Israeli agents explain to her that she's at risk to she protests that she and her family aren't Jews, her grandfather was Jewish but her father converted and they are good Catholics. To which the agents respond rightfully 'you think that matters to him?'.
I think it's useful, inevitable even, for people to form identity groups based off of mutual aid against threats they each can't avoid by disclaimer.
I hope my writing is precise. This is such an awful topic to discuss because of the constant ambiguous 2 step people perform going back and forth between race, ethnicity, and individual's position in race-ethnic-cloud-space.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
A comprehensive history of how European Americans have imagined themselves overtime, the social conditions preceding each shift, when Reaction happened and how it manifested, leading up to the present day US, UK, & Canada.
In the podcast a lot of your comments seemed focused on Why not sort for the Cultural Trait Directly (The high IQ Ugandan) as well as Why focus on this broadest possible identity group (proxy of a proxy of a proxy). He doesn't really address point 1, but the entire book is about the inevitable social patterns people display regarding point 2.
Kaufmann traces over time how ethnic shifts intensify otherwise dormant identifications (case studies in voting patterns & self identification in the same city at 5%, 10%, and then 30% Hispanic. How previously blase National Symbols become are suddenly realized to be Ethnic Distinction symbols once the population of an area sharply shifts. Tipping points movement patterns in the UK mirroring the US), distinguishes between ethnic stories of 'who are we' changes vs how intermarriage may create more colorism distinctions, uses mono-racial but multiethnic societies as case studies for what happens when societies experience massive shifts over a short amount of time (Northern Ireland, Antigua, Ivory Coast).
Briefly flipping through it again (it's been a few years) It's really a mostly empirical work. As far as I can tell Kaufmann's primary adversary is less the cultural right than the old economic focused left. I'd contrast it with Mark Blyth's "Angrynomics" which makes the old left case for economics as the primary driver of social forces as an explanation for Trumps victory in 2016 and the broader populist shift in Europe. Kaufmann hammers over and over that the cultural conflict over ethnicity explains far more of the data in self-identification, voting patterns, school choice, internal migration, de facto spatial segregation, and support for X or Y policy.
It's most salient chapters for the non-academic are the final fourth and final. Kaufmann both extrapolates what will happens and then also illustrates a few plausible near future scenarios depending on how society responds. His go to example for contrast is Mauritius vs Mexico, which stand in for a closed off society vs an open mixed one.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
There is also the issue of budgets. It costs more and more to make a video game. How big did a studio need to be to make a JRPG for the ps2 vs how big does it need to be for the ps4. As it gets more costly to make a console game the harder it is to justify taking a risk on an interesting narrative. I loved Specs Ops: The Line and I maintain that it's the best way to read Heart of Darkness. But I simply can't imagine it getting made in this environment.
PC gaming is getting better and better though, if only through accumulation over time. And if you consider visual novels like Utawarerumono to count as video games then things have never been better. More top 5% of visual novels are out then ever before. I remember when it was regarded as an unprecedented victory when we got VNDB's 3rd most highly rated VN (Muv Luv Alternative), let alone the more obscure stuff, or legendary H games like the Rance series, Evenicle, or Dohna Dohna.
On a more narrative stories with plots, etc point we did get Disco Elysium, which was pure lightening in a bottle never to be regained. If you have not played it before it simply must be experienced. Suzerain may count, although it's characters are more expressions of political factions that exist and the real character is the nature of Turkiye post WW-2. But books have used individuals to express such situations for a very long time now.
Overall I think both your initial argument and your critique of my own are strong.
Perhaps it's that when graphics were bad and gameplay restricted that one of the only options left was to rely on strong writing. But now that graphics are good pretty much everywhere and gameplay design is a fairly well mastered craft there is just not as much pressure to perform on narrative. But that's just an intuition.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
This is a great list of narratively strong games but I think this misses something unique in how video games deliver narrative. The interactive nature of video games means that the reader/player can experience narrative through gameplay itself. Video games are distinct in this player experiential means of narrative communication.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for example has the player personally experiencing being beaten down by it's punishing combat system, then getting passingly good at that system, getting over their fears within that system, and then experiencing mastery over it. The endboss line "Hesitation is defeat" is not just a good character line, it is an expression of what is being experienced by both the in-game character and also the player. You the player have to get past your desire for safety and instead fight on the knifes edge, and overcome. Your experience mirrors the character's own experience of repeated trial, overcoming of the desire for safety, and success. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
Victoria 2 has no narrative at all. It's a grand strategy game full of mathematical expressions of interest groups, migrations, military power, & prestige. But through repeated games you the player experience the narrative of what it means to be a nation amidst Great Power politics. Of the iron faced incentives structures set by the world around you. Play as france and you may find yourself willing to go to war over this pointless piece of land in Africa no one had ever heard before called Fashoda just as an excuse to start a war to devastate a nation simply to avoid them overcoming you economically and subsequently militarily. So you have to go to war now, before it's too late. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
Frostpunk is a city builder that takes place in a steampunk Victorian Era cold driven apocalypse. There are a few dialogues to set the tone or inform you about what's causing the next crisis. But overwhelmingly the narrative is told through decision making. The first time you play (before repetition causes desensitization) you sit grim faced at each challenge. You may demand people work extreme hours with no rest. Children into coal mines. The butchery of innocent sick and wounded just to make room for the next batch and because it's not worth it to recover them when food is so low. The sincere temptation of dictatorship or religious fanaticism just to keep control of the populace long enough to make it to the next day. 'we can always loosen things up later' you tell yourself. Your jaw has been clenched for three hours without realizing it as you make Sophies Choice tradeoff decisions that you deem necessary because your people are all that's left and The City Must Survive. But there is little dialogue, just experience.
I think video games have a really powerful means of getting a person to emotionally understand a narrative or setting in a way that books and movies simply canot. It's different to read an idea or see it versus being personally constricted by a system and condemned to navigate a world within it's rules. So while I think your list is a fantastic set of games, a golden age even, I think your comment on decline since the ps4 overlooks how games more broadly can communicate narrative outside of the traditional considerations of dialogue or imagery.
Imagine Shinigami Eyes but applied to people who merely engage seriously with an author.
I want to be able to talk with progressive minded people that 2+2=4 without a tag next to my name that's the same as the one next to Walt's and have my thoughts dismissed out of hand.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
Is there any desire out there for a book review of Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann by someone who is not of Walt Bismarck's milieu?
It was brought up in the podcast and address's a lot of what Yasine brings up. But it's also a bloody tome to reread and something that someone without context of who I actually am could use to immediately disqualify any other points I may make in the future. So I'm reluctant to just put it out there.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
Ommegang Witte
Spring is here. The weather is warming up. Stout season is done and it's time to embrace lighter beers again. The beer is a Belgian white ale, heavy with coriander & orange peel. Just a delight everytime.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
dammit how did I know that would be a video of Kensington before I even clicked it.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
Despite the creator's pseudonym being Thames (implying British) I suspect the creator is actually Canadian. Either Old Stock Anglo-Canadian or the 90's generation of Cantonese/Korean first gen Canadian. There's also a smaller but real possibility of earlier Indian immigrant family who moved to Toronto specifically to get out of India and now feels like the Old World is chasing after them.
There is a quip later in the video about Indians & Tim Hortons. That's a Canadian specific stereotype. Nobody from East Anglia or Texas would have strong associations about Tim Hortons. In the US the association would be between Indians and 7/11, Dunkin Donuts, or even Motel chains. The UK I'm sure has it's equivalent. But the association of first resort would not be Tim Hortons.
I therefor conclude that the creator was born and raised in Brampton, Ontario and born in 2000. Brampton was extremely European pre-90s, 70% European in 96', and 60% European in 2001. It's now 18% European (mostly retirees) and 52% South Asian. These are circumstances were people falling into hate-spirals become a real possibility.
When Algeria was willing to commit ethnic cleansing ("by suitcase or coffin") it's population of French Europeans in Algeria was ~10%. Demographic shifts can make people go into dark places.
I am, of course, making up the exact age and location out of the flimsiest of pretenses. But I'm thoroughly convinced this is just another propaganda effort in the ongoing Canadian ethnic tension that now exists.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
If you are a mostly-lurker and you have that itch that crosses the line that stops you from posting it's often something others either appreciate the thought behind or passion behind.
So congrats! You are now quite literally in the top percent of posters! Tens of thousands of lurkers. Thousands of posters. Dozens of AAQCs.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
It was! Thank you so much! I'd thought it lost to me for good.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
there used to be a very interesting article shared around on occasion about anti-suffragettes. Pointing out that a lot of suffragettes at the time used to assert ideas that expanding the vote would create World Peace because women would never vote for war and other now seemingly ridiculous claims. and that a lot of the actual convincing wasn't based around assuring people of the virtue of expansion so much as arguing the logical continuity of universal suffrage. A "might as well" convincement rather than a moral crusade. Or that there used to be a unique moral claim that women had when they did interefere because they were seen as apolitical. That the history of the movement as understand by the common man has been pretty much forgotten.
Of course I don't know whether it's true or not, but I've never been able to refind it. I'd love if anyone here still has a link to it.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
that was always my issue. I find the combat system to be too opaque.
EU4: First more morale, then more discipline. Have enough artillery. use terrain. done.
CK3: Good Knights. Good men-at-arms. have more troops. men at arms. done.
Victoria 3: Don't ever go to war. Just build tall. comfy. done.
Victoria 2: Enough infantry to fill the frontline. Enough artillery to do damage. Some cav for early game capture.
Stellaris: A confusing as figuring out HOI4 Navy.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I never could get a full grasp of Stellaris. And the new ck3 expansion is just okay. After the End 2 released on steam though. Shame they removed the California rationalists big Yud lore.
Suzerain is unique as a western VN. And it's hard. But pulling off the Great Sordish Recovery is incredibly satisfying.
It's also a great way to understand the struggles of post ww2 Turkiya
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
"Suzerain" finally got it's "Kingdom of Rizia" expansion. Still rough around the edges and falls prey to purple prose but it's still a fun expansion to a unique game.
Did a reformist diplomatic run. Next is to do an Absolutist militarist run.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
This is excellent stuff! With this place off reddit, not advertising elsewhere, and slowly developing it's own jargon things like this are great for legibility for newcomers.
"Westphalian....From a series of treaties in 1648. We also have a member with this as part of his username."
Hey that's me! Hi everyone!
It's an honor to be a recognized name enough to make this list. I don't comment that often but I like to think that I have a pretty good AAQC-to-comment-ratio to compensate. Actually AAQC as shorthand should probably also make the list.
A "prominent people" list may also be useful at somepoint. If only to explain why everything is on the main thread and then suddenly this Kulak guy thinks he's important enough to justify his own thread that's just a link to his substack. Which makes sense in context but must seem kinda bizarre from afar.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
Remember the second half of On War when Clausewitz just starts getting really nerdy about old Napoleonic tactics involving skirmishers and such? The Idealism philosophical book isn't useful for the tactical and operational scale. And the tactics he spends the second half on are hilariously out of date.
So I'm less passionate about the idea of the average military personnel pouring over the book than I am about the very idea of establishing On War's prestige in the eyes of the laymen. Sun Tzu has some name recognition and some people have even pretended to read his book. But Clausewitz is pretty much forgotten by the non-engaged public unless you are some kinda warnerd.
But the next time some genuinely asks me "I don't get it. why didn't we just nuke Afghanistan?" I wish I could use an argument from authority using quotes from Clausewitz. Since people think with crude heuristics and assumed knowledge (no condescension. we are all condemned to this) I wish his very basics could be expressed and then get a sage nod of 'well if Clausewitz said so then I guess so" simply because they recognize the name drop. I have managed to actually get normal people to take seriously that war has economic costs by pointing out Sun Tzu.
There's also an effort post somewhere about how obsessions' with winning in the operational sense undermines grasp of the strategic/political reality. You'd think the Nazi's won the war for all the gushing people still have over Rommel and the first year of Barbarossa.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I would back On War if only to get it across to those seeking power that the point is to achieve a goal. it's to instantiate the world you desire. Too many find power, exercise that power, and then are befuddled when they didn't get what they want.
"But I won. I won the fight/beat the army/socially humiliated the opponent. Why don't they give up?"
well, if you didn't get what you want then you didn't actually win now did you? Art of War is great for impressing upon someone that they should maximize their chances of winning On War is great for impressing upon someone that they should know what winning looks like ahead of time and then pursue victory. Not the other way around.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
at risk of a low effort warning for memeing.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
The vast majority of this forum is atheist/agnostic. Some are Christian. But the numbers have to be seen to be believed
Source: Tracingwoodgrains's First Annual Survey, N = 885
Agnostic: 23%
Other Atheist 13.6%
Atheist Humanist 27.8%
Atheist Antitheist 12.7%
Making the total non-believer population round nicely to 77%. A little bit more if you include those who put down things like "catholic but lazy, not really believing" or "Taoist".
A census of what percent of the US is atheistic is difficult to pinpoint. An atheistic secular Jew may decide when asked on a polling question that his religion as ethno-religion is more important then a discreet theological claim and thus when the pollster asks "what religion are you" he answers Jewish. Even though when later asked 'do you believe in a God" he responds with a clear no. So too may the no longer believing Catholic who raises their kid in the church and keeps their thoughts to themselves because their Catholicism is too intertwined with their ethnicity to be unwoven. There is no contradiction here, just note that how big or small you want atheists to appear does depend on what precisely you are asking.
But for the simple "what religion are you" question. "Atheist" got 2% in 2007 and 4% in 2023. Source: Pew Research 2023 National Public Opinion Survey
What makes this forum so outrageously non-representative compared to the US population as a whole is not only that 4% vs 77% number, but also that the First Annual Motte survey also asked "what religion were you raised in". 30% were raised broadly non-religious. Meaning the average Motteizen isn't just non-religious, they are someone who was immersed and walked away. They say there's no zealot like a convert and I think this applies just as well to deconversion.
So if this forum has 3x as many explicitly anti-theists as the atheist population of the US as a whole and population here is more atheistic by literally 15x as much then your question transforms into something a little bit different. It's not just 'why does this forum broadly...' but rather 'why is a forum of this specific belief breakdown treating religion with such respect'
And for that I return us to perhaps the source. In favor of Niceness, Community, And Civilization, by Scott Alexander
I seek out people who signal that they want to discuss things honestly and rationally. Then I try to discuss things honestly and rationally with those people. I try to concentrate as much of my social interaction there as possible.So far this project is going pretty well. My friends are nice, my romantic relationships are low-drama, my debates are productive and I am learning so, so much.
And people think “Hm, I could hang out at 4Chan and be called a ‘fag’. Or I could hang out at Slate Star Codex and discuss things rationally and learn a lot. And if I want to be allowed in, all I have to do is not be an intellectually dishonest jerk.”
And so our community grows. And all over the world, the mysterious divine forces favoring honest and kind equilibria gain a little bit more power over the mysterious divine forces favoring lying and malicious equilibria.
Andrew thinks I am trying to fight all the evils of the world, and doing so in a stupid way. But sometimes I just want to cultivate my garden.
Or as Our Own Tracingwoodgrains brought up iwhen trying to explain this place in On Mottes and Mythologies
It’s pretty simple. I remember the kid I was, born into and seriously committed to a set of beliefs that I would need to seriously examine and step away from later in life. I remember just how rare it was to have a candid, good-faith discussion with people on the other side. I remember just how damaging the Arthur Chus both in and against my community were, how much unnecessary pain they caused. And if there’s any chance in an increasingly polarized world to build a space that allows that kid to honestly discuss his most controversial, difficult opinions and get sincere engagement and pushback instead of being shut down or mocked?I will drag myself across broken glass to maintain that space, and all the Arthur Chus in the world aren’t enough to convince me otherwise.
That’s The Motte for you. It’s not perfect. It doesn’t always live up to the ideals Scott Alexander and others have championed. But it comes closer to being a working discussion ground for people who hold dramatically different beliefs than anywhere else I’ve found, and that’s just not the sort of thing you give up on.
What we've all participated in constructing here is a precious little creature. I take seriously the horrific implications of why treat them with respect at all.
The Thirty Years War became the benchmark to measure all later wars. The inhabitants of eastern France interpreted each subsequent invasion int he light of stories told about the Swedes and Croats who devastated their region in the 1630s. Soldiers fighting in the trenches along the eastern front of the First World War believed they were experiencing horrors not seen in three centuries. In his radio broadcast on 4 May 1945, Hitler's architect and armaments minister, Albert Speer, announced 'the destruction that has been inflicted on Germany can only be compared to that of the Thirty Years War. The decimation of our people through hunger and deprivation must not be allowed to reach the proportion of that epoch' For this reason, he went on, Hitler's successor, Admiral Donitz, had given the order to lay down arms. Public opinion surveys carried out in the 1960's revealed that Germans placed the Thirty Years War as their country's greatest disaster ahead of both World Wars, the Holocaust, and the Black Death. - Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy, pg 5-6
I find this forum to be a civilizational candle in the dark in these ircivilizational times. And that means taking the religious among us here seriously. If we are excessively demure to them then that is only a reason to expand that sensibility to others, not to deny them that environment in the first place. There is enough vitriol on every other website and in every other which side are you on boy shibboleth seeking interrogation-conversation. If you J'accuse this place of taking people who hold unsubstantiated beliefs ridiculed in greater rat-dom and engaging with them with seriousness of tone and tenderness of heart then I take your accusation in stride.
Yes. It is.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
This is a very reasonable critique.
I should be clear that the Cadastral Map Bias lens is my strong prior of first resort for inexplicable behavior by companies. I am not well read enough on SBI to back up the truth of the grapevine claim.
What on earth is going on with the layoffs btw? Did the industry over hire? It seems really inexplicable from afar.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
"Seeing like a State" continues to stay relevant.
Interesting stories, fandom goodwill, and developer reputation continue to be the illegible benefits of the varied forest biome. All sacrificed for a cadastral map of Norway Spruce accessible to investors who can only work by algorithm.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I'd forgotten about the Japanese wargame carrier issue! Thank you for reminding me. I've never given the Pacific Theater the attention it deserves. Navies just don't click in my head the way they seem to hold a spell on some people. But yeah I'd heard about the carrier anecdote. Mind-numbing stuff. I've read enough books on the European Theater that I can sometimes see how the Germans would see things the way they did. But it's really difficult for me to get into the mindset of the Japanese regarding attacking America.
Actually I've been using your exact book as an audiobook to fall asleep to! (i already listened to it once properly. don't worry) I should probably read it as an actual physical book. The details stick better that way. If you like Stahel then you should definitely check out Robert Citino's trilogy. His accounts are fairly mainstream but he summarizes the mainstream take on things very well.
Got any other recommended books? If you havn't read/listened to Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" then I can't recommend it highly enough.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I've also actually played some old school commercial wargames before! Historicon is a great convention with some incredible set ups.
And yeah when you find out about real life wargames you see that they fill that important niches of teasing out just how one might ought to respond under unstable circumstances. Kaiser Wilhelms insistence on winning the wargames he partook in was a gross violation of the Prussian traditional of the Professional General Staff.
Speaking from memory without a direct source I recall an anecdote that Field Marshall Paulus of 6th Army/Stalingrad fame wargamed how Operation Barbarossa would play out and concluded that after a few weeks of initial breakthrough the supply situation would become a shitshow, and then the entire offensive would grind to a halt near Moscow. I imagine he felt positively Cassandra-esque.
But for those proper military games implemented on a grand scale in real life - any war nerd worth his salt ought also to check out the Louisiana Maneuvers pre-ww2.
400k men moving around with umpires determining exactly what happened at each step. All done with 1940's technology. They had charts to figure out who beat who! Imagine maneuvoring around and then going "wait. I've got 20 dudes. You've got 10. But you have a machine gun and I have one mortar team. okay get a ref." and then waiting 30 minutes, getting a resolution, and then doing it all over again on the next hill. Mindnumbingly tedious but incredibly important for teaching US Generals what modern war might look like.
I use race to point towards someone's uncontrollabe physical features. People generally default to height, hair colour, and skin colour but this also includes internal features like pelvic tilt affecting butt shape.
I use ethnicity to mean culture, language, & upbringing. But culture almost always includes an accounting of racial features. A Japanese Beauty is largely a social construct, but it includes notions of long straight black hair. Mormon face is apparently a thing. It would be strange to read accounts of "the ideal Dutch beauty" of the 12th century and find requirements for Afros, even if the other 90% just describes social virtues. Kaufman points out that while many cultures place a value of skin lightness relative to their own norm, they also find the extreme paleness of Europeans to be ugly.
So ethnicity accounts for race, but race is only at most a statistical indicator for someone's ethnicity.
I'd say your personal ethnicity has drifted away from the broader Moroccan core. Different cultures have different notions of what's within their cultural cloud vs what goes beyond the boundary. There are many accounts of people born and raised in Japan still being ostracized as 'not really japanese' because they don't fullfill 100% of all expectations of what it means to be Japanese. Many settler-colonial societies like the US & Canada meanwhile have a much more open conception of what it means to be American. Of course these self-conceptions can massively shift overtime, but there's always a self-conception. I don't know how expansive the Moroccan conception is but i'm sure it's something you've navigated & negotiated about with both your family and with strangers.
I was born in Canada but came to the US in my adolescence. When I go home everyone immediately comments on how American I've become. But most Americans didn't grow up being told to 'Go Back Where You Came From'. And every Remembrance Day I'm reminded of my difference from the typical American. Meanwhile my Jamaican-Canadian-American coworker complains about she feels racially alienated living in America. She misses Jamaica where everyone looks like her. But she's culturally a much cleaner fit into the American mainstream than I am.
More options
Context Copy link