self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.
At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!
Friends:
A friend to everyone is a friend to no one.
User ID: 454
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
I apologize. I misread:
I already cited the genetic trajectory of Rome (genetic decline -> civilizational decline), granted that bakes in the assumption that population replacement from North Africa was dysgenic, and the subsequent correction towards Northern Europe was eugenic. But it did happen that way.
My intent was to demonstrate examples of the phrase in the wild, the connotations seem clear to me, even when they're not strictly military.
This uses the meme, but it has no connection between strong/weak men and military victory.
Huh? Did you miss:
Hard Times Create Strong Men 1920s - 1940 (Depression, WW)
There are two implication is that the Great Depression was a hard time, which created the strong men who fought in WW2. Alternatively, both count as hard times, and created a generation of strong men who produced the good times from the 1940s to 1970. Since it references a literal world war, what else do you want?I can only apologize for the poor quality tweets, but Ywitter's indexing sucks. I went to the bother of finding at least one robust example:
https://x.com/OrdainedPrepper/status/2018394819597660297?s=20
Another world war would fix all this nonsense. This is what happens when humans have extended periods of peace. Strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times and bad times create strong men … and round and round we go. Humans NEVER learn because we have insignificantly short memories.
Please try and guess the context first. It's a reply to
I'm sure there are more out there, but I'm calling it a night.
So it seems like your collection of slop tweets exactly proves my point. Ain't nobody saying that because they think "weak men" can't swing a sword, shoot a gun, or push a button just as well as "strong men".
It's hardly my fault that the tweets are slop when the topic is slop and the search functionality is trash. I think it's rather clear that unironic admiration of the Spartans as superlative warriors is relevant to the thesis, though they used spears rather than swords for the most part. It'll have to do for now.
I never said it was a particularly useful or thought provoking theory, just one that's quite a bit more useful than the strawman you make it out to be.
I disagree that you have demonstrated this.
It actually beats a quite significant theory though, that is: "the winners keep winning, forever." Simple models, such as those in chess, 4x games, etc, show that once one side has a decisive advantage, it's already game over. But civilizations in real life don't follow the same pattern.
Is anyone making that claim? Very well, your approach beats the two maximally degenerate models.
In some sense you might say it's stating the obvious. But why is that a problem? Tons of memes state the obvious, that's what makes them accessible. That doesn't make them wrong.
The obvious is the Motte. The bailey is all the additional extensions heapened on it. Devereaux does not contest that nations rise and fall, because that is obviously true. Neither do I. We both claim that the version he specified is immensely useless. The more you steelman the idea, the more it becomes something mundane. Add enough caveats, and you're describing standard history.
I also note that you haven't addressed my point about corporations, as of the time of this edit.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
I understand what you're trying to say. I've noted the points of agreement and disagreement. The most specific is the claim that the change in population after the collapse of Rome was dysgenic, and that the specific adaptation to the Plague was a net positive after the plague subsided. That might be true, but definitely needs more evidence to be more than a possibility. The selection pressure wasn't so high that the protective allele became predominant, and that's despite Bubonic plague being a recurring problem.
My gripe is with the claim made (by others) that the cultural consequences of "hard times" are positive on net. It is also true that selection pressure strong enough to overcome genetic drift will produce adaptations that might be eugenic, depending on the context. For example, the protection provided by the mutant ERPA2 is probably dysgenic now, since we don't really have to worry about the plague but can't cure Crohn's.
More importantly, the advocates for the Hard Times thesis often want to intentionally cause suffering and hardship, because they think that's good. Even if it's debatably eugenic, the juice is clearly not worth the squeeze.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9hr ago
The Vatican military/Swiss Guard is a tiny paramilitary force. It has no hope of holding up against anything much larger than a terrorist attack. It doesn't need to, because of good relations with their neighbors, and because it's in the middle of Italy.
Notice that you have changed the standard of what constitutes a group from nation states to an entire religion and all its adherents. I think that says something, and strays from the original point of contention (and when I gave specific examples of softness, I chose smaller groups because I think it's a shitty standard at the level of nation states). The Papal Enclave doesn't recruit primarily from within the Vatican, as far as I'm aware. That is a form of outsourcing. I might as well argue that the late Roman Empire was recruiting from itself, because the barbarian tribes at the borders had partially or strongly Romanized.
Ok, hold up. If there is such a thing as ambient cultural softness, that can be applied to entire societies, then surely being unable to recruit your defense from your own people is as close to a definition as we can probably get.
That is an incomplete definition at best.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9hr ago
Are you aware those genes don't simply convey resistance to the Black Plague, they provide more generalized resistance against lethal infectious diseases?
That is not information conveyed in the article you linked. The primary protection is against Y. Pestis, I went to the trouble of looking and I find no evidence of significant protection from other pathogens, at least for the ERAP2 variant in question.
As the article confirms:
However, the protection against plague conferred by these variants appears to have come at a cost. The protective ERAP2 variant is also a known risk factor for Crohn’s disease. Another protective variant has been associated with an increased risk of two autoimmune diseases. Thus, the Black Death and other past pandemics may have shaped humans’ immune systems in ways both good and bad. While we acquired better protection against infections, we became more susceptible to autoimmune diseases.
Yeah. It's a tradeoff. What would you rather have, a genetic resistance to Y. Pestis that is far from perfect, and obsolete with the age of antibiotics, or elevated risk of Crohn's disease, which is chronic and lifelong?
And recall the Native Americans were devastated by diseases for which Europeans had developed immunity. It provided a strong genetic advantage.
They were doing just fine before being exposed to alien pathogens. And the Europeans probably picked up syphilis in the process. I don't see how this improved things for anyone.
The Black Plague certainly impacted all classes of people, but the poor masses were hit harder, which yes would be another selection effect suggesting eugenic pressure. Higher immunity among higher social classes is observed even today.
That is much more likely to be a consequence of improved nutrition and sanitation. The wealthy also had the luxury of flight in the face of the plague. They also, yes, probably have better genes for physical and mental health overall, but probably not to that drastic an extent.
Scholars cite the pressures created by the Black Plague on the Catholic Church as being decisive in the Protestant Reformation in Europe, and in the breakdown of feudalism in England towards the manorial economic system which then gave way to the market system.
That's fine.
I already cited the genetic trajectory of Rome (genetic decline -> civilizational decline), granted that bakes in the assumption that population replacement from North Africa was dysgenic, and the subsequent correction towards Northern Europe was eugenic. But it did happen that way.
Yes, and you need to justify that assumption better. North African Berber populations are not the same as the people further south, the Sahara Desert is remarkably inconvenient. There has been a great deal of population admixture over 1.5 thousand years, so a naive extrapolation from current IQ figures is fraught.
If you took away war, starvation, and apocalyptic disease from our evolutionary timeline we would be devolved and unrecognizable and not human. Not saying I support all those things, but the eugenic effects of these sorts of pressures: war, disease, etc. lends credence to the "hard times create strong men" meme, but it's not always true. The pressure has to be eugenic in nature to ring true. Somalis living in a shithole isn't going to make better Somalis unless there's a eugenic selection effect. "Hard times" that are also dysgenic do not make good men.
It is a very good thing we have options these days, like gene therapy as I've mentioned previously. We do not need war and disease to trim the herd, it's a horribly crude solution at best.
Even in the absence of civilizational collapse, selection pressures were still present. In the absence of modern medicine, disease was rampant. Wars still killed people, albeit at a lower background rate. I wouldn't accept the trade of setting back living standards and tech levels so hard it took a thousand years to recover, during the late Enlightenment or early Industrial Revolution.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9hr ago
It is true that South was the better combatant, but all the stuff you've said about how the South lost its war suggests to me that you didn't really read my comment - their loss is precisely what you would expect to create Strong Men (in the Strong Man cycle theory) and thus them losing the war is evidence for the theory, not against it, as you seem to think.
As you note, the South already had a strong martial culture. What exactly changed after their loss in the civil war to strengthen it? Is there evidence that they became more likely to sign up for military service on a per-capita basis? They weren't a bunch of pacifists who got beaten up and decided to enlist as a trauma reaction. It is very weak evidence at best, if used to support the Hard Times theory.
(I used an LLM to check, and it claims that 37% of white Americans come from Confederate States, but make up about 40-45% of active duty personnel who are white, and thats roughly a quarter of all active duty personnel considering all races. I haven't double checked the figures, since I've been awake for 36 hours now, so I'm open to evidence otherwise)
There are all kinds of martial cultures that are greatly divorced from hard times, especially when you compare how bad things were to what to they have now. The Gurkhas. The Sikhs. The latter fought (and often lost) a whole bunch of wars, but made a name for themselves, creating a self-identity that persisted. They were already "strong men" when times are hard, they are debatably still so, even if they mostly drive taxis in Canada. The standard is awfully wooly.
Really? Which ones do you have in mind? I think the Russians were impressive at Hostomel. I actually suspect this is an area where the Chinese severely lag. The UK and France, I think, have good trigger-pullers but not a lot of mass...who else?
Israel. Their special forces punch way above their weight class, but then again the entire country does too. Korea (the southern one, though NK SF did pretty well in Ukraine).
Loss of faith (probably religious but possibly also in a shared national project)
Loss of reliance on reason
I disagree with Kipling on many things, but I find this mildly funny. I suspect that an increased reliance on "reason" is responsible for a lot of the loss of (religious) faith. Intelligence and education negatively correlate with religiosity.
I agree that Europe stagnated because of poor economic choices, including excessive redistribution and deindustrialization. I do not see how that is strong evidence for the argument in question. One would assume that going through WW2 would put them in prime position to become stronger men, while the Americans, having had it easy for centuries, would be the ones in decline.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9hr ago
As I said in the previous thread, that's not the meme, it's an strawman of the meme.
Ain't nobody saying that because they think "weak men" can't swing a sword, shoot a gun, or push a button just as well as "strong men".
Do you really want me to go digging up examples on Twitter? Very well.
https://x.com/ashukla09/status/1513940563917041664?s=20
https://x.com/MarkOrmrod/status/1941804527914537373?s=20
https://x.com/AntonKreil/status/1969104105894183202?s=20
https://x.com/romanhelmetguy/status/1684935042554843137?s=20 (Spartan glazing, in the context of an ACOUP post)
https://x.com/infantrydort/status/2023174525714645445?s=20 (More Sparta glazing)
https://x.com/demos_network/status/2019499416156098933?s=20 (It's even got a gif from 300!)
https://x.com/bitcoinzay/status/1488910846063484930?s=20 (Bruh)
Happy? You want more of this slop? My point was that it exists in the wild.
The meme refers to a cyclical "boom-bust" cycle, rather than competition between peer nations. A country of weak men creating hard times can be more powerful militarily than a country of strong men creating good times
If you collapse the course of a civilization into "hard times" and "good times" then I would interested to see how you didn't get a cycle out of it.
You acknowledge that the "cycle" is variable, and grossly so depending on context. Great, does that offer any predictive value? Can you pinpoint the threshold of "decadence" where the odds of collapse skyrocket, or the degree of character-building hardship that ensures a society moves onto the good stuff?
If you can't, then the theory is borderline useless. It only beats one alternative, which is that literally nothing ever happens.
Hard times don't immediately create strong men, and good times don't immediately great weak men. They're breeding grounds for the next generation
That is a phase shift, it should preserve the overall pattern.
The decline of many eminent corporations in the past is kind of a microcosm of the same phenomenon. Megacorporations have all the advantages: more information, better ip banked up, connections, and money to invest, yet there are many such cases where they've ended up in the dumpster. Being top dog often results in a loss of the dna that made a corporation ascendant in the first place.
Corporations are not nations. More importantly, you have omitted what I think is most necessary to have this actually be a supportive argument: that corporations or companies that go through bad times tend to emerge stronger, and that that bad times breed better companies. It's good that you don't say that, because it's not true. A far more common result is that they go bust too. Unfortunately that means you're selectively paying attention to one side of the argument.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
10hr ago
My brother in $Deity, if the cost of eugenics is painfully killing off 30% of the population with pestilence and plague, I'm not sure I want to take up that offer. That's coming from someone who is sympathetic to the cause of eugenics, done sensibly. We can do it with much less societal disruption by far more genteel approaches such as germline gene editing. No need to cause civilizational collapse, civilization is kinda nice, most of the time.
The Black Death, the high mortality during the Middle Ages, the violent organization of the early Roman Republic all served eugenic functions- even the collapse of the Roman Empire served an important eugenic function. "Hard times create strong men" is a nod to the eugenic function of growth and the dysgenic effects upon realization, stagnation, and ultimate decline. Goethe
You can see the full "Hard times create good men, good men create week men" cycle in the genetic evolution of the Roman Empire, with the collapse of the Roman Empire forming an important eugenic function reversing the dysgenic effects of late Roman decadence.
Citations desperately needed. I've never needed them more, because your claims warrant them. What fucking eugenics? Are you aware of the fact that the same genes that convey resistance to the Black Plague also cause increased risk of autoimmune disease? War, starvation and apocalyptic disease are terrible ways to go about it. All you've done is attach a chart that shows some kind of distributional shift of what I can only assume is some allele or haplotype. I find it incredibly funny that you chose to provide citations for the one thing you claim that least needs it.
Sure. That's not an issue at all. What was the last war where the continental US faced an existential threat? The Civil War? The War of 1812? The country would probably have survived a defeat in WW1 and 2 back-to-back and everything that came since, it's the perks of being an island fortress the size of a continent with enormous natural resources.
The fact that WW2, a conflict that killed somewhere between 75-80 million people still had no chance of causing serious catastrophe at home is probably the greatest testament to American superiority around. You can't blockade America, you can't starve America, you can't even cut off oil supplies because you make enough to get by, albeit with austerity measures. The only thing that can put a dent in you are nukes, and you have nukes of your own.
I struggle to identify another historical Great Power with that kind of domestic security and free license to do whatever the fuck they want abroad without it following them home. Even Britain at its peak had to seriously worry about neighbors in Europe, for good reason.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
10hr ago
How is that a bad example? The Papal Enclave exists as a nominally independent state. It preaches Christian charity and forbearance, and I believe it's probably at least 500 years since a Pope had to crack skulls with a mace (and that too was probably another pope). There is no major nation that can get away with that kind of nominal pacifism, barring those that have military alliances with stronger powers, which is just another form of outsourcing all the nasty brutish threat of violence.
Please, by all means share your definition of cultural softness. If I know what you mean, then we can move to productive debate.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
10hr ago
The Motte is that there are dozens of factors at play, many of them heavily contextual and localized, requiring exhaustive research. I'm describing history.
I do not have to be a historian to observe that a historical "theory" is implausible, and I largely defer to Devereaux in this particular topic. If you have any concrete examples of him being incorrect, especially here, I'm all ears.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
12hr ago
What if it's trained to wriggle around a prostate? Given how many worms there are, that's the polycule to end all polycules.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
12hr ago
It's sort of glossed over but the US has a region that has both a history of Hard Times (from losing a war) and of Strong Men (from a long military tradition). I'm speaking, of course, of the former Confederate states, most of which are more likely to enlist their men in US wars than wealthy American states such as California or New York. Hawaii - which (contrary to its public image) is very much a Hard Times state - is the most over-represented, although some of that might be military kids joining the military.
I'm aware that the South and rural states are over represented in the US military.
I don't dispute the data. But what exactly does this prove for the Fremen thesis? The South lost its war. Spectacularly. If Hard Times produce the strongest military culture, and the South has been steeped in both literal defeat and the mythology of that defeat for 160 years, shouldn't we expect that culture to translate into superior military outcomes, not just higher enlistment rates?
Sure, they put up a good fight, but their martial culture didn't beat raw industrial output. Consider what that implies for the Fremen hypothesis.
What we actually observe is that Southern enlistment feeds into a military machine whose effectiveness derives overwhelmingly from the economic complexity, technological sophistication, and logistical infrastructure that the "Good Times" coastal states disproportionately fund and staff with engineers and contractors. The trigger-pullers matter.
The people designing the triggers, the targeting software, the satellite constellation feeding the operator's goggles, and the supply chain keeping him fed and fueled also matter, perhaps more. Modern militaries have really fat, technologically dependent tails. After all, plenty of other countries have top-notch special forces without relying on beef-fed Scots-Irish borderers. You can't separate the Marine from the apparatus that makes him effective, and that apparatus is very much a product of "decadent", bookish, economically complex society.
You take it for granted that the US of A is living in Good Times due to its power and material wealth. But if we understand Good Times to be in a sense derisive, we can quickly understand that that it's not power and wealth themselves that are Good Times; rather it's (for example)
You'll see that the Gods of the Copybook Headings have been much more respected (although unevenly) in the United States than in Europe - and often precisely due to the influence of the Hard Times states.
Perhaps it's not coincidence, but rather virtue, that has seen the US pull ahead of the European economy while maintaining a truly ludicrous edge in military prowess and birth rates despite a much smaller population. After the Hard Times (the Cold War) ended, Europe decided to embrace the Hopes that our World is built on and now they are paying the price.
Man. This is the epicycle problem I flagged in my original post, and I don't think you can escape it just by invoking the Victorians.
You claim that Good Times could/should be understood "derisively" and that it's not power and wealth per se that constitute them. Fine, I'll grant it for the sake of argument. But then what does constitute them, in terms specific enough to generate predictions?
If the US has avoided True Good Times because of the influence of Hard Times states (despite being, by any material metric, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in human history) then the definition of Good Times is quietly doing the same unfalsifiable jig I described: the US wins, therefore it isn't really decadent; Europe stagnates, therefore it is. Where's the independent variable? What would I have to observe to falsify the claim that the US has been protected from Good Times?
In other words, what elevates this from being just another just-so story, if it's my turn to bring Kipling into the court?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
13hr ago
I can imagine "ambient cultural softness". I gave two examples above, I can probably come up with more if I had to. A vegan group house that eschews violence and practices non-violent communication is soft. The Papal Enclave is soft.
I simply don't think it's a useful metric for gauging or predicting the life cycle of a civilization. The Pope has bodyguards with rifles, who are willing to use violence so he can keep his hands clean.
A concept can be entirely coherent and entirely useless. I'd react the same way if someone claimed that it's the coolness of the hairstyles in fashion that predict the rise and fall of civilization. Extending moral softness to the scale of civilization is about as useful.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
13hr ago
Haha, your situation is too tragic for Scotland. I hope you manage to visit America someday.
Truer words have never been spoken.
I don't have anything tacticool yet. Actually, Illinois is probably passing another law, this one called the RIFL Act, so that gun manufacturers need to pay a bunch of money to Illinois to get a license to sell in the state, and if they don't, then FFLs can't even sell those manufacturers' products or they get fined. So I might have to pick up something marginally more tacticool soon, or I will have to drive to Missouri to buy anything (actually, that's not so bad anyway...).
My condolences, that sounds like a pain. I seem to recall that transporting a gun across state borders is also a major pain, but I'm sure you know better than I would.
I don't know if my guns would be as tacticool as you like. I probably wouldn't bother with foregrips; just a red dot and a light, and maybe a magnifier for the red dot. Oh, and maybe a suppressor.
That sounds plenty tacticool to me! Now that you mention it, my dream gun absolutely has to have a suppressor, even if the licensing is a ball ache.
I would recommend making a friend who owns an MP5 clone or similar. AP5 or Stribog, something roller delayed. I'm interested in them, myself. Apparently 9mm has more recoil than .223, which was shocking news to me. But if it's roller delayed, then it's less recoil.
How does one specifically look for friends with MP5 clones? I imagine that involves lurking on gun boards, but I'd be laughed out of the room when they learn of my cursed place of residence haha.
Hmm.. A quick Google says you're right on the recoil. I imagine that both platforms are mild enough that it's not an issue!
You also need to visit a range that lets you rent full auto guns. You also need to shoot a full magazine out of a semi-automatic shotgun. You also need to shoot an AK or an SKS. You also need to shoot USSR pistols. You also need to shoot a lever action. Please, plan accordingly.
I have been a good boy and saved most of my salary. I can start to see why I bothered. I'm sure my girlfriend will understand the paper-mache engagement ring. I can probably pass of a necklace made of spent brass as a particularly avant garde American invention. Pray that ammunition prices recover, and that the range passes it on to poor tourists like me.
USSR pistols? Do you mean an actual Soviet handgun? I don't see anything else online! What do they offer that a Western handgun doesn't?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
13hr ago
I do not agree that there is anything usefully described as "ambient cultural softness", unless you're talking about a Quaker colony or a Buddhist retreat.
If demographic decline and poor economics making it impossible to maintain an overextended empire count, then you might as well accuse most nations with decline fertility rates of being on that road, since they'll be there eventually. That is pretty much every single developed country and most of the developing ones. More importantly, Rome used substantial numbers of auxiliary forces for most of its history, including when its reach barely left the peninsula. It only failed them after several hundreds of years of pronounced success, after a host of other factors weakened the empire.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
13hr ago
Firstly I'm not actually American but Australian
My apologies. That slipped my mind.
What good has it achieved for America? The US military beat Saddam and derailed their modernization plans in Iraq. China bought up the oil wells and started to catch up. The US military 'secured' the Middle East, so that China could import their oil safely and creep forward in the South China Sea unmolested. The US blew up Libya and caused a serious political crisis in their European allies. The US tried to bomb Yemen, failed to reopen the Red Sea to traffic, then made a deal with the Houthis.
The primary purpose of any army is the defense of its nation, usually from other countries and their armies. I think the US is doing excellent on that front. As I've said, even if recent efforts to project power abroad have been less than effective, the continental USA is at no risk of invasion. Chinese paratroopers aren't going to land in LA no matter how bad the war in Taiwan goes. The US is too far, it is too geographically blessed. There's no power on Earth that can threaten it on its home turf, and that's before we even consider the nukes.
Could the US have been more sensible? Of course. I agree 100%. But the fact that it can hop on one leg while trying to kick itself in the balls and still be the world power means that the pressure to be smart is less than crushing.
What if the dollars that went to Somalia were invested in hypersonic missiles or just producing artillery shells?
I really don't think that even ten billion dollars would make a noticeable difference to the military budget. That's 0.5% of the F-35 program. Of course, that is because procurement is busted and everything is overpriced, but that's still the way it is. The US war machine is not starved for cash, it's suffering from lack of an effective way to convert the ridiculous amount of money it has into useful materiel. I can't blame the Somalians for that.
A thousand cuts? Fatal to small mammals. A whale might not even notice. It could hemorrhage a liter of blood a day and draw every shark in the Pacific and few would have the balls to bite it (cloaca? Idk). The fact remains that even if the USA isn't acting maximally rationally, it's still doing pretty damn well overall. It's fine to grade on a curve when nobody is going to bomb their homes.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
13hr ago
I appreciate the nuance. It is unclear to me that a US military doctrine used to styling on poorly fed goat herders and third world militaries will remain unchanged if/when forced into a war of attrition against a peer-power. I don't think setting up Burger Kings will be a priority during the invasion of Taiwan. But it looks increasingly like the quality of manpower or the equipment of infantry will become less and less relevant with time. Drones do not care about PT.
The implications for modern politics are straightforward: Civilization falls to barbarians when the existing power structure cannot enforce the laws, finance the military, make political decisions and foster a functioning economy. The danger is not in the hinterland, geographical or social. It is in our own government, our social divisions and our political animosities. We've mostly solved the plagues and famines that used to destabilize organized societies. We're never going to solve the political problem.
To perhaps interpret your point too literally: where are the barbarians? That's a serious question. The closest you can get to "uncivilized" is the more godforsaken parts of Africa and the Middle East. Most of the world has air conditioning and wifi. Going with your definition of "barbarian" as a particular social class or ethnicity within existing society, is there any meaningful risk of them seizing power? Foreign barbarians are impotent. The "local" ones are part of the underclass because of certain... deficits. Neither are a meaningful threat.
In this day and age (and for several hundred years) the primary threat to a nation state is either civil war or occupation by a foreign power of comparable sophistication. Rome survived multiple civil wars. The US survived a serious one already. That's pretty lindy. In case of civilizational breakdown, who's doing the invading or occupying? Canada? Mexico? China? For the foreseeable future (studiously ignoring AI), the most likely outcome of another American civil war would be the eventual reconstitution of the republic, perhaps under new management. That's not the end of a civilization, for the same reason we consider China or Rome as continuous for hundreds or thousands of years. In those cases, the new ruling class were rarely barbarians, they were most commonly another flavor of local elite.
Of course, once we consider AI, it all becomes rather moot.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
14hr ago
My leading examples are, in fact, actually trailing. I recapitulated the case for the Roman Empire as presented by Devereaux in a comment in the thread I linked to. In short, the Hard Times argument didn't hold much water there either.
Note that you're pivoting from some combination of moral pulchritude and harsh lifestyle to the claim that the peoples of the plain had advantages in terms of access to horses and the ability to evade more sedentary great powers, you're on much firmer soil. Steppe nomads were a menace, Scott takes S-risk very seriously. Jokes aside, that is not the same argument as the one Devereaux made, or my defense on his behalf.
The modern era has not lasted as long as the Han dynasty, so we should give more time for the thesis to play out, but it seems pretty likely that the whole cycles of history thing was true for most of human history, but now it might not be.
I imagine that the people who actually believe in the Hard Times theory would be rather miffed to hear that. The main reason they're attached to it is because of the implications on the conduct and prognosis of modern civilization. It's no good to say that, hey, it worked in the past, but we're past such things. You can be as gay and irreligious as you like, as long as you've got fighter jets and nuclear weapons isn't an appealing message to them.
I appreciate the context but I'm going to have to push back here.
You're essentially conceding the core of my argument while framing it as a rebuttal. Consider what the conceded version actually says: Rome's military decline tracked with its institutional decay, loyalty structures, economic capacity to maintain professional armies, and political dysfunction, not with some ambient cultural "softness" that sapped the virtue of Roman men.
I don't blame you, because decadence is both a loaded and vague term with multiple connotations.
My understanding is that the legions didn't stop being effective because Roman citizens got too comfortable. They stopped being effective because Rome progressively couldn't afford to staff them with Romans due to demographic decline, fiscal stress, and political fragmentation. That's a story about state capacity, not moral character. It actually supports the thesis that material and institutional factors dominate over vague civilizational hardness.
Devereaux takes pains to note that perception of decadence is effectively decoupled from the promised dire consequences:
To put it quite bluntly, no part of Roman military ‘decline’ follows this pattern. Rome’s military power was greatest when its wealth and urbanism was growing, and begins to decline in a period where the empire seems to have become somewhat more rural and poorer (though still quite wealthy and very urban by pre-modern standards). Likewise, the literary reports of declining Roman morals and military ability (as we’ll see next week, these are frequently equated by Roman writers) show no connection to either the patterns of Roman wealth accumulation or later military weakness.
Sallust is writing two centuries before the height of Roman wealth and power under the Nerva-Antonines (the six emperors from 96 to 192, the first five of which are known as the ‘Five Good Emperors’ for the outstanding quality of their statesmanship). Tacitus and Suetonius, bemoaning the loss of Roman virtue, live at the beginning, not the end, of that long Roman summer of wealth, success and power.
You can achieve success and fame by predicting all 25 of 1 recession, as long as you ignore the failures. This forum has its share of people who believe that the West has become decadent and is thus destined to fall (at the hands of less decadent competitors). This includes both tangible things like state capacity, industry and so on, alongside normative claims about morality.
Is there an objective way to track moral decline? Church attendance? Single parenthood rates? Drug use? Maybe, assuming you agree with them on what constitutes moral decline. I don't.
My primary objection is to people pushing the "strong" version of the Hard Times theory. I do not claim empires cannot become senile or overextended. If you want to call that "decadence", be my guest, as long as we're all on the same page regarding the definitions in use.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15hr ago
It's far more concrete and makes testable predictions, for which I'm grateful. I still wouldn't agree with it.
We do have evidence of genetic selection pressures due to the environment: the best example that comes to mind is East Asians accumulating traits that increased conscientiousness and reduced neuroticism. That's fine, depending on how far you stretch things.
Times that are hard enough to kill the uncautious and unprepared (the Mongolian steppe, the American colonial frontier) select for men capable of mastering the environment.
The issue is that hundreds of years pass between anything of note happening. Steppe raiders come and go, the concentration of wealth and population, and thus power hugs the same locations it always does.
These men have the potential to build a culture that enshrines the virtues that they have been selected for; if they do so, then they can master their environment even more, and what's more, they will outcompete less-selected men and cultures, and if they can keep their culture while claiming the bounty of less-hard lands, they will do extremely well.
Those are big ifs. Group selection is real, and cultural selection is faster than genes can dream of. It is fine to model things as better adapted communities/tribes/civilizations overrunning their less adept peers. The problem is when you're asked to show robust evidence that degree of environmental hardship correlates with wealth or military success. Wealthy, stable empires built around breadbaskets beat hardy frontier folk nine times out of ten. Devereaux’s blog has no end of specific examples, I've already recapitulated the evidence as pertains to Rome.
The US colonists only won against Britain by virtue of immense distance and logistical difficulties, and by the late 19th and early 20th century, they'd gone from being frontiersmen to living in a country with a comparable level to development to the best Europe had to offer, and then eclipsing them entirely shortly after. It is an open question if America has lost its edge, as of the time of writing it's the strongest nation on Earth. China is limited to projecting power in its own coastal waters, America rules the waves, and thus the world. There are no objective measures of decline, at least nothing with real stakes (I mean military stakes or dysfunction that can pluasibly lead to either foreign conquest or internal dissolution, not just growth disease or cultural stagnation. Rome survived multiple civil wars.)
But the crux of the issue is that you have to fit the model to historical events, and then show that it has predictive value (without training on the test). That is a high bar, and it is much easier to falsify than it is to prove. But it is also easy to postulate superficially plausible explanations for many things, the hard part is showing the relation to reality. You win some, you lose some.
I believe that Devereaux did a good job dissecting the specific flavor he dubbed Fremen Mirage, the version you propose makes fewer bold claims. That is an improvement, don't get me wrong, but you still need to demonstrate accuracy and predictive power. History is messy. It resists convenient narratives.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
16hr ago
I'm not particularly disputing the definition of "good" or "hard" times. I'm saying that they're highly reductive ways of describing something as large and complex as a whole civilization. Reductive doesn't necessarily mean useless, but there are better frameworks. It's not the point of contention, what we started off debating was what happens as a consequence of the goodness of the times (or lack thereof).
I'm not talking genetics. The nature of the times allows men with specific traits to rise to prominence and become characteristic of their civilization, whereas people of a different temperament are marginalized.
Given the population of the globe today, I think it's entirely possible that there are generals of the caliber of Napoleon or Caesar around, without an opportunity to demonstrate their tactical acumen. They've got better things to do, they're probably CEOs, or like an actual descendant of Napoleon, making millions at a hedge fund. They probably play HOI4 in their free time.
I think this is good. I think it's great! I'd rather they make billions as quants instead of launching invasions into Egypt. I think that talent is general and finds a way to manifest in both good and bad times alike, it just tends to be more... violent in the latter case. That does not mean that the times create the men, the men were always there, talents intact, they just went about applying it differently. I do not know if we actually disagree about that.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
17hr ago
I think the game, as of Today AD, has about 15-30 hours of content in it before you're really scratching the bottom of the barrel. That is honestly not bad at all, compared to many other titles, but it's clearly unfinished if not quite barebones.
That's fine. I bought it in EA knowing that it's maybe half-done. I had fun, though I'm beginning to notice the burnout. The devs seem competent, I'm not too worried.
I wouldn't worry too much about the fixed characters. I'm part of the largest modding discord, and we've got mad motherfuckers making brand new SLs, units and laying the ground for entire total conversions (WW2 and 40k, because those settings are the obviously correct choices). All of that before we have an official modding SDK.
I intend to play till I feel like I've seen it all, and then I might either download one of the many balance mods or the few ones that currently add new content. Or I can wait a few months and come back to a lot more, including both official and modded content. If you're worried you'll pick the same SLs again and again, then there are already mods that randomize the starting pool, and it takes at least a dozen hours before you have the majority unlocked and can fall back into old habits.
I think this is orthogonal to my point. I find the Somali fraud situation to be somewhere between ludicrous, shameful and funny. Given that I have no skin in that game, I have the luxury of finding it more funny than infuriating.
But that's neither here nor there. The reason Somalis can leech off what seems like staggering amounts of wealth in absolute terms is because America is so wealthy that it's not particularly impactful in relative terms. They're a mosquito treating an elephant as a buffet, at some point they might get swatted for the inconvenience, but they aren't debilitating.
They stole a few billion dollars (I don't know the actual figure, I'm erring on the side of being generous to their talents at welfare fraud)? No big deal. The SF to LA rail line was originally budgeted at $35B and that ballooned to $128B with no projected date of completion. I don't know how much of that money was actually spent, so consider the F-35 program: started off at around 244B, and is now estimated to now have lifetime costs of 2 Trillion dollars. The humble James Webb went from a sticker price to a single billion to a cool ten of the same.
That is a lot of money. That is probably a lot of waste and graft. Yet it didn't collapse the country. A big strong healthy nation has proportionately bigger parasites, and can tolerate those parasites for far longer before it decides it needs that blood for better things. Before it is forced to tighten belts and actually check the accounts for the month.
So you have the equivalent of spare change from a not particularly important government program funding an entire civil war involving millions, without anyone taking action for years. The harm to the average Minnesotan, while real, was mostly invisible because how goddamn rich you lot are. Most countries would kill to have billions stolen from trillions, if that meant they had trillions in the first place.
What is that if not an example of degeneracy and decadence, where this nuclear superpower is getting humiliated by a shithole country?
I mean, what did the Somalians in Somalia do? They aren't on the autism payroll. Your ire should be directed at their compatriots in your country, who I am told mostly hold full citizenship. Bend them over an electric rail, I have no objections. But I think it is a mistake to claim that this is some sign of imminent collapse (assuming that is what you meant, you might have raised it as a single illustrative example).
For all your corruption, graft, poor budgeting and cost overruns, the US military is still the best in the world. The F-35s might have an eye-watering price, but they're good fighter jets sir. The telescope does telescope things which I read about on Quanta. Californian HSR? Now that I can't really defend. Anyway. Your hegemony is only now being challenged, with no clear victor, and only in a very constrained geopolitical theater. While a few carrier groups might be very unhappy in the Pacific should the missiles fly, the average American doesn't need to really worry unless some of those missiles are nuclear tipped. At which point we're all kinda screwed, if that's any consolation. I think it's comforting, in a grim way, that the only way to make life significantly worse for you in absolute terms is to potentially kill a quarter of the planet. Otherwise a decisive Chinese victory at Taiwan means you're looking at something like going from 2026 GDP figures to 2005. That's really not the end of the world. It's probably not even the end of America.
When Byzantium has its 600th civil war and loses provinces to Bulgaria or the Arabs, that's a real defeat for the Byzantines. When Korean court intrigues result in them letting their army rot and constantly imprisoning their best generals, that's genuine military failure. Letting other nations infest and parasitize your politics is just as bad as being humiliated on the battlefield, in so far as the results are the same. Payment of tribute is an ancient custom of defeated nations.
Humiliating? Yes. Annoying? Yes. Bad optics? Yes. Lethal? No. Somali fraud or minor ethnic bickering and identity politics won't bring down the American empire. It won't even make Minnesota flip away from being a Blue state. The Weak Men Hard Times theory focuses on civilizational trajectories as a whole and their failure modes, as does my critique, this isn't quite on the same level of concern.
Fair enough, I recognize that as a valid possibility, even if I think that reunification is more likely than not. The last civil war didn't end up with two separate independent cores, for whatever that's worth.
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