N.S. Lyons on a new world order; Antonio Garcia Martinez clarifies the content moderation issue; Robert Wright hearts Rand Paul; Matthew Continetti, Yuval Levin, and Paul Ryan; Bill Gates is un-FIT
On Putin's responsibility for invading Ukraine, there is an undiscussed issue about how much responsibility is there. 100%?
1000% or some uncountable amount?
"Responsibility can't be quantified, and thus none should even try"?
We don't talk as if responsibility, like probability, must sum to a maximum of 100% - but we should.
I think it’s Putin at a (bad) 70%, with corrupt US Mil-Ind-Complex + NATO (10%), Biden weak (10%) and all other responsibilities 10% for a total of 100%. Others might think, and thus disagree and discuss, that it’s Putin at 90%, and all others at 10%; or Putin at 51%, and all others at 49%.
An alternative idea is that Putin is 100% for his decision, and all other influences have any arbitrary 5, 10, 50, 90% or whatever numbers, and there is no limit to the responsibility.
In both cases Putin, as decision makers, bears decisive responsibility. But limiting the total to 100% pushes one to balance why it's 70%, or 51%, or 99% - and how much or how little is available for other influences.
It's stupid to claim that "expansion of NATO" had no influence - since Putin often mentions it. But yes, that means the US and pro-NATO-for-Ukraine folk bear some responsibility.
Many today still talk about how the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW I "led" to WW II, with Hitler plus Stalin both invading Poland in 1939. Few talk about how important, or not, the Stalin ordered Holodomor starvation of Ukraine in the early 30s led many Germans to think only Hitler was strong enough to oppose the genocidal Soviet commies.
[I really don't know how much, if any, coverage this got in German news.]
This continues thoughts from last week, where Neo thinks Putin is 100% responsible:
Part of the issue with Gates is he buys his own hype: the the success of Microsoft is due mostly to his genius, and somehow the success of MS denotes then a higher level of genius in him.
Now, while I won't deny that the man is smart, this conclusion ignores three HUGE factors that contributed to *his* success: 1. the privilege of his family, which led then to him 2. attending the ONLY high school in his area that had a functioning computer lab, which his intelligence drew him to, and 3. the TIMING of his entrepreneurial urges.
If Bill Gates came of age in 2004 rather 1974, he is just one more tech hustler.
Nobody special.
But he has bought the hype that he in fact IS special.
Gates followed a "second pioneer"/ me too strategy - but more successfully than others. The HUGE success of MS was due to ...
IBM. Choosing Gates for their "IBM PC". Any of the personal computer Op Systems probably would have been technically, good enough - but it was the IBM name that made them successful.
Plus Briklin's true genius with Lotus 1-2-3, so blazingly fast AND fully featured.
[In 1981 I worked at Ford Aerospace, in Palo Alto, with a P&BA (Profit & Budget Analysis) director using an Apple II plus Visicalc to greatly improve his back-calculation ability on budgets, rather than the IBM mainframe punch card decks. ]
Windows 3.1 in '92 was good enough, with a mouse, to be used on the available hardware. Windows 95 started the S curve exponential growth in the internet.
Maybe thousands, or only hundreds, of other guys were "as smart as" Gates in tech plus business - but HE was the right place at the right time. To take IBM's call and not mess it up.
I consider https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ to be essential reading on this topic. Yes, Joel Spolsky did have an incentive to shine a favorable light on Bill Gates since that reflects well on himself, but this anecdote is consistent with my understanding of how effective Gates was as a technical CEO.
But that doesn't guarantee Gates's effectiveness today. One consequence of being world-famously successful is that, if a problem is solvable with the strategies you executed on in your heyday, odds are good that someone else already tried to replicate said strategies on it -- unless you really were that much better than everyone else on the planet at executing such strategies, major problems that remain will be biased toward those that your old tricks can't solve. (This is one of the more subtle patterns behind "Planck's principle".) And that's before we get to the curse of sycophancy, etc.
The best commentary on the NATO question comes from non-MSM sources, particularly those from East Europe. The Mearsheimer-ist analysis too often denies the agency of these former Soviet/Warsaw Pact countries. In the end the East analysts were more correct than most US/Western Europe analysts. Putin was an easy read for them as the West appeased constantly and just ended up kicking the can down the road. In the analysis from the East the Germans come off especially bad, which is an easy conclusion to make in hindsight. Even Trump got that point!
One of the best sources of material is former Estonian president Toomas Ilves https://twitter.com/IlvesToomas. Hopefully Ukraine will find it possible to follow some of the Estonian model of governance when the war is over. Estonia in some ways seems like a liberal version of Singapore.
It is good to see Rand Paul staying consistent. 20 years ago, it would have been hard to find a democrat that did not agree with the statement- Al qeada is attacking the US because of our presence in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, the Ukraine war is only the latest example of the good/bad heuristic, it permeates the “news”
Sure, NATO expansion "played a role" in the Russian invasion. And a final settlement should besides an un-invasion (including from Crimea) a guarantee that Ukraine will not be formally incorporated into NATO.
'the greatest danger of all for Trans-Atlantis: a seemingly complete inability of its leadership elite to grasp or reckon with – let alone address – glaring domestic weaknesses, or to prepare for pending crises that are staring them in the face'
I'd sort of agree with this if it means the failure to stimulate rapid growth with lower deficits, freer trade, higher immigrations, fewer restrictions on urban land use, and a tax on net CO2 and methane emissions. Who know what Lyons means.
Do any of the FITs talk about how to better prepare for pandemics? If the Gates solution is wrong the problem should not be ignored. And any solution will involve experts somehow
I think it might be a mistake to even start with the assumption that experts are available. Not only did the current set of installed experts make a bloody mess of things over the past two to three years, but many people who knew better didn't obviously know a lot better across many margins. I think our notion that "someone knows exactly what to do and we just need to find them" is inherently flawed, and chances are really good that putting anyone in charge with lots of arbitrary power is going to fail, just a little more or less.
In other words, if we have a lot of problems finding the right experts and putting them in power so that we get the right results, maybe issue is that there are not any experts that can be put in power such that we get the right results.
I'm surprised that Arnold referred to Gates' column. I'm still laughing at these lines in Gates' column:
"Covid happened because the world hasn’t created an environment in which smart, compassionate people can make the most of their skills as part of a strong, well-prepared system."
Please read the entire column. It's funny because it shows Gates prefers to ignore the history of large bureaucracies, including international ones. He thinks that good solutions come from smart people (I don't talk about compassionate people because I have never met anyone in my professional work around the world, including a long stay in China). Gates assumes that he has the can opener: he knows smart, compassionate people who in addition have the relevant skills and who only need a strong, well-prepared system (maybe like the Chinese one!). Long ago I thanked Gates for Microsoft but you can bet that I will not buy the new book about how to fix the world he is promoting via WSJ.
On Putin's responsibility for invading Ukraine, there is an undiscussed issue about how much responsibility is there. 100%?
1000% or some uncountable amount?
"Responsibility can't be quantified, and thus none should even try"?
We don't talk as if responsibility, like probability, must sum to a maximum of 100% - but we should.
I think it’s Putin at a (bad) 70%, with corrupt US Mil-Ind-Complex + NATO (10%), Biden weak (10%) and all other responsibilities 10% for a total of 100%. Others might think, and thus disagree and discuss, that it’s Putin at 90%, and all others at 10%; or Putin at 51%, and all others at 49%.
An alternative idea is that Putin is 100% for his decision, and all other influences have any arbitrary 5, 10, 50, 90% or whatever numbers, and there is no limit to the responsibility.
In both cases Putin, as decision makers, bears decisive responsibility. But limiting the total to 100% pushes one to balance why it's 70%, or 51%, or 99% - and how much or how little is available for other influences.
It's stupid to claim that "expansion of NATO" had no influence - since Putin often mentions it. But yes, that means the US and pro-NATO-for-Ukraine folk bear some responsibility.
Many today still talk about how the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW I "led" to WW II, with Hitler plus Stalin both invading Poland in 1939. Few talk about how important, or not, the Stalin ordered Holodomor starvation of Ukraine in the early 30s led many Germans to think only Hitler was strong enough to oppose the genocidal Soviet commies.
[I really don't know how much, if any, coverage this got in German news.]
This continues thoughts from last week, where Neo thinks Putin is 100% responsible:
https://tomgrey.substack.com/p/tabs-and-tweet-like-thoughts
I haven't heard of any books about responsibility being quantified to total 100% - know any?
Part of the issue with Gates is he buys his own hype: the the success of Microsoft is due mostly to his genius, and somehow the success of MS denotes then a higher level of genius in him.
Now, while I won't deny that the man is smart, this conclusion ignores three HUGE factors that contributed to *his* success: 1. the privilege of his family, which led then to him 2. attending the ONLY high school in his area that had a functioning computer lab, which his intelligence drew him to, and 3. the TIMING of his entrepreneurial urges.
If Bill Gates came of age in 2004 rather 1974, he is just one more tech hustler.
Nobody special.
But he has bought the hype that he in fact IS special.
Gates followed a "second pioneer"/ me too strategy - but more successfully than others. The HUGE success of MS was due to ...
IBM. Choosing Gates for their "IBM PC". Any of the personal computer Op Systems probably would have been technically, good enough - but it was the IBM name that made them successful.
Plus Briklin's true genius with Lotus 1-2-3, so blazingly fast AND fully featured.
[In 1981 I worked at Ford Aerospace, in Palo Alto, with a P&BA (Profit & Budget Analysis) director using an Apple II plus Visicalc to greatly improve his back-calculation ability on budgets, rather than the IBM mainframe punch card decks. ]
Windows 3.1 in '92 was good enough, with a mouse, to be used on the available hardware. Windows 95 started the S curve exponential growth in the internet.
Maybe thousands, or only hundreds, of other guys were "as smart as" Gates in tech plus business - but HE was the right place at the right time. To take IBM's call and not mess it up.
I consider https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ to be essential reading on this topic. Yes, Joel Spolsky did have an incentive to shine a favorable light on Bill Gates since that reflects well on himself, but this anecdote is consistent with my understanding of how effective Gates was as a technical CEO.
But that doesn't guarantee Gates's effectiveness today. One consequence of being world-famously successful is that, if a problem is solvable with the strategies you executed on in your heyday, odds are good that someone else already tried to replicate said strategies on it -- unless you really were that much better than everyone else on the planet at executing such strategies, major problems that remain will be biased toward those that your old tricks can't solve. (This is one of the more subtle patterns behind "Planck's principle".) And that's before we get to the curse of sycophancy, etc.
The best commentary on the NATO question comes from non-MSM sources, particularly those from East Europe. The Mearsheimer-ist analysis too often denies the agency of these former Soviet/Warsaw Pact countries. In the end the East analysts were more correct than most US/Western Europe analysts. Putin was an easy read for them as the West appeased constantly and just ended up kicking the can down the road. In the analysis from the East the Germans come off especially bad, which is an easy conclusion to make in hindsight. Even Trump got that point!
One of the best sources of material is former Estonian president Toomas Ilves https://twitter.com/IlvesToomas. Hopefully Ukraine will find it possible to follow some of the Estonian model of governance when the war is over. Estonia in some ways seems like a liberal version of Singapore.
It is good to see Rand Paul staying consistent. 20 years ago, it would have been hard to find a democrat that did not agree with the statement- Al qeada is attacking the US because of our presence in Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, the Ukraine war is only the latest example of the good/bad heuristic, it permeates the “news”
Sure, NATO expansion "played a role" in the Russian invasion. And a final settlement should besides an un-invasion (including from Crimea) a guarantee that Ukraine will not be formally incorporated into NATO.
'the greatest danger of all for Trans-Atlantis: a seemingly complete inability of its leadership elite to grasp or reckon with – let alone address – glaring domestic weaknesses, or to prepare for pending crises that are staring them in the face'
I'd sort of agree with this if it means the failure to stimulate rapid growth with lower deficits, freer trade, higher immigrations, fewer restrictions on urban land use, and a tax on net CO2 and methane emissions. Who know what Lyons means.
Do any of the FITs talk about how to better prepare for pandemics? If the Gates solution is wrong the problem should not be ignored. And any solution will involve experts somehow
You need very different experts. People who come from more rigorous disciplines. Tyler Cowen and others have talked about this.
I think it might be a mistake to even start with the assumption that experts are available. Not only did the current set of installed experts make a bloody mess of things over the past two to three years, but many people who knew better didn't obviously know a lot better across many margins. I think our notion that "someone knows exactly what to do and we just need to find them" is inherently flawed, and chances are really good that putting anyone in charge with lots of arbitrary power is going to fail, just a little more or less.
In other words, if we have a lot of problems finding the right experts and putting them in power so that we get the right results, maybe issue is that there are not any experts that can be put in power such that we get the right results.
I'm surprised that Arnold referred to Gates' column. I'm still laughing at these lines in Gates' column:
"Covid happened because the world hasn’t created an environment in which smart, compassionate people can make the most of their skills as part of a strong, well-prepared system."
Please read the entire column. It's funny because it shows Gates prefers to ignore the history of large bureaucracies, including international ones. He thinks that good solutions come from smart people (I don't talk about compassionate people because I have never met anyone in my professional work around the world, including a long stay in China). Gates assumes that he has the can opener: he knows smart, compassionate people who in addition have the relevant skills and who only need a strong, well-prepared system (maybe like the Chinese one!). Long ago I thanked Gates for Microsoft but you can bet that I will not buy the new book about how to fix the world he is promoting via WSJ.