sciuru
1yr ago
Annexation might be the most outrageous way to disrupt equilibrium, but if done bloodlessly, it might cause less suffering in the long run, than toppling/installing governments w/t outward annexation. For some reason civilized world strongly prefers smouldering conflicts with violence and suffering spread -- and therefore, perceptually discounted -- across space and time thinly enough to look almost "natural".
Wikipedia on Syrian civil war: 15 March 2011 – present (11 years, 6 months and 3 days); aside from combatant casualties at least 306,887 civilians killed, estimated 6.7 million internally displaced & 6.6 million refugees.
For Iraq estimates and methodologies range wildly.
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Costs of war project: 268,000 - 295,000 people were killed in violence in the Iraq war from March 2003 - Oct. 2018, including 182,272 - 204,575 civilians
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The PLOS Medicine study's figure of approximately 460,000 excess deaths through the end of June 2011 is based on household survey data including more than 60% of deaths directly attributable to violence.
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The Lancet study's figure of 654,965 excess deaths through the end of June 2006 is based on household survey data. The estimate is for all excess violent and nonviolent deaths. That also includes those due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.
Is that burning slow enough?
This is not to justify any other conflicts. The whole framing of "justification" is hilarious, as it presumes innocence of any geopolitical act, unless you can't make up any excuses at all.
sciuru
1yr ago
Since the beginning of war I've seen rather high levels of bureaucratic activity: officials fired and reshuffled, legislative trappings expanded, corporations merged and shuffled. I take this as evidence, that at least some information trickles down to Putin's mind.
The point is not that he is personally fond of gadgets or internet. To survive in his vipers nest, he needs a lot of information, from various sources/services, competing and being played against one another. I doubt it's as simple as "everyone just serves him rosy reports": when one official over-serves his rosy vision, his rival might undercut him by serving something closer to reality, with more details. It's more effective to compete down toward ground truth, gradually adding more details, than to race up - into more and more delirious and vague positive reports.
sciuru
1yr ago
I don’t know of archival evidence, showing that Soviets planned to destroy Polish home army through deliberate timing of operation. I’ve read only a few AH posts, which usually have careful summaries (cc @Botond173). My sense is that Stalin was clearly hostile and antagonistic; Soviets and Poles hated each other and were almost in the state of war of its own; Soviet army at that direction exhausted its offensive momentum, but they seem to be able to act anyway; in the event there was no coordination.
My point was that this data leaves some open space, which everyone would tend to fill in as he likes. Even my whole presentation is biased in ways I don't see. Does it seem wrong to you? If you have a better account, I’d appreciate you sharing it.
I wouldn't rely too strongly on the notion of legitimacy in the age when big actors were constantly vivisecting small actors for their own convenience, w/t asking. When, in the aftermath of the war communism was incredibly and genuinely popular, does it make Stalin's claims - as a major figure of communism - more legitimate by proxy? When a "government-in-exile" gets back (from London) to its devastated homeland and dismisses local resistance's claims to participation - does it have more legitimacy than the people, who endured the war here?
I do not suggest legitimacy is meaningless, just it depends a lot on what reference point you choose at any given moment.
Edit: after skimming through history of Latvia around WWII I admit, the questions I raised here are irrelevant for Latvia. Apart from several periods of challenged legitimacy (during the War of Liberation and 1934 coup) the Soviet intervention, puppet govt installation and deportation policies -- were a clear violation of any internal legitimacy at the time.
The questions I raised, are still relevant for other states of Eastern Europe.
sciuru
1yr ago
You singled out annexation as an exceptional threat to international stability. Why do we need that stability in the first place? Not to save lives and to promote well-being in the long run? By this metric, I argue, conflicts w/t annexations inflict more damage than bloodless annexations.
eventually the current phase of the war
That's absolutely an overstretch. Annexation and the launch of separatist movement were a direct response to revolution in Kyiv (revolution doesn't justify that response, I am just stating the causal link). Without annexation, separatist movement alone would have sparked the protracted smouldering conflict, that we observed till February. Invasion was in no way necessitated by the state of the conflict or status of annexed Crimea, unless you believe Putin's narrative.
sciuru
1yr ago
Could I ask your view on late Russian Empire? Although lagging behind, it seemed to be more in touch with European states (than its own people, ironically), industrialized at impressive rates, and eventually yielded to some democratic changes. If Russian whites were as successful as Finnish ones during their civil war, I believe - in the hindsight - they could steer toward better trajectory, than the Soviet one.
sciuru
1yr ago
First, I support removing any traces of Soviet Union from the countries, annexed by it. I don’t think any invasion could be justified by historical narratives (if at all). Moreover, Putin’s narrative, even wrapped around geopolitical calculus, is not consistent with his real actions anyway.
I disagree with sweeping extrapolations of Stalin’s policies to other Soviet leaders and Soviet people (and Russians). I think Kennan well outlined Stalin's maniacal drive for purges and deportations in the Long telegram:
At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. [...] To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries.
Without it they would stand before history, at best, as only the last of that long succession of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guarantee external security of their internally weak regimes.
But the Soviet experiment was not doomed from the beginning. Many revolutions had started with war and terror, but some cases (French, English, American) had positive impacts in the long run, not apparent from the outset. Idealists like Lenin and Gorbachev even attempted to implement decent reforms, and tried to grant certain autonomy to and promote (or rather enforce) ethnic character of republics. Lenin:
Politically and culturally, the nativization policy aimed to eliminate Russian domination and culture in the said Soviet republics. The de-Russification was also implemented on ethnic Russian groups and their children. For example, all children in Ukraine were taught the Ukrainian language in school. The policies of korenization facilitated the Communist Party's establishment of the local languages in government and education, in publishing, in culture, and in public life.
Gorbachev removed Soviet aggressive stance abroad, and enacted actual democratic reforms domestically -- in a pretty unilateral way in both cases. Khruschev got rid of Stalin’s cult and at least started to care about quality of life, while his aggressive international stance was not unilateral, US administration also took role in the positive feedback loop.
One crucial factor, distinguishing Soviet project from successful revolutions, is that they tried to impose their vision on everyone around. Why overstretch, why waste your effort at all on other states with their own distinct visions and identities? Enjoy your utopia on your own, if you manage to survive it.
sciuru
1yr ago
Not due to. You use them to arrive at conclusion that confederates were bad. Or not bad. It's a good example, as there seems to be much less agreement across US on their legacy and how to cope with it.
Imagine a monument to "famine relief policy of the metropole", erected in one of its colonies. Arguably, metropolitan policies often rather aggravated the consequences of famines, which conveniently served to suppress resistance. If you agree with this, you would be willing to get rid of the monument as commemorating a deliberate lie. Or you might think govt policy was a genuine, but ineffective attempt to help. That's causal inference.
sciuru
1yr ago
Christianity's potential as a weapon had expired long ago, but it performed well for several centuries. Ideologies, like institutions, are optimized for the contemporary circumstances. The more time passes, the more they confine your movement -- as you need to look coherent -- but less effective they are as intended tools. SJ might be in its most defiant phase now, but might evolve into something more net positive and cooperative (or provide a bunch of positive externalities and disappear altogether). Christianity also took time to assume its peaceful role.
sciuru
1yr ago
Overall, I agree with your assessment, except the fact that Stalin was a notable outlier wrt body counts. The following Soviet leaders impeded economic development and degraded quality of life within Soviet bloc (including USSR itself) vis-à-vis the West, but number of people they killed - throwing tanks on strikes, uprisings and demonstrations in Berlin, Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, during Prague Spring – was negligible relative to Stalin’s count. I do believe in their good will and incompetence (except for Putin).
Speaking of glorified imperialism. Here’s the case of Britain:
the culpability of the British in each famine varies wildly, and most scholarship analyzing British rule as a catalyst of famine tends to focus on famines within the Raj period, specifically the Great Famine of 1876-78, 1896-1902 famine, and the Bengal famine of 1943. Notably, Purkait et al, when enumerating famines under British rule, identify "British policies" as catalysts only in these three instances. If we take this analysis at face value and rely on mortality estimates from Purkait et al, this produces a figure of 13.6-23.3 million famine deaths for which British rule bore partial responsibility.
These are broad estimates, feel free to provide better ones. Odd Arne gives a rough estimate of at least 10 million killed plus 3 million from Ukraine famines – for the whole period of Stalin’s reign (with 23 million imprisoned and deported, I don't if this overlaps).
Now, when I fixed my evaluation of Soviet policy, what do you think of this one? Are there any relevant factors at all for you, and how do account for them w/t causal reasoning?
sciuru
1yr ago
Everyone in replies has stressed how this decision has nothing to do with alternative histories. It clearly does. When you denounce Soviets in the hindsight, you explicitly deal with counterfactuals, assuming that Soviets could have avoided their excesses (presumably like other European states or US), but had chosen not to. And that this choice – of pursuing aggressive political agendas, by brutal means – might be attributed to the barbaric attitudes of their leaders (and probably people).
Isn’t this a purely causal interpretation? If instead you could have attributed Soviet policies to other factors, partially beyond their control – like geopolitical prisoner-dilemma-like situations, or mere incompetence of the leaders – you wouldn’t denounce them.
This counterfactual reasoning is at the heart of most cultural wars, and it has nothing to do with "rewriting" the past. It has to do with imputing motives and hidden geopolitical variables, in the hindsight.
I would be glad to hear counter-arguments, as it seems many commenters disagree.
sciuru
1yr ago
"Bad" gouging is about raising prices beyond compensation for (1) risk and delivery costs, and (2) demand increase. Legality of price gouging increases incentive for profit seekers, yes. But if they are profit seekers, why not cooperate and arrange high cartel prices for this short period of time?
only if you pretend that the larger market has ceased to exist
Why pretend that market never fail? Especially during disruption and uncertainty of a disaster, when there might be not so many arbitragers rushing to close all price differentials.
natural method of limiting overuse of scarce goods
Could you provide a brief example of this method?
sciuru
1yr ago
I don't see reliable indications
What indications would you imagine? That Peskov or some news media would mention in a passing, that Putin "recently browsed runet to gauge domestic sentiment", "Putin is actually very modern, high tech guy, he uses PC and internet regularly"? or that Putin would conspicuously tap at his smartphone during meeting or forum? You would dismiss those signals as a part of "enlightened monarch" theater (like videos you refer to). It means there is no reliable evidence to reject the hypothesis outright.
My core belief is that an autocrat would learn to filter higher level signals on which his survival depends. Higher level means he is like a mediocre CEO/ early modern ruler -- he doesn't know how stuff at lower level works, he knows how to build and manage patronage networks, play them against one another and how to discern through them any conflicting information. That's rather weak assumption on his part, much less than classic field-independent rationality with infinite computing power.
Do not sweep me into "LW", that's a weird rhetorical device. Methodologically, my main issue here is to find how to evaluate likelihood of what we observe about Putin, given my or your hypotheses. Your assumptions are clearly favored by Occam's razor, being interwoven into an elegant and expressive narrative of a stupid "political animal". My assumptions rely more on historical parallels and general logic of delegation/ autocratic rule. Public image of savvy rulers of the past also didn't reflect hidden variables of their decision making.
that much we know. We can't really say more
No. That much we observe. And when we observe so little, it's your personal priors, which mainly speak, not the likelihood.
sciuru
1yr ago
First assumption is that he cares about his political survival and understands which domestic and foreign variables to track. Second, that he receives highlights from western media/ analysts anyway. If he doubts the quality of information, surely he can arrange a randomized controlled trial and order 10 independent analysts to report to him. Seems like a standard routine for an autocrat who is fed up with sycophants.
sciuru
1yr ago
I think, the real debate is about how much of a cap is justified.
From a narrow, short-term efficiency perspective, raising price above the marginal cost of production is suboptimal (and therefore "bad") only if you want to maximize total welfare (which most people probably don't). Market price is merely an aggregation (like average) of prices at which transactions actually occur. But some people implicitly imbue it with a sacred meaning of being unconditionally "efficient" and "welfare maximizing" - just by virtue of resulting from any market interactions whatsoever. From a narrow view, that's incorrect, as markets often fail to arrive at a short-term efficient price, if they try at all.
In the narrow view it's also irrelevant that consumers reveal their preference by choosing monopoly suppliers. True, in this exact moment monopoly supplier is their optimal choice. But when a robber offers you to choose between your life and money, you would also optimally choose your life. Robber imposes on you the choice (market structure), by force (market power), which pushes you toward inefficient allocation.
From a broader, more reasonable but complicated macro perspective, there must be a profit margin big enough for investment, risk premium and so on. If all producers would maximize welfare in the short term, they wouldn't grow and therefore underperform in the long run.
sciuru
1yr ago
Likelihood as a function is fixed in a classic bayesian mode. The only thing that we update is probability distribution over parameters. Likelihood corresponds to a static model of the world and should evaluate all possible states of the world, including hidden ones.
Jiro is right. In your example you are isolated from any indicators of lobsters whatsoever, and rely solely on priors. If I was regularly checking counts of web searches for lobsters, and they were decreasing or absent, I would at some point start to reduce probability of their existence.
sciuru
1yr ago
Few hypotheses (based on experience, wrapped in theory):
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Hedonic treadmill. Your rotation system might still have a low "essential" variation, so that brain can predict/remember the most salient patterns, after which new songs don't excite/surprise it. Intermittent silence helps
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Attention. When you listen as a background to other activities, it might feel much less exciting, as attention spreads among inputs. Concert, in contrast, grabs all your sensory inputs at once
sciuru
1yr ago
I recommend you to read the posts I linked, they are really good (can't quote them in a lossless way).
I dislike the whole "Soviet plan" take because if you admit, reasonably, that Poles were in a state of war with Soviets (after Katyn, defeat of Bolsheviks by Poles and German-Soviet invasion) - then why would Soviets help them at all?
As it happened, there were numerous instances of AK cooperation with frontline Soviet forces, particularly at the beginning of Burza. Kowel, Lwów, and Wilno in particular were jointly liberated by the AK and Red Army, but in each instance the AK was subsequently disarmed by the Soviets. The stories of these arrests spread and many AK units in the east actively withdrew ahead of Soviet forces to avoid being disarmed.
So yes, you would be more or less correct that the Rising did not expect or envision much in the way of direct Red Army support and cooperation. The entire point of the Rising was to liberate the capital during that window of opportunity presented by the advance of the Red Army towards Warsaw and the withdrawal of German forces from the area.
I see this as more of a malicious form of neglect than a dedicated plan by the Soviets to allow the Germans to wipe out the AK for them
Airfields/supplies: they assisted, albeit in a clearly formal way
The US specifically requested the use of Soviet airfields for refueling of their flights to Warsaw on 20 August, but this request was denied by Stalin on 22 August. Soviet airfields were only made available to the US on 18 September, after which they were again denied until after 30 September and the effective end of the Rising. Red Army Air Force provided its own limited supply drops, but only starting 13 September. Soviet air drops to the Rising were also significantly smaller in volume than US efforts
sciuru
1yr ago
And if you were yourself, what would be your verdict? Mine would be conditioned on baseline atrocity levels across European colonizers, and some cost/benefit calculations: how much oppression and deaths the gifts of "enlightened civilization" costed to Indians. Columbian exchange is a notorious example.
I do not believe in their good will in most cases.
My impression about Khruschev and Gorbachev (from their biographies) is that they were true believers, and tried to optimize for their ideological metrics, often inaptly, but with minimal outright violence. Brezhnev wasn't a believer, more like a passive corrupt bureaucrat. Beria was a monster, Khruschev had orchestrated an incredible operation to remove him. A lot of aggressiveness was embedded in the Soviet system as a whole, irrespective of its operators.
Debating moral labels per se is not rewarding, as they are moving targets. What data do you have on "murders on large scale" and excessive wealth for post-Stalin leaders? I can provide some data, supporting my claims, if you have interest.
Agreed, our degree of uncertainty varies across cases. I admit the consensus about Soviet impact on Latvia. What I am arguing for -- is that counterfactuals matter, while people pretend they don't.
Another example (with placebo group) is when Soviet army stopped short of Warsaw at the moment of Polish uprising against Germans. Allegedly Soviets waited for Poles and Germans to destroy as much of each other before entering. When you know about Soviet-Polish mutual hate and Soviet extermination policies against Polish army, you might readily impute that motive to them. But, if there was no evidence on that particular case, would it be right to impute it? Would you erect a memorial to victims of Red army, that intentionally stopped?
sciuru
1yr ago
simplistic "America overthrows countries to get their oil" model
That model is nowhere implied in Gdanning's reply. He argues the leverage is not that big, as any "crude democracies" have to share their oil rents to keep elites and populace sate, which sets a limit to their oil output game. Same holds for Russia: they are still reaping surpluses, even with exports to Europe shut, and hugely discounted sales to China, but I am not sure it would last for long.
The argument you outlined looks plausible to me, but all narratives about need for preventive action are also weapons by themselves.
sciuru
1yr ago
Not sure about local search, but googling site:themotte.org "AI" works fine.
sciuru
1yr ago
[You] I also do not believe that inter-service rivalry in Russia has a noteworthy epistemic dimension and doesn't amount to mutual distrust and libel, to prevent them from ganging up on the Czar.
The following excerpts are from the "Russian Military Intelligence: Background and Issues for Congress (Updated November 15, 2021)" [pdf]:
The FSB, however, has sought to gain a greater foreign intelligence role and has significant international operations, especially in Russia’s neighboring post-Soviet states.30 This reportedly has caused significant friction within Russia’s intelligence community, especially with the GRU and SVR, which consider foreign intelligence collection their primary responsibility. The FSO operates as an overseer of the various security services, helping to monitor infighting and the accuracy of intelligence reporting.
However, as analyst Mark Galeotti has opined, “Russian collection operations are not just highly active but also extremely professional. Tasking, though, appears less impressive. While the Foreign Intelligence Service and GRU have a strong sense of the military and technical secrets they are meant to uncover, their political objectives are sometimes naive.”
Here's from Joss I. Meakins (2018) "Squabbling Siloviki: Factionalism Within Russia’s
Security Services":
In fact, the question of “who watches the watchmen” has long been a concern of the Kremlin. Since the 1990s, the FSO has traditionally fulfilled this role and acts as the last line of defense against rival factions. According to Mark Galeotti, the FSO controls the elite Presidential Regiment of 5500 soldiers which guards the Kremlin and has its own intelligence unit to verify intelligence analysis.
I am not sure much more details on this subject could be obtained.
There is no doubt about inter-service strife, but the question remains as to whether it leads to competitive race down the ground truth -- as I proposed -- or to mere gang-style clashes. The same sources also note that:
Analysts and reporting therefore suggest the GRU’s influence is often relative to the ability of its chief to develop personal relationships with Russia’s political leadership.
and, as you said,
Russia’s President also helps foment conflict within the security services, seeing it as the best way to retain control by playing them off against each other. [...] to ensure that no single agency becomes powerful enough to threaten the regime.
Meakins also writes:
An in-depth analysis of recent episodes illustrates that crime and corruption drive much of the conflict. The desire to control illicit revenue schemes, from money laundering to smuggling, is a common cause of siloviki power struggles.
sciuru
1yr ago
Great analysis, thank you.
I apologize if you discerned bad faith in my words, there was none of it. I explicitly admitted that “Your assumptions are clearly favored by Occam's razor, being interwoven into an elegant and expressive narrative [...]”.
For now I’ve googled out a few more claims about Putin’s alleged aversion-to-PC. That plus data you provided have updated me. Many asynchronous claims from rivals and subordinates alike, pointing in the same direction is improbable to fake.
I appreciate the way you and others have scrutinized every causal linkage in my story, stating that evidence X is not necessarily caused by hidden dynamics Y. It's a fair criticism, but I'd like to know what evidence, in principle, could have shifted your prior towards mine or least away from yours. Rejecting extreme cases by analogies would get us only so far. If you can't contemplate such evidence (due to nature of the question), then probably this discussion is boring for you, as I would repeatedly hit the same tiles on your epistemic map, thinking that your battleships are there, while there are none. As for me, I enjoy your counterpoints.
Here’s what Alena Ledeneva writes in "Can Russia Modernise?: Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance". The book is from 2013, but assuming a degree of institutional inertia, its findings might still be relevant.
It is tempting to think about informal power, status and influence as a pyramid, by analogy with formal power, because the power networks involved in informal governance are also vertically integrated, somewhat hierarchical and can be similarly rigid and brutal – ‘like a wolves’ pack’, in the expression of one respondent. Yet they surface in more subtle ways and involve constant and mutual monitoring by key players, including highly personalised checks and balances. According to a well-informed respondent, the monitoring function of smotryashchie (the watchers) is central for informal governance and should not be associated with some stereotypical siloviki planted everywhere to watch over businesses or projects. The checks and balances of smotryashchie emerge from Putin’s networks’ watching over one another and from their informal reporting:
In reality, smotryashchie is not a single eye. It’s a complex system. Where there is some money, there should be control. Putin controls manually. He does not trust anybody. There are checks and balances and there are trusted watchdogs. There is Rottenberg. There is Akimov. There are [the] Koval´chuks. There is Timchenko, who also starts steering (rulit´ ). 9 All these people have access to Putin through a private room in his office. Each of them has Putin’s ear and in the end he [Putin] gets a more or less adequate picture. He divides and rules. In each constituency, there are those associated with Berl Lazar and there are those associated with Adolf Shaevich.
He also uses non-sistema sources that we know nothing about. It is like the operative work of reading dossiers, morning FSB reports (utrennya spravka FSB), general country reports (obschaya spravka po strane), [and] memos (dokladnye zapiski) that come from almost everywhere. It used to be Sechin who did the reading, now it must be somebody else’s job. The operative work, however, continues as normal.
One of my respondents also observes that Putin labels people as ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ (svoi and chuzhie) rather harshly:
Putin takes information from svoi only. He seems unable to trust people and the delivery of information and signals-gathering occurs through siloviki but, make no mistake, they assemble it from all over the place (po shirokomu frontu).
Alexander Stubb (former prime minister, foreign minister and finance minister of Finland) recently shared his impression of Putin at Lawfare podcast. Stubb and Putin (then prime minister) participated in ceasefire negotiations in 2008. I am not going to extrapolate from this vignette, but I deem it an informative perspective from someone who has no clear incentive to praise Putin (I mean, aside from denying that he was negotiating with a moron). Starts at 11:44
Stubb: Putin at the meetings is very well prepared, he’s got his usual speaking notes and quite often he starts by reading out ...and then he starts going into real business. Interpreters at both sides are very good, so you get a sense of what’s going on. Then there’s always a rigmarole of him being late, anywhere from one hour to four hours, it’s kind of stuff you have to live with. But yeah, he’s ...analytical, he is intellectual, he’s cold, he knows his stuff. He is not a pushover as we can see.
Lawfare: [my paraphrasing] one thing is to be well prepared and to hinge solely on your initial point, but what about fluid reasoning, about ability to read others and to react in the moment?
Stubb: Listen, you don’t become a president or leader of Russia if you don’t have a cognitive capacity which goes beyond the normal. Certainly he was able to react to situation, in a very impressive way. He was able to connect the dots, he would bring in something, say, on the Middle East or Syria, he’d bring in memory from Afghanistan, make reference to Stalin. He’d talk about some details about, say, a NATO mission somewhere, missile negotiations with America, make reference to George W. Bush, to Condoleezza Rice… The guy knew his stuff […] You see the problem is, quite often we get our image, a picture, a projection of particular individual from the international media […] but certainly I would say that out of hundreds of leaders or ministers I’ve met over the years, Putin is someone who you would remember, because he’s so well versed in his dossier.
Lawfare: many in the Western media of late have been focusing on him losing his mind in some way…
Stubb: I think that’s rubbish
Lawfare: ...losing his grip. I don’t know if that’s because of covid isolation or mental decline, but [Stubb laughs]
Stubb: My take here, it’s a little bit counterintuitive to what we usually hear in the West or what you would hear from an avid transatlanticist like me […] I think some people simply don’t understand the Russian soul or the Russian mind. Russian leadership has always been very centralised […] he is rational from his perspective, but irrational from Western perspective. For him it’s about story: Great Russia, re-instituting Russia, make-Russia-great-again mentality. […] so all this stuff about long tables, him, being in a covid isolation… to be honest, I think it’s Western rubbish
[You] This is what I'm analogizing to LW mindset (again, it's not fair to dismiss that as a rhetorical device, it's a good faith reference to a phenomenon we discussed earlier). It can be called «generality hypothesis».
Analogies of the form “Not unlike folks from $outrgoup, you’re making a methodological error of” collapse diverse opinions within $outgroup and blur the line between their cluster of opinions and mine, and it's those collateral implications of the analogy I dislike. I called it a rhetorical device as your argument is perfectly valid without this wrapping.
I admit, my hypothesis is similar to Efficient Dictator Hypothesis (akin to Efficient Market not Pareto efficiency) or something like political no-arbitrage: if Putin didn't use some sort of higher-level information filtering techniques, this knowledge differential would have been exploited by his opponents and he wouldn't have survived and stayed on top of a ruthlessly competitive Kremlin environment.
[You] My null hypothesis is that ours is a (perhaps extremely) degenerate case of autocracy, that Putin is not that savvy at this autocrat thing, and owes his success at staying in power solely to narrow specializations like building a small intensely loyal mafia family and murdering key people outside it.
But what does mafia building consist in, exactly? Isn't it about managing and filtering patronage networks?
Any ideology, however polished, serves as a device for rationalization and coordination within tribes. Is your point that sj is so consolidated as to be called an ideology -- but a flawed, contradictory one? Or that sj is just a spontaneous result of signaling games, and not ideology at all. I wouldn't dismiss any views, overlapping with its umbrella.
Edit: for prospective downvoters. Ever care to engage? or my view is too idiotic for you to descend to?
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