Open Thread 35: The 100,000 Thread

Comments

1. E. Harding says

   January 31, 2018 at 1:04 am

   “* Weev outed as Jew by his own mother. Don’t know if true but hilarious.”

   Anyone could either see Weev was a Jew just with his eyes the moment he saw him, or is blind. Even the Germanic last name reeks of Jewishness.
2. Polish Perspective says

   January 31, 2018 at 1:05 am

   On Sinotriumphalism – a narrative I largely agree with, but with some significant caveats – I did read the Financial Times Op-Ed which was the basis for the tweet of ‘burgeoning Chinese start-ups’:

   https://t.co/w3MT8lzrWx

   That Op-Ed was the dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time. The author doesn’t seem to understand the concept of productivity. Working 6 days a week for about 16-18 hours is not necessarily a good thing if you don’t have great productivity and there’s no evidence that the average Beijing coder does better – or frankly, even as well – compared to the average SV one.

   Importantly, what is the reach of Chinese tech companies outside of the Mainland? How many are using Baidu instead of Google? How many in India are using WeChat instead of Whatsapp?

   It reminds me of the stupid Op-Eds that were published in the 80s about the imminent takeover of Japan. The difference between China and Japan is of course that China has the demographics to overtake the US, but my point is that when Japan was rising you started seeing uncritical gushing articles that glorified every single habit of the Japanese. That Op-Ed in the FT was something like that. Just dumb.

   As for the panic in the New Yorker:

   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/making-china-great-again

   I have noted an increasing trend of what you could call “liberal internationalists” panicking. Their political equivalent are ‘liberal interventionists‘, a.k.a. people like Hillary Clinton, who in turn are barely distinguishable from neo-Cohens (and often funded by the same donors).

   Nevertheless, it is an interesting thing to think about. We were always told that nationalists are going to have a harder time to adapt to the new world of a rising Asia, particularly East Asia, because nationalists are less internationally-oriented and (presumably) less tolerant to outsiders. However, what we’re seeing is the exact opposite.

   It is nationalists, not the internationalists, who are adapting to the new reality much better and with far less hysteria. I believe this is because none of the nationalists believe that current Western power is being used in our interests. Western power, especially US power, is used to further Israeli interests in the Middle East. Nobody knows what we are doing in Afghanistan any longer. We’re approaching 20 years in a country that is seeing major attacks in the Kabul capital and 40% of the budget of their government is composed of Western aid. Western governments are aiding the replacement of their own people through 3rd world migration.

   Is it any wonder that nationalists would even welcome the demise, or at least the diminution, of their countries’ standing in the world?

   Even on petty matters, this pattern holds true. China banned Hip-Hop this week. Take a look at the US billboard 100 list and tell me that there isn’t a huge amount of utter trash there. Why would we side with ZOG USA over China? People in the New Yorker may panic, but I doubt many nationalists will, certainly we haven’t so far and that will not change.
3. Polish Perspective says

   January 31, 2018 at 1:27 am

   On an unrelated note of convergence of Eastern Europe to Western standards, this map caught my eye:

   https://i.imgur.com/PaIjzzd.jpg

   I found it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7sf1of/european_countries_by_average_monthly_net_wage_in/

   Some parts of this map are problematic. For instance, I heavily doubt that the difference between Austria and Poland is just $300 in PPP net wages. That said, PPP wages do not convey the quality of social services. And let’s be clear: those are of a significantly higher quality in Austria than they are in Poland, so one should not think that net wages in PPP is a sufficient proxy for quality of life. Furthermore, I also think that the relative proximity of NL and Spain to be somewhat suspect.

   So is the map bunk? Maybe not.

   Polish average wages reached 5000 PLN at the end of 2017:

   https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/wage-growth

   At current exchange rates that is around 1500 USD. In Warsaw, the wages are closer to 6500 PLN, which is around 2000 USD at current exchange rates. Once you factor in PPP, you’re in the 3000 PLN ballbark, which is not bad. (US average wages are 4000 USD on a PPP basis, given that their PPP is the same as their nominal).

   Even in a nominal sense, getting 2000 USD in Warsaw is not terrible. You add significantly lower living costs than in London or Paris, and you end up with a relatively decent life. Polish healthcare is quite good if you pay private companies and even then the costs are very low.

   Furthermore, some countries like Czechia and to a lesser extent Slovakia should have even higher wages. Czech wages are roughly on par with Polish wages in nominal terms, despite having higher living costs. But Czech GDP per capita is higher by 35% or so, which means that the Czechs have been underpaying their workers for many years in order to boost manufacturing exports (largely successful). Nevertheless, this is now changing. Real wage growth is running in the 5% range for the Czechs. Their main problem very expensive real estate whereas, Polish prices are largely quite stable.

   The same pattern also holds true wrt Slovakia. Interestingly enough, Slovakia actually has a productivity per hour worked comparable to New Zealand(!) according to the OECD. Given that V4 economic growth is much more based on industrial strength, this seems to me to be sustainable.

   For example, the Polish economy grew by 4.6% last year. In Gross Value Addition (GVA), which is total production less taxes, it grew by 4.3%. What is important here is that industrial GVA grew by 6.2%. Source:

   http://stat.gov.pl/en/topics/national-accounts/annual-national-accounts/gross-domestic-product-in-2017-preliminary-estimate,1,7.html

   This means that Poland, despite already having decent per capita GDP and growing fast, is doing so on the back of industrialisation and export-led growth. The same pattern is true in Czechia and Slovakia. This is why I am fundamentally more optimistic about these countries’ long-term growth potential over, say, Portugal which is much more reliant on tourism and petty services.

   Finally, it is important to underline that EE growth is still significantly linked to the broader European context and in that sense, the continent is doing fairly okay:

   https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/gdp-growth-annual
4. Polish Perspective says

   January 31, 2018 at 1:34 am

   Once you factor in PPP, you’re in the 3000 PLN ballbark

   It should say “3000 USD“, not PLN, just for clarification.
5. Daniel Chieh says

   January 31, 2018 at 1:45 am

   That Op-Ed was the dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time. The author doesn’t seem to understand the concept of productivity. Working 6 days a week for about 16-18 hours is not necessarily a good thing if you don’t have great productivity and there’s no evidence that the average Beijing coder does better – or frankly, even as well – compared to the average SV one.

   Pretty sure the writer is trolling pretty hard in his overall article to mask his main point – that virtue signaling, benefit massing and SJW spiraling in Silicon Valley will kill them. This isn’t out of ignorance, from what I can tell, the writer has worked with Chinese companies a great deal so he’s intentionally not mentioning a lot of aspects of the culture there which make it a lot more possible(for example, continuous iteration of development; scaling challenges/opportunities; startup culture and enthusiasm).

   This is addressed better here:

   https://medium.com/@a2d2/looking-east-2eafb83bf9c9

   But overall, I think the writer is basically just shitposting and trying to browbeat the Silicon Valley into becoming more sane in a world where writing long rants on gender equality and women going on rants of “I am not emotional! You are thinking I’m emotional because I’m a woman, right?!!” is becoming a stupid norm. He’s not trying to make a complex argument, he’s just looking for a way to intimidate SV out of its madness.

   I doubt it’ll work.
6. Singh says

   January 31, 2018 at 4:00 am

   How long until your cmp is updated?

   Do you think China will be only 5 years behind the USA by 2020?

   How do you think a small minority dominating the military affects the cmp if any. 4 or 5 NW Indian states producing the vast majority of men & officers for example।।

   Dam, I had the first comment but it wouldn’t let me post.
7. The Big Red Scary says

   January 31, 2018 at 4:43 am

   Concerning Hanson’s viewquake, he makes some interesting points, but overstates his case, I think, with regards to good guy/bad guy dichotomies being a modern nationalistic invention. Although I haven’t read the Mahabharata, which he mentions, I have read the Ramayana, which is an unapologetic nationalistic moralizing tale. (The good guys are Aryans from the north. The monkeys of central India help out the good guys and so achieve honorary human status. The bad guys are Sri Lankan demons.) The same goes for the Aeneid. And of course, parts of the Old Testament. Even the amoral Greek myths, to which Hanson refers, were criticized at length by Plato precisely for being amoral.
8. inertial says

   January 31, 2018 at 11:08 am

   China, Unhampered by Rules, Races Ahead in Gene-Editing Trials

   Yeech.

   Here is one area I am perfectly willing to let China race ahead. Meanwhile, everyone else can observe from a safe distance.
9. inertial says

   January 31, 2018 at 11:11 am

   When Japan was rising you started seeing uncritical gushing articles that glorified every single habit of the Japanese.

   From November 1991:

   http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xNohRvHocrU/UaKE8qeDdqI/AAAAAAAAAqk/GhfXacGDsHc/s1600/capture-20130527-010307.png
10. Polish Perspective says

    January 31, 2018 at 11:30 am

    Disagree with your (generous) interpretation. People like Moritz often have feudal value systems. Remember Mitt Romney’s praise of Chinese workers at Foxconn during the 2012 campaign, when he lauded them for being so workaholic that they were even taking suicides after not being able to take it anymore? He wasn’t joking.

    You’re underestimating the autism of these robber baron types. Many of them genuinely want a nightwatchman state for these reasons.

    That all said, I’d certainly prefer Chinese tech companies to completely displace the US ones. But so far, their international record is spotty at best. Hopefully that will change.
11. Randal says

    January 31, 2018 at 11:37 am

    A nice full stop to the discussion here and in the wider world which began back last September about the Catalan independence issue, and became rather excited by the “repressed” unofficial referendum:

    The ousted Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, has admitted privately that his attempt to secure regional independence is over and claims he has been sacrificed by his own side, according to messages sent to a colleague and captured by TV cameras.

    Rajoy was much vilified after deciding to enforce the law against the illegal referendum, but events seem to have vindicated him and his approach. He seems to have correctly judged that Catalonia was too divided on the subject, and Spain sufficiently united against it.

    It reminds us that rebellion does not always win, and that cracking down upon it does not necessarily always lead to defeat, but more importantly I think it reinforces the fact that leftist pseudo-nationalism, apart from being inherently contradictory (leftist dogmas implicitly deny nationalism and its racial/ethnic aspects), is almost inevitably going to let down, or actively betray, its nationalist supporters.
12. German_reader says

    January 31, 2018 at 11:45 am

    The same goes for the Aeneid

    I don’t really think so…who’s supposed to be the evil side in the Aeneid? Sure, there are some contemptible characters on the side of the Italian natives fighting the Trojan exiles (the Etruscan king Mezentius, strikingly described as contemptor divum, being a prime example), but on the whole the Latin natives definitely aren’t described as evil…and how could they, after all the whole point of the story is that eventually they’ll mix with the Trojans and form a new people. Is Turnus really unambigously a bad guy or isn’t he justified in some degree in fighting the Trojans, and somewhat of a tragic figure himself? I don’t think there’s really a stark good-evil division between the two sides here, it’s more like mortal men fighting, suffering and dying due to the whims of the gods and to prepare the ground, in a long-term teleological perspective, for Rome’s greatness. The moral quality of the combatants isn’t really a prime factor.
    I agree about parts of the Old Testament though, and even more so regarding Christianity which imo is the prime source in the West for a view of the world where adversaries are seen as evil, not just as people with different interests.
13. German_reader says

    January 31, 2018 at 11:50 am

    Btw, how is Beevor’s book about the battle of Stalingrad slanted against the Soviet Union? I would have thought that to be fairly difficult, since the controversial aspects of the Soviet wartime record (Stalinist crimes in Poland and the Baltic states, the issue of rape by Red army soldiers etc.) are peripheral to that battle, and Stalingrad undoubtedly was a huge Soviet success and important turning point of the war.
    Does Beevor actually know foreign languages or is he another English monoglot?
14. Randal says

    January 31, 2018 at 11:55 am

    It reminds me of the stupid Op-Eds that were published in the 80s about the imminent takeover of Japan. The difference between China and Japan is of course that China has the demographics to overtake the US, but my point is that when Japan was rising you started seeing uncritical gushing articles that glorified every single habit of the Japanese. That Op-Ed in the FT was something like that. Just dumb.

    It’s true that these foolish, panicky articles are foolish and panicky, but I think you are correct to note the difference in this case, which is that China does have the scale (and the long term track record) to make the idea of it supplanting the US perfectly plausible, whereas the idea of Japan doing so was always inherently ridiculous.

    In other words, the fact that foolish US sphere elites made fools of themselves about Japan in ways that are similar to the ways they are panicking about China is no reason to suppose Chinese power and influence will fade back to mid-ranking levels as Japan’s did, as some try to imply.

    Nevertheless, it is an interesting thing to think about. We were always told that nationalists are going to have a harder time to adapt to the new world of a rising Asia, particularly East Asia, because nationalists are less internationally-oriented and (presumably) less tolerant to outsiders. However, what we’re seeing is the exact opposite.

    Absolutely agree with you on this.

    The reason, of course, is that internationalists believe that the evolution of the world into a multiculturalist monoculture [sic!] of US sphere social degeneracy is both inevitable and represents the necessary triumph of Good and completion of the “arc of history”. Even the possibility that this might not come about threatens their world-view profoundly and sends them into an existential panic.

    Nationalists (at least the rational ones, and those who don’t live in a country with a plausible shot at global domination – ie the vast majority) are required to accept that their own nation is not top dog, and have no particular need to impose their own way of life upon the rest of the world. They just want to be left in reasonable peace to live their own way.
15. Jaakko Raipala says

    January 31, 2018 at 12:10 pm

    I agree with Rosa Luxemburg, though with the opposite logic. Finland is Russia, the one counter-revolutionary fragment that survived the very un-Russian revolution. The Russian Federation isn’t Russia, it is a continuation of the Soviet state that forcibly separated from us a hundred years ago with the help of malicious foreign powers.

    For many reasons it would be best and most historically accurate if Finland would be called Rus-land and Russia would be called something else.
16. Daniel Chieh says

    January 31, 2018 at 12:13 pm

    Perhaps I overestimate their sanity. Tragic, then.
17. The Big Red Scary says

    January 31, 2018 at 1:45 pm

    I really shouldn’t have brought up the Aeneid, since I read it as an idealistic teenager. For what it’s worth, though, my impression at the time was that Virgil was trying rather unconvincingly to justify Roman domination of the Italian peninsula. It might seem rather different to me now if I read it again.

    With regards to Christianity, one should note that it is not monolithic and that many of its contemporary forms are rather far removed from its roots. Not to argue there is no true Scotsman, but the kind of self-righteousness of Western elites strikes me as singularly un-Christian.
18. Swedish Family says

    January 31, 2018 at 2:09 pm

    For many reasons it would be best and most historically accurate if Finland would be called Rus-land and Russia would be called something else.

    Now that’s a novel idea. You should put it to the Sputnik i pogrom crowd. )
19. German_reader says

    January 31, 2018 at 3:07 pm

    For what it’s worth, though, my impression at the time was that Virgil was trying rather unconvincingly to justify Roman domination of the Italian peninsula.

    There certainly is a very strong element of imperial propaganda to it (imperium sine fine and all that). But I don’t think there’s really anything like a Manichaean struggle between good and evil in the poem. Even the Carthaginian Dido who in the end curses Aeneas’ descendants is to some extent worthy of sympathy and pity after all. Mortals on all sides are essentially the playthings of forces beyond their control (the gods, the fates) and have to act out their role in a predetermined drama, at great cost to themselves.

    but the kind of self-righteousness of Western elites strikes me as singularly un-Christian.

    They’re definitely extremely lacking in charity and humility. On the other hand, I don’t think it can be denied that demonization of opponents (be they pagans, Jews or other Christians regarded as heretics or schismatics) as quite literally servants of Satan was a very strong current for most of Christianity’s existence. And if the other side is totally wicked, it’s not hard to believe one’s own side is completely good (even though such a conclusion should be very dubious from a Christian point of view). It seems likely to me that this religious background did transfer to some extent to modern secular nationalisms and reinforced the inherent us-them dichotomy (the prime example today being US nationalists with their belief in America’s absolute goodness and the absolute wickedness of all rivals and opponents).
20. Sean says

    January 31, 2018 at 4:06 pm

    One cannot prove a Jewish conspiracy or tendency to undermine IQ and race related science by cherry picking names of lists. It would need a detailed, large-scale quantitative study. This is possible. One way would be to obtain a list of English language nonfiction books published since, e.g. 1945 and metadata. One could then derive tags, themes etc. from the metadata and the title. Similarly, one can derive ancestry status from the author names and any metadata one can find, e.g. via Wikipedia. Finally, one would book for associations between ancestry and content. If there is any Jewish tendency, it will show up here

    I disagree that they can cancel one another out. Smart Jews defeat less intelligent Jews in argument. The winners are where the Jewish tendency is found.
21. Sean says

    January 31, 2018 at 4:22 pm

    The remake of Red Dawn had FX inserted North Koreans as the invaders after Hollywood film-makers were scared off of releasing their original movie with China as the baddie. China is not going to leave you alone.

    Every country converging with the US system is the theory of Walt Rostow. According to Rostow, countries such as Vietnam that did not want to go along with his theory should be bombed.
22. Anon says

    January 31, 2018 at 5:03 pm

    Actually, in Sputnik i Pogrom they write stuff like “Welcome into the Russian nation!”, to all those Finnic tribes they have in the Northwest. Because they have such light hair, the SpiP crowd believe they’re ok to assimilate.
23. Mitleser says

    January 31, 2018 at 5:30 pm

    It’s true that these foolish, panicky articles are foolish and panicky, but I think you are correct to note the difference in this case, which is that China does have the scale (and the long term track record) to make the idea of it supplanting the US perfectly plausible, whereas the idea of Japan doing so was always inherently ridiculous.

    Nitpick: China has scale and independence, unlike post-Imperial Japan which is mostly America’s eastern sidekick.
24. Swedish Family says

    January 31, 2018 at 5:54 pm

    Actually, in Sputnik i Pogrom they write stuff like “Welcome into the Russian nation!”, to all those Finnic tribes they have in the Northwest. Because they have such light hair, the SpiP crowd believe they’re ok to assimilate.

    Oh, I’m sure, but more Rus than the Rus? That idea wouldn’t go down well, would it?
25. Singh says

    January 31, 2018 at 10:57 pm

    Lol Ravana is a Brahmin from the Northwest & is a servant of Lord Vishnu; Sri Ravana & Sri ਕੁੰਭਕਰਨ guard the gates to Vaikunta realm of Sri Vishnu Bhagwan।।

    Sri Ram Chandra Ji is from Ayodya which is more than 700km EAST of ਕੁਰੂਕਸ਼ੇਤਰ where Mahabharat takes place & only 400km west of Patna Sahib Bihar (Magadh) which according to you Euros is a completely different “shramanic” culture.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaya-Vijaya

    Due to a curse these 2 brothers must incarnate either ੭ times as the enemy of Sri Vishnu (Dharma) or ੩ as his enemy.

    —
    In the first life they were born as Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha in the Krita Yuga, killed by Vishnu taking the form of Varaha, a boar and Narasimha, a man-lion in the Satya Yuga.

    In their second life they were born as Ravana and Kumbhakarna and were killed by Vishnu who descended as Rama in the Treta Yuga.

    And in their third life as Shishupala and Dantavakra who were killed by Vishnu who descended as Krishna in the Dwapara Yuga.

    But what to expect from a (((hajnal line))) christian?

    Lol Liberal “whites” think we’re superstitious fundamentals, RW whites think they’re (((gods))) gift on earth & automatically become born as all knowing blonde blue eyed Rishis able to slay demons & recite Vedas while in the womb।।

    The entire idea of the enemy being unbelievers & Satanic is the core of monotheism।।
26. Singh says

    January 31, 2018 at 11:08 pm

    This why it goes Faggot – > Slav Nazi – > Rodnover lol. Such an idea is preposterous

    The state stuff may be true but Blood is higher।।Reminder that Arya in these Finno Turk languages means Slave, Foreigner, Southerner, Enemy।।

    Their women are free to integrate.
27. Daniel Chieh says

    February 1, 2018 at 12:00 am

    Why do you use ।। so much? It keeps making me think of XOR operator.
28. Greasy William says

    February 1, 2018 at 12:11 am

    Here is an actual post from one of the Left wing blogs I frequent:

    “Ive started to wonder if we can even call ourselves a sovereign nation anymore. A foreign power interfered with our election and installed their puppet. A puppet who has made quick work of removing us from the world stage, has eroded trust in our own institutions, and just further divide the country.
    and to top it off they even decided to lift sanctions.
    And now Congress and this administration refuses to do anything to prevent it from happening again.

    It’s so obvious, Russia won.”

    The above quote is (presumably) not a parody. This is seriously how these people think.
29. reiner Tor says

    February 1, 2018 at 1:03 am

    to top it off they even decided to lift sanctions.

    ???

    By the way I know a Dominican American, who posts frequently on Facebook about how Russia stole the election. He also frequently shares posts of Shaun King. If I didn’t know him I’d probably think the Russia hysteria was confined to white liberals. I also didn’t know that Hispanics liked African American race hustlers, even if a light skinned one.
30. Greasy William says

    February 1, 2018 at 2:07 am

    It has never been 100% confirmed that Shaun King is black. What is known for certain is that the two parents listed on his birth certificate are white, although King claims that the man listed as his father is not his biological father and I think he is probably telling the truth.

    As far as “African American race hustlers” go, King isn’t that bad. Certainly the overwhelming majority of BLM types absolutely despise him. He’s a Bernie guy.

    In 2015, did Hungarian liberals hate Bernie as much as American liberals did?
31. The Big Red Scary says

    February 1, 2018 at 2:27 am

    This could be informative and entertaining. But you have to provide more context for ignorant (((hajnal))) Christians like me, since at this time in my life I can’t afford to spend months reading Hindu scripture. In my youth, when I had more free time, I read a translation of the Ramayana for the fun of it. Do you disagree that it is a nationalistic moralizing tale? This was my amateur impression, and some Brahmins-turned-scientists with whom I discussed it agreed this was a reasonable interpretation. Anyhow, feel free to educate this brown-haired, brown-eyed, pale-skinned wannabe Rishi.

    By the way, why the triple parentheses around “hajnal”? Are you just pointing out that Hajnal himself was Jewish, that I was born west of the Hajnal line, or that I have some Jewish ancestors? (All of the above are correct.)
32. reiner Tor says

    February 1, 2018 at 2:44 am

    There are neocon and neolib oriented leftists (including basically all of the leftist online press), and there is a distinct Bernie style left. They mostly hate each other (though their borders are somewhat porous, and they can occasionally be united against the evil Orbán), and quite naturally the former hated the American Bernie, too.

    My only African American Facebook friend is half Hungarian (Jewish – actually I think he’s Jewish in the halachic sense), but fully identifies as African American (doesn’t speak Hungarian etc.), and he was also a Bernie bro. Apparently most of his friends (both black and white) were, too.
33. The Big Red Scary says

    February 1, 2018 at 3:17 am

    Mortals on all sides are essentially the playthings of forces beyond their control (the gods, the fates) and have to act out their role in a predetermined drama, at great cost to themselves.

    Indeed this a common theme in classical literature (and henceforth I defer to you on such matters), but I suspected that Virgil didn’t really take this so seriously and wrote in Homeric style for the same reason that judges in England still wear wigs, so I mostly noticed it out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I was wrong to do so. According to Singh, I’m totally wrong about the Ramayana too.

    It seems likely to me that this religious background did transfer to some extent to modern secular nationalisms and reinforced the inherent us-them dichotomy

    Likely enough. However, I am rather hesitant to take seriously the stories that people tell themselves and others to justify their actions. For example, if you read leaked documents from the US State Department, there is very little expression of humanitarian concern and a whole lot of realpolitik.

    I’m not saying that philosophical or religious ideas have no influence on people, either individually or collectively, but I would argue that a completely alien civilization that had worked out the basics of evolutionary game theory could mostly make sense of our civilization without knowing anything about our philosophy or religion. What I think philosophy and religion do, most concretely, is affect what people consider a desirable equilibrium and provide them with a means of coordinating the achievement of that equilibrium.

    (In Orthodox Christian terms, evolutionary game theory is a mathematical model of the consequences of the Fall of Adam. Orthodox Christians are however eternal optimists…)

    By the way, you were right in an earlier conversation that particle physics is completely useless as common ground for a popular scientific culture. I have more hopes for probability and game theory though, since they are extremely useful and mathematically undemanding, requiring not much more than the arithmetic of fractions and the geometry of straight lines in the plane. Moreover, there are a number of fine popular books on these subjects. Now we just have to adapt them for cartoons and romantic comedies!
34. Anatoly Karlin says

    February 1, 2018 at 11:30 am

    It’s a well-written book and he does know Russian but I recall there being many mistakes and sensations, David Glantz, Chris Bellamy, etc. are considered more serious historians AFAIK.
35. Anatoly Karlin says

    February 1, 2018 at 11:33 am

    I occasionally lurk /r/politics, it represents a vast liberal-normie demographic and they predominantly think that way too.
36. German_reader says

    February 1, 2018 at 1:14 pm

    Moreover, there are a number of fine popular books on these subjects.

    Could you name some of them? I’m afraid I don’t really know much about game theory, that’s probably something I should eventually rectify.
    Thanks for your observations, very interesting. I’m undecided on those issues, certainly ideologies, belief systems etc. are often merely rationalizations for actions people would do anyway, and much can be explained with subconscious patterns of behaviour shaped by evolution (Azar Gat applied this to war in his War and human civilization, good book imo). On the other hand, I don’t think everything can be explained with this, e.g. medieval crusaders going to the Holy Land must have known there was a high risk of them dying there (with little material benefits to be expected for themselves or their kin) so genuine religious enthusiasm (e.g. crusading as a kind of penitential practice for laymen from the military elite) must have played a large role.
37. Sean says

    February 1, 2018 at 1:58 pm

    Stalingrad undoubtedly was a huge Soviet success and important turning point of the war.

    If Japan had joined in the attack on the Soviet Union then Hitler would have won the war. The Americans’ main reason for provoking Japan was to divert them from attacking the Soviet Union. Hence the turning point of WW2 occurred in the heads of American strategists.
38. Sean says

    February 1, 2018 at 2:06 pm

    On the other hand, I don’t think everything can be explained with this, e.g. medieval crusaders going to the Holy Land must have known there was a high risk of them dying there (with little material benefits to be expected for themselves or their kin)

    To join the The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon also known as the Order of Solomon’s Temple; the Knights Templar, one had to give a very substantial gift of land to the order and be celibate for the rest of one’s life.
39. German_reader says

    February 1, 2018 at 2:06 pm

    The Americans’ main reason for provoking Japan was to divert them from attacking the Soviet Union

    Eh, do you have a source for that?
    And the main reason Japan didn’t attack the Soviet Union was the Japanese army had been soundly trashed by the Red army at Khalkhin Gol/Nomon Han in 1939…which led to the ascendany of the Navy faction that wanted to capture the European colonies in Southeast Asia for their oil and resources…which made conflict with the US inevitable.
40. Sean says

    February 1, 2018 at 2:31 pm

    In his PTSDA Kevin MacDonald noted the the horror that well to do medieval parents viewed their children joining the orders of monks and nuns , which often demanded a substantial bequest and celibacy too. I wonder about the pacification of instincts in the higher social classes and how it makes them vulnerable to ideologies of peace and ethical purity. One tends to think the elite are just out for themselves, but there might be an inherent distaste for hard reality in the mix.
41. Sean says

    February 1, 2018 at 3:23 pm

    Mearsheimer’s Tragedy but I don’t have it to hand. The timing of events is circumstantial evidence (snow on the ground is powerful circumstantial evidence for it falling from the sky during the night).
    http://www.unz.com/article/the-case-for-pearl-harbor-revisionism/ Look at the timing on the Provoking Japan into attacking panel, the oil was cut off forcing Japan to go in the opposite direction to the Russian far east as soon as the Soviets were into it with Germany

    The historical context was that, as I have mentioned before, Japan’s thrashing of Russia caused the 1905 revolution. The Americans worried that Japan would move in on the Russian far east after the Bolsheivik revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_intervention_in_Siberia

    Japan was the danger to the Soviet Union through most of the thirties, and that battle Japan lost was a close run thing in which Russian artillery obliterated formed up Japanese infantry just as they were about to attack . Japan would not have tried to knock the Soviet Union over, but it would quite possibly have been the first to kick them when they were down.

    Hence, Japan might well have attacked the Russian far East if the Germans had pressed forward in a timely manner and forced the tottering Soviet army to defend the Moscow ) instead of stopping before Smolensk. . Fedor Von Bock insisted in his diary that he didn’t want to “capture Moscow”, but rather destroy the enemy’s army, the bulk of which was right in front of him . Instead they waited for almost two months (and predictably bad weather). Hitler alone thought this was a good idea–see Stolfi.
42. Sean says

    February 1, 2018 at 3:41 pm

    Lincoln colluded with Russia to win the US Civil War

    https://www.rbth.com/arts/2013/09/12/when_the_russian_navy_sailed_into_new_york_29761.html
43. Krastos the Gluemaker says

    February 1, 2018 at 8:44 pm

    Effectively 100% of reddit’s large news, politics, whatever commentary are bots/shills etc, except for the genuine hillbilly Trump supporters who show up to troll and argue pointlessly; most of them by now even realized they are dealing with astroturf. (who might still have spammers/botnets of their own, but anyway) It’s a terrible platform, maybe not as much for videogames, but for the former topics.

    Given your knowledge of general Internet happenings, memes, even specific smallers groups like /r/acisthalflings I thought you’d grok this.

    This needs to be mentioned to a broader audience sometime, but really, for foreigners looking for an accurate representation of political groups and their news sources:

    Alt-right – doesn’t need to be explained in comment sections here.
    USA Religious Right grassroots – they actually probably have terrible online footprints and aren’t very readable/intellectual in general (the literal creationists and whatnot) but you can find their views from various religious activists groups. As with the of course small number of “billionaire Republicans” and current Rep officeholders their views are often enough directly represented by the Republican Party organs anyway.
    Neoliberal/Neoconservatives – barely any difference in positions per se these days, (huge divide in partisanship/ethnic grievances/whatever) they really have no grassroots too but the MSM media from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times heavily represent these groups.
    Establishment Democrats grassroots – read, for instance, DailyKos. The perfect example because the whole Kos ecosystem specifically set out to ban Bernie Sanders supporters from the website in 2016 so unless you’re super worried about occasional bot/spam accounts you can guarantee almost everyone else remaining is a genuine Hillary Clinton-esque establishment Democrat
    Left-Wing Democrats (and non-Dems) grassroots – spread across all the place, smaller groups really, but I can tell you a good representative example would be Jacobin magazine.
44. Krastos the Gluemaker says

    February 1, 2018 at 8:57 pm

    Imho I’m not sure there actually are that many great layperson level popular books, but I am never the best judge about this; there would be tons of accessible more academic works, ie papers or texts. There are also tons of Malcolm Gladwell-drivel books but that’s not what you’ll want. I know others would jump in and recommend their favorite hugely politically motivated sources too (even I agree you can’t just tell someone to start reading Chomsky for a general, fair picture of game theory and related topics alone). Likewise you could read popular psychology/human behavior but might as well skim Wikipedia for that; confirmation bias, conjunction bias, whatever all are common and easy topics but reading a popular book that just loads that up with political rants isn’t necessary, furthermore that doesn’t really give a complete picture at all of the field of game theory, only the popular psych/behavior.

    If you don’t need any updated stuff or specific topics in computer science (online textbooks or just papers/lessons are readable though) I’d think John Maynard Smith’s Evolution and the Theory of Games is a good recommendation, definitely around and in libraries etc too.

    my footnote: I can guarantee for a fact there are not any great “popular books” in more of a combination of game theory/information theory/chaos theory that get across key points, again as one would recommend for computer science, it’s one of thousands of things I know someone could work on; there aren’t even great broad but introductory textbooks since that’s not the typical course sequence or the way academics proceed through teaching topics. But if you’re looking for a much more general picture and philosophy/history/general layperson stuff etc things can be put together.
45. Daniel Chieh says

    February 1, 2018 at 10:23 pm

    OT:

    Canada is more woke than you. It is the true progressive superpower, unlike all the rest of the pretenders struggle vainly against the tide of history!

    Canada’s national anthem is now gender-neutral
46. The Big Red Scary says

    February 2, 2018 at 1:00 am

    On the other hand, I don’t think everything can be explained with this

    Nor do I. I am simply hesitant about other explanations. Forget about crusaders, though. What about lemmings? I’ve never heard a good explanation for their behavior.

    Krastos is, I think, overly pessimistic, but “popularization” is probably too strong of a word. More appropriate might be “summary for highly intelligent non-experts”.

    For game theory, you could start with

    http://lesswrong.com/lw/dbe/introduction_to_game_theory_sequence_guide/

    by Yvain (earlier incarnation of Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex).

    For probabilistic thinking, I recommend How Not to be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg:

    https://books.google.ru/books?id=pj6MDQAAQBAJ&dq=how+not+to+be+wrong&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVsoCoxYbZAhXSJ-wKHU5_CukQ6AEILjAC

    There’s also Conned again, Watson:

    https://books.google.ru/books?id=FDx0PgAACAAJ&dq=Cautionary+Tales+of+Logic,+Maths+and+Probability&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzjJjyxYbZAhUFkSwKHXyQAw0Q6AEIJDAA

    This is goes over some of the same ideas as Ellenberg’s book, but in the style of Sherlock Holmes stories. Someone should write a similar book centred around game theory.
47. for-the-record says

    February 2, 2018 at 5:13 am

    What about lemmings? I’ve never heard a good explanation for their behavior.

    If you are referring to their supposed collective suicide by jumping off of cliffs, it appears that this is a myth.

    Populations of lemmings fluctuate dramatically, from massive herds to near extinction. For years, theories on these populace peaks and plummets varied from the supernatural to the absurd . . . It turns out that there is no proof that an assemblage of wild lemmings would actually drive themselves off of a cliff at all, but rather the myth was perpetuated by a 1958 Disney documentary called White Wilderness, in which the filmmakers manually ran a pack of lemmings off of a cliff to make for good television. The staged suicide turned out to be a critical success, as the movie went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. . . .

    While a definitive explanation for the waxing and waning lemming communities remains unknown, recent speculation suggests their explosive annihilation can be attributed to the variety of predators they attract, including the stoat—a short-tailed weasel that’s even capable of hunting lemmings beneath winter snow beds.

    http://mentalfloss.com/article/50957/do-lemmings-really-run-cliffs-their-death
48. Polish Perspective says

    February 2, 2018 at 6:18 am

    I did see that. Canada is in a race with Sweden to see who is the most pozzed country of them all. I actually think Canada will win that fight, not because the Swedes (ethnic ones) are less pozzed, if anything they are even more so. The main reason is because of two giant oceans on each side of Canada, wich means that the multicultural experiment can run in Canada for many decades longer since the minorities they take in tend to be highly-skilled and are mostly from non-Islamic backgrounds.

    This will allow for substantial conversion among the immigrant 2nd gen population to become “oppressed people of color” and then you throw in gender, disability, queerness, homosexuality etc into the mix. It’s assimilation in the worst sense of the word.

    Returning to the topic of Sinotriumphalism, Bloomberg came out with an interesting story over systematic GDP cheating. I’ve archived it since Bloomberg now requires you to register an account to read their full stories:

    https://archive.is/i8acY

    This chimes with what I’ve been saying for a while, too. Up until 2010, I largely believe the Chinese GDP data even if it had huge holes, because all the fast-moving indicators were in sync with 10% GDP growth (and often more). Post-2010, there have been extreme stability in a way which is very atypical as well as divergence between fast-moving indicators and official data. This GDP rigging practice has since spread to India and Turkey.

    Still, China does seem to have recovered their mojo in the last year or so and the report does make clear that the most blatant cheating was probably closed post-2015, so there’s that. Nevertheless, it’s quite likely that China’s true debt-to-GDP ratios are even worse than Victor Shih’s 320% of GDP(total debt, not just government).

    Sinotriumph will happen on account of high IQ and low gdp per capita, but I think it will happen slower than many optimists assume. I would also be cautious about assuming that China will overtake the US before 2035 or so on a nominal basis, though we will likely never know because admitting that they cooked the books would destroy their credibility. Furthermore, military capability (in terms of raw power projection capabilities) will lag even more.
49. Greasy William says

    February 2, 2018 at 7:52 am

    Sinotriumph will happen on account of high IQ and low gdp per capita, but I think it will happen slower than many optimists assume.

    Yes, exactly. This is my position.

    A homogeneous country with massive territory, abundant resources and an average 105 IQ is naturally going to eventually become the world’s strongest. But even in the long term, China is tied down by having very powerful neighbors in an eventually re militarized Japan and an eventually reunited Korea. India sucks but it’s sheer size makes it a pain in the ass for China as well, and there is also Australia to deal with. And it seems like Russia and China are incapable of cooperating on anything other than trolling the US.

    But also for China to become the world’s most powerful country they will need to make economic reforms that the Communists appear unwilling to make.

    One thing is for sure, China is gonna have to do something soon. Their private sector debt is over 200% of their GDP and grows by 35% a year. This is 80’s Japan territory. Although China will be better able to deal with it than Japan was.

    For the record, I don’t think that China is faking their GDP numbers.
50. The Big Red Scary says

    February 2, 2018 at 8:29 am

    Hah. Another one bites the dust. Thanks.
51. Daniel Chieh says

    February 2, 2018 at 9:50 am

    I never give massive faith to government release numbers – not only is there skullduggery especially on a provincial levels as each province wants to look good compared to others. Incidentally, this is also why the “ghost cities” existed, it wasn’t to build potemkin cities for the West, it was to build potemkin cities(or at least, questionable investments) for each other in order to boost local GDP numbers. The Caixin PMI is much more reliable estimate as it excludes SOEs. Post-2015, the numbers are probably more accurate since Emperor Xi now has crushed all rival factions along with their shenanigans, many with highly corrupt individuals. Related to Canada – many of these individuals fled with their families to places such as Canada, after sinking their funds into assets.

    When it comes to its debt, its effect is mostly dysfunctional allocation of capital rather than the risk of a financial bomb. When China Railway Corp Group has trillions of liabilities, the net loss isn’t really that the railways will stop running and more than excessive debt means that the military will stop deploying. The problem is that the SOE is sucking up far more capital than needed, fully aware that they will be “bailed out” by the government and the banks will continue to lend them funds knowing fully well that the Chinese government will bail them out. Japan had similar issues, which ended up with massive zombie corporations guaranteeing lifetime employment.

    The difference is that China has more levers in control of the banks, the SOEs(one would hope, anyway!) and far less desire to keep alive anything like a zombie corporation; we probably will be seeing at least one default this year and CRC has been threatened to be split. Housing debt was controlled in 2017, I think that in 2018, we will see debt growth calm down in aggregate as well. This faith isn’t out of blind air – the CCP has ultimately seemed to have been capable of flexibly handling their own examples of waste: the ghost cities got populated, excess steel was turned into high speed rail and infrastructure, and housing costs for affordable, low cost units have become more emphasized.

    Its a gigantic, complex beast. Sometimes its amazing that it even vaguely rows in the same direction.
52. Daniel Chieh says

    February 2, 2018 at 10:29 am

    But even in the long term, China is tied down by having very powerful neighbors in an eventually re militarized Japan and an eventually reunited Korea. India sucks but it’s sheer size makes it a pain in the ass for China as well, and there is also Australia to deal with.

    Japan, maybe. Korea probably can’t reunify, and even if they did, I don’t see how it’ll be a threat. But its just a poison pill at the moment – I believe a majority of young South Koreans don’t even want to reunify as the notion of familial ties have been fading, as it’ll be a major economic burden to try to assimilate North Koreans even in terms of health. South Korea has been having economic issues, which makes it even less appealing. No idea about Australia but I can say for the foreseeable future, India will only be a pain by constantly starting pointless nonsense, almost like a cry for attention.

    Russian-Chinese trade hit 80 billion in 2017, I believe, so there’s quite a bit of cooperation but countries being countries with their own interests, some friction is inevitable.
53. AP says

    February 2, 2018 at 10:42 am

    Meanwhile in Minnesota:

    http://www.weeklystandard.com/inside-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/article/2011402#

    “As a result, the school system’s obsession with “white privilege” now begins in kindergarten. At Edina’s Highlands Elementary School, for example, K-2 students participate in the Melanin Project. The children trace their hands, color them to reflect their skin tone, and place the cut-outs on a poster reading, “Stop thinking your skin color is better than anyone elses!-[sic] Everyone is special!”

    Highlands Elementary’s new “racially conscious” elementary school principal runs a blog for the school’s community. On it, she approvingly posted pictures of Black Lives Matter propaganda and rainbow gay-pride flags—along with a picture of protesters holding a banner proclaiming “Gay Marriage Is Our Right.” On a more age-appropriate post, she recommended an A-B-C book for small children entitled A is for Activist. (Peruse the book and you find all sorts of solid-gold: “F is for Feminist,” “C is for…Creative Counter to Corporate Vultures,” and “T is for Trans.”)”
54. German_reader says

    February 2, 2018 at 11:28 am

    Thanks for the recommendations, I’ll look at that!
55. German_reader says

    February 2, 2018 at 11:33 am

    Sounds like child abuse, one has to be deranged to send one’s children to such a kindergarten.
56. AP says

    February 2, 2018 at 11:51 am

    It’s a public school, I suspect some parents who happen to live in that town don’t even know.
57. Polish Perspective says

    February 2, 2018 at 12:18 pm

    The problem is that the SOE is sucking up far more capital than needed, fully aware that they will be “bailed out” by the government and the banks will continue to lend them funds knowing fully well that the Chinese government will bail them out. Japan had similar issues, which ended up with massive zombie corporations guaranteeing lifetime employment.

    This is exactly the right analysis. China is not in a danger to experience a Big Crash™, but rather is a slow-burn, originating in increasingly inefficient allocation of resources.

    The Chinese banking system is propped up by both complete state control and the fact that China has a superhuman 45% savings rate, which provides massive funds to the financial system on a yearly basis. But the point is that if credit debt keeps growing faster than nominal GDP, which it has for every year for the last decade (2017 appears to be an outlier, according to the latest, and supposedly better, Chinese data), then it will need to eat larger and larger shares of these savings.

    Those funds could have gone into productive investment instead of increasingly propping up zombie banks and companies. That’s the Japanese malaise, with Chinese characteristics, if the trend is not arrested. Under Xi, the state has in fact gained ground in the economy and not given way to private firms, despite the rhetoric during the 2013 party congress about allowing the market a ‘decisive role’.

    On a more metapolitical musing, the main problem with reading Chinese politics/economics from my PoV is that I personally prefer to read either A) Chinese who live in China or at the very least B) ethnic Chinese who are fluent in Mandarin and who are following the domestic debate closely, but who publish in English occassionally but who are not blind shills for Western interests. Both are very hard to access if you are a non-Mandarin speaker. India’s policy debate is conducted largely in English, making it much easier to read what’s happening close to the ground in great detail.

    An additional wrinkle is that many people in the West wish China harm, so they tend to prefer a certain type of doomster. Gordon Chang is the most stereotypical one of them all, but he has become so laughable that even Western media refuse to take him seriously.

    Victor Shih is a balanced type and so is Harry X. Wu (Angus Maddison’s former co-worker, and who is now working in Tokyo). But overall, there is a paucity of these people. I generally distrust non-ethnic Chinese people, especially white analysts who took a grad degree in East Asian studies at Harvard or Princeton and now fancy themselves experts only because they have an Asian wife as well.

    As someone who genuinely wants China to do well, you are constantly forced to use a heavy filter when using Western sources simply because the inherent bias is negative towards China (same with Russia, though the anti-Russian bias is on a whole other level of hysteria). But the problem is that the authorities in Beijing are not exactly very honest either, and there has been a crackdown of sorts on dissent in China itself. Not necessarily that people are thrown into prison, but more of a social pressure type of crackdown. In universities, people can be accused of being “pro-Western” and lose their jobs. This includes people who are skeptical of the government’s economic performance as well as the veracity of the economic numbers.

    I find that there are few countries in the world where there is so much written as there is like about China yet the quality is so poor (for an international audience), in other words, the noise-to-signal ratio is very bad when it comes to China from a Western PoV. If Russia had good Sino studies, that could help but it appears to be non-existent. India only cares about China in terms of military strategy thus far, and as you point out, they are more of a nuisance to China than a real threat.
58. Mitleser says

    February 2, 2018 at 4:03 pm

    Canada is in a race with Sweden to see who is the most pozzed country of them all. I actually think Canada will win that fight, not because the Swedes (ethnic ones) are less pozzed, if anything they are even more so. The main reason is because of two giant oceans on each side of Canada, wich means that the multicultural experiment can run in Canada for many decades longer since the minorities they take in tend to be highly-skilled and are mostly from non-Islamic backgrounds.

    This will allow for substantial conversion among the immigrant 2nd gen population to become “oppressed people of color” and then you throw in gender, disability, queerness, homosexuality etc into the mix. It’s assimilation in the worst sense of the word.

    There is another important reason.

    Canada has generally been the test case for new features of this “western universalism,” and, as a peripheral resource-based economy tightly tied into globalized value-chains, we have often been intellectually colonized by liberal-internationalist views (for good and ill). Unlike Russia, as we are small in population and sit next to the US, we have rarely had the capacity (or the will) to resist US-led “universalism,” but our analysis when we have tried has been much the same as Remizov’s.

    https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2017/11/02/interview-with-mikhail-remizov/#comment-6953
59. Singh says

    February 2, 2018 at 11:21 pm

    Sanskritize english।।
60. Singh says

    February 2, 2018 at 11:25 pm

    Was gonna remove the abrasive parts of my comment but Idk decided against it।।

    I mean, just the idea that you choose a life of evil to be closer to your Lord ie 3 incarnations instead of 7, has much nuance to it।।

    ‘Brahmins’ are mostly faggots these days,

    Just go read Ram Avatar part of Chaubis (੨੪) Avatar of Vishnu in Sri Guru Dasam Granth Sahib (Sikh)

    Or see recital with translation on YouTube.

    The triple ((( is used to also indicate kike like traits ie the eternal anglo or that jewish power rides on NW euro naivety.

    It’s basically saying “white” nw euro people are basically jews।।

    Man, just go lift & Idk the world keeps getting more mind-fucked।।
61. Daniel Chieh says

    February 2, 2018 at 11:57 pm

    I find that there are few countries in the world where there is so much written as there is like about China yet the quality is so poor (for an international audience), in other words, the noise-to-signal ratio is very bad when it comes to China from a Western PoV.

    This is very true, and I find this equally frustrating. And of course, we can’t dismiss blind Sinophilic enthusiasts such as Godfree Roberts and Pablo Escobar(less so, but still…) who also help muddy understanding. I think the notion of noise and smoke and the sense of chaos prevails even within China: at the end of the day, it composes of an area that’s almost the same size of all of Europe, and of a Han population that’s genetically almost as diverse as Europe’s homogenous population(consideringly only traditionally white Europeans) and pretty distinct regional cultures, even dialects that are virtually languages of their own.

    I try my best to read a number of different sources in both English and Chinese, pro and con, compile them with the ancedotes of what I find myself in my travels, and hopefully get something akin to truth(with a sample size of 1).
62. Greasy William says

    February 3, 2018 at 12:46 am

    even dialects that are virtually languages of their own.

    I thought the Communists had crushed all the regional dialects?

    and of a Han population that’s genetically almost as diverse as Europe’s homogenous population

    So then what makes somebody Han? The Han were self identifying as a nation well before China was united as a single country.

    China has the same problem that Russia does: too big. The Chinese and Russians could all convert to Japanese style peaceniks and it wouldn’t matter. Other countries are always going to be threatened by their size and homogeneity.

    Neither China or Russia has ever done anything to me, and as an American I feel threatened by both.
63. Daniel Chieh says

    February 3, 2018 at 2:19 am

    I thought the Communists had crushed all the regional dialects?

    No, that’d be pretty hard. Mandarin will probably get you everywhere, but regional dialects are pretty common. Cantonese for one major one, but Shanghaiese, Fujian speech, etc. Mandarin has taken loan words from many of them so there’s is occasionally some resemblance but mutual unintelligibility remains. What’s keeps them from being distinguished as their own languages is that there’s only a single written system.

    So then what makes somebody Han? The Han were self identifying as a nation well before China was united as a single country.

    No, prior to Qin unifying the country, any notion of being one people was vague at best. The movie Hero, propaganda as it might be, addresses this directly in its effort to rehabilitate Qin Shi Huang. There’s some genetic resemblance, you try to identify with some aspects of common culture, and work from there. There’s the Yellow Emperor and legendary kings, but that’s basically an unifying myth. I’m sure there was proto-population, but it spread out and developed separately for some time.

    The distinctions in culture and identity is actually one of the reasons why the Party is so paranoid about separatism. There’s still a heck of a lot of identification by province and some wealthy parts like Shanghai could really exist on their own, even with their own distinct culture, cuisine and language. Imagine, I suppose, if the EU succeeded in creating a political union and got their population to superficially identify as “European citizens.” You’d still have people identifying heavily with their former country and culture, I imagine.
64. Anatoly Karlin says

    February 3, 2018 at 4:54 am

    That’s interesting, I was under the impression that grandparents (especially in the villages) still spoke the old patois, while youth has transitioned entirely to Standard Chinese everywhere.

    Is there research on this, or is this a personal impression from traveling?
65. reiner Tor says

    February 3, 2018 at 6:01 am

    The Chinese “dialects” are mutually unintelligible languages, little surprise that their staying power is large. It’s like expecting Russian to have supplanted Latvian because it was the official language.
66. for-the-record says

    February 3, 2018 at 6:04 am

    That’s interesting, I was under the impression that grandparents (especially in the villages) still spoke the old patois, while youth has transitioned entirely to Standard Chinese everywhere.

    Is there research on this, or is this a personal impression from traveling?

    An interesting article in The Atlantic from 2013 (“On Saving China’s Dying Languages”) addresses this question:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/06/on-saving-chinas-dying-languages/276971/
67. Daniel Chieh says

    February 3, 2018 at 11:24 am

    Cantonese is really strong and there’s probably research on that. Personal impression of Shanghaiese is that it still is common, since there remains a certain internal “civilizational confidence” of Shanghai as especially successful part of China. Probably decreasing, however.
68. Daniel Chieh says

    February 3, 2018 at 11:40 am

    Man, they referenced Wu language(of which Shanghaiese is one variation).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_%28state%29

    That is so ancient. I do recall when I was in China, someone explaining to me how she was “You know, we are Wu people!” Frigging state has been gone for two thousand years but some people are still #WeWuzSunTzu.
69. reiner Tor says

    February 4, 2018 at 12:58 am

    I’m quite surprised to see that Mandarin appears to be the main language of 70-80% of the Chinese population. I read a decade ago that half the population spoke some other dialects, and that they are mutually unintelligible. I once had a Chinese girlfriend from Harbin, who told me she couldn’t talk to her grandma in Shanghai, because she spoke the local dialect. So I just assumed that people in the provinces usually spoke the local language. I didn’t expect Mandarin to so quickly assimilate such large populations of tens of millions of speakers of provincial dialects.

    But apparently that’s so. The things I learn at Karlin’s blog…
70. Daniel Chieh says

    February 4, 2018 at 10:06 am

    Centralization is much easier as the population has become more urban, and thus exposed to the official language, which is also pushed by the Party. The major ones haven’t yet vanished into thin air and thus why I noted they continue to contribute in cultural importance, but as a “common tongue”, Mandarin is definitely universal. Cantonese speakers off the top of my head would be most likely to not speak Mandarin and remain unintelligible to me.

    Appparently it even has its own written system:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese

    I’m not an advocate of it, a common main language is essential to a sense of unity.
71. Anonymous says

    February 22, 2018 at 5:17 pm

    I do know for sure that Japan is going to be a major annoyance for China but’s Japan’s demographic trends do not look good from here on out. Still, it’s not as good of an environment as the US with Canada and Mexico.

    Japan’s national mindset is largely about their supposed superiority over other Asians, actually knowing quite a lot of Japanese myself (I’m American and I used to date a Japanese girl). This mindset is actually quite active in Japan, the main reason why Japan dislikes China so much is not because of war (they weren’t the ones being killed) but because there is a huge feeling of insecurity that Japanese have towards being overtaken by China despite priding themselves on being so much better as a race. Basically it’s “If I can’t have her, no one can!”

    I largely agree with you on India, India’s likelihood of becoming a superpower are really quite slim, even with good governance. Lack of human capital can’t be solved with just ‘education’ like SJW’s say, India’s IQ in 30 years of tests has remained relatively the same although India has alleviated quite a bit of poverty. There likely maximum IQ is low 90’s, I remember an article by Steve Sailer that argued quite convincingly that IQ takes a long time to increase. With these sorts of IQ trends as well as the coming advent of automation and there is a tough road ahead for India.

    India’s mindset largely speaking, is colored by the fact that despite economically speaking having a huge amount of starting advantages relative to China, has managed to so epically mismanage itself that it remains behind China, and the gap is still increasing (likely until 2030 or so). Their national memory and collective conscious is likely colored by such thinking such as:

    • Why aren’t we at where China is at? China isn’t a democracy, China had communism for much longer then us, why aren’t we there yet?

    This sort of jealousy leads to the constant India obsession with China, in which they compare themselves constantly (Superpower 2012? Wait, no 2020) is almost like a childish obsession with the popular guy who got all the girls, except this time it’s on a national scale.