coffee_enjoyer
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coffee_enjoyer
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3hr ago
It “isn’t a game or a sports match” in another important respect, which is that America can lose even if Iran loses even more. We have been losing since the war started because we are worse off since the war started. We lost money, perhaps $100bil so far, and certainly more on the way due to crude shortages. We lost bases and free transit through two important straits. We have increased the ire of Iran for no reason, and outside of the neurotic world of Israel First media pundits nobody really cares about Iran’s domestic or neighborhood squabbles; better relations with Iran would have been justified on the grounds of cheaper pistachios alone, let alone access to their Rare Earths or whatever high IQ youths we could have poached for AI. Their navy and missile silos don’t matter to us. Nothing we have done has advanced American interests or even raw power. It’s likely we come out of this with a less powerful America, with Iran and Oman gaining normalized influence over Hormuz, Houthis gaining influence over Bab El-Mandeb, and a bunch of Arabs who are questioning why they’d make arrangements with America over China. Yeah, the war is good for Israel, but what’s good for Israel is bad for America; if Israel is unsafe, we get to poach more of their high IQ tech talent. We don’t actually want Israel to be a regional super-power such that we lose talent that’s useful in our economy.
There are genetic differences between the White Texan and the Indian. There are differences in 5-HTTLPR S-allele frequency which influences in-group proclivity and clanishness. India is, of course, a comically clannish land with like 20,000 sub-castes and a majority who report being highly against intermarriage between castes (per Pew). S-allele holders are more implicitly racist and prejudicial, more likely to accept unfair distributions, are worse in responsibility and self-control (in one study, are less likely to help others and less favorable of altruistic punishment. There is even a study that found "the 5-HTTLPR S-allele prevalence [is] a critical moderator for the linkage between democracy and social trust. Although democracy tends to be conducive to social trust, this positive relationship exists only in societies with a lower level of the 5-HTTLPR S-allele prevalence".
Some parts of India have as high as 60% SS expression while the Anglo-Saxon has 20% SS expression. Because of social contagion of norms this has an effect on society at large. There are also differences in the "pioneering" and "explorer" genes that make the Texan a Texan. Anglo-Saxons have 20% or higher DRD4 7R; this is completely absent in some Indian populations. And some differences in OXTR rs53576 AA expression.
If it turns out you allowed people in who are genetically inclined to be clannish, you’re pretty screwed, because there’s going to be a constant implicit bias against your own group in education, employment, democracy, etc. What makes this sad is that the Anglo-Saxon Texan is genetically inclined to not form accurate stereotypes about their out-group, which is a very good gene conducive to civilization until you share a nation with people from the opposite propensity, and then you’re on the losing end of Popper’s paradox of tolerance. Gujarat is the single highest region of origin for Indians in Texas, I think, and more than half report having to pay a bribe to get something done, which is insane. I have never heard of anyone in America having to pay a bribe and I’m from the Sopranos state.
There’s a William James quote about social trust:
Turn now from these wide questions of good to a certain class of·narrower· questions of fact, questions concerning personal relations, states of mind between one man and another. For example. do you like me or not? Whether you do or don’t depends in countless cases on whether I meet you half-way, assuming that you must like me, and showing you trust and expectation. In such cases what makes your liking come is my previous faith that your liking for me exists. But if I stand aloof, and refuse to budge an inch until I have objective evidence·of your liking me·, until you have done something that is apt, as the absolutists say, ad extorquendum assensum meum [= ’to compel my assent’], ten to one you won’t ever like me. How many women’s hearts are vanquished by the mere optimistic insistence of some man that they must love him! He won’t consent to the hypothesis that they can’t. ·In these cases· the desire for a certain kind of truth brings about that truth’s existence; and so it is in innumerable cases of other sorts. The only one who gains promotions, gifts, appointments is the man in whose life they are seen to play the part of live hypotheses, who. . . .sacrifices other things for their sake before they have come, and takes risks for them in advance. His faith acts on the powers above him as a claim, and creates its own verification. A social organism of any sort, large or small, is what it is because each member does his duty with a trust that the other members will do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the faith in one another of those who are immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which nothing is achieved—indeed, nothing is even attempted.
Hence it is important for a civilization to have the high-trust, risk-taking, optimistic pioneer who does not quickly form generalizations against an outgroup. This is not the Indian, but it is the Texan.
It sounds like you got this from a call of duty mission plotline. Our intel predicted they would respond as they did respond:
https://www.dia.mil/Articles/Speeches-and-Testimonies/Article/567085/2014-annual-threat-assessment/
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS26/20220317/114527/HHRG-117-AS26-Wstate-BerrierS-20220317.pdf
Even if they were evilmaxxing, it would be the dumbest decision ever to target civilian centers as it would immediately grant America et al the moral right to do the same to them.
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