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Posts published in February 2018

Virtu in Attrition Warfare

Published 2018-02-28 by StartUp Daemon
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If you read “Master Sun’s Military Methods”, you will immediately know why the US were defeated in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc., although the book was written 2,500 years ago. One of Sun Zi’s core precepts is the avoidance of attrition warfare, if not any direct engagement with the enemy whatsoever. Master Sun’s treatise is timeless, yet I sometimes defy this insight, and in an uphill battle against the toughest of enemies.

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Attrition warfare against a powerful adversary is a gruesome affair. Therefore, I must begin with a word of caution. This is not at all advisable even if you have decades of experience in power tangling publicly or covertly. If you have little practice in the game of power or you are in a vastly inferior position, Master Sun’s original work is to be followed to the letter. Winning an attrition engagement with a strong enemy – and without meeting Pyrrhus’s fate – is a very intricate endeavor that requires immense attention to detail, flexibility, situational awareness and intuitive grasp of how to act from moment to moment.

To facilitate understanding, I have divided the process into phases, but they usually overlap, so don’t take this as a step-by-step “attrition for dummies”. You can never account for all the twists and complications. This is NOT something dummies and novices should attempt without a powerful ally to bail them out when they mess it up, as they inevitably will. I myself have done it only a few times (although never regretted it), and have no intention of doing it again unless absolutely necessary. To help both you and me internalize the abstractness of this missive and achieve more clarity, I refer to the practiced strategist as the Artist and to the enemy as the Opponent.

Phase I: Observation

As Master Sun stated, deep knowledge of oneself and the enemy is the unshakeable and irreplaceable foundation of the master strategist’s inevitable victory. Every well-staged power play begins in paying close attention to the Opponent, the battlefield and one’s goals and capabilities in that context.

In general, being attentive to other players has many benefits. It is foundational. In the special circumstances of escalating to a conflict of attrition, however, it has two critical goals – more critical than in any other situation. The first objective is very similar to Master Sun’s premise, only more forceful – to ensure overwhelming advantage to win the conflict and especially the ability to take damage publicly. The second is to formulate a firm decision/determination that the fight is Right Action – that the Opponent should indeed be “vanquished at great cost” (rather than avoided, defeated with guerilla warfare etc.) because this is exactly what well-conducted attrition warfare is about.

I have never undertaken attrition conflict because someone was opposing my goals directly. In the typical case, the conflict was forced on me indirectly by someone who was adding “white noise” in my space of operation or undermining team goals through incompetence, rather than seeking to undermine me personally. The nuisant Opponent could not be removed from the situation easily and inflicted escalating damage, albeit inadvertently. Rather than seek to regain control by indirect methods such as passive aggressiveness, in each case I chose to find a permanent resolution that would also “clear the air” for the team as a whole. One objective of the resolution was always to ensure the elimination or lasting submission of the Opponent.

After accepting the inevitability and necessity of attrition, I would map out a branching tree of possible paths forward as well as an inventory of the resources I had at my disposal. I would compare these to the possible requirements of the attrition conflict. In the modern world, the typical resources required consist of ample time, patience and mental fortitude to endure a long-lasting entanglement in public. One must also consider possible effects on income streams and general ability to advance career and business goals or whatever other pursuits are central to one’s life and related to the coming battle.

Phase II: Preparation

A well-executed attrition conflict must meet all the following criteria:

  1. The Artist’s victory is guaranteed before open engagement commences.
  2. The Opponent is unable to escape once his impending defeat becomes apparent.
  3. The Opponent lands powerful blows onto the Artist, and publicly.
  4. The Opponent is crushed into submission or oblivion, and publicly.
  5. The Artist exits the conflict with much of his strength intact or easy to recover (not vulnerable to Black Swan attacks).

The first and last of these objectives are core premises of Sun Zi’s treatise to be applied to any conflict. The Artist must know that whatever the Opponent does and whatever circumstance intercedes, there are multiple paths to victory and no unavoidable paths to defeat. This knowledge must be both practical – knowing oneself and the Opponent in excruciating detail – and intuitive, based on experience and personal antifragility. Equally, the Artist must be certain that in the aftermath of the conflict s/he won’t face a challenger or a coalition of weaker adversaries while the Artist’s strength is diminished.

The middle three goals comprise the core of the attrition strategy, and run contrary to much of Master Sun’s teaching. The goal of classic encirclement is to erode the morale of the Opponent and cause him to collapse; it is sudden and occurs just before victory. In attrition, encirclement is early, gradual and overt, with the express purpose of the Opponent being allowed to take a strong position. The Opponent is set up to fight to the death, rather than collapse, guaranteeing that he can inflict serious damage on the assaulting Artist. Finally, the Opponent is ground into nothing rather than asked to surrender, contrary to what would be the optimal approach for any classical strategist.

As Sun Zi states, the most important resource of the Artist is the strength of his own force, the resilience and commitment of his men. In a modern context, this refers to one’s own skills and psychological mettle to endure and progress in a protracted engagement. Decision and determination must be established and tested before public hostilities commence. The Artist must be sure that he will persevere to victory whatever it takes. This includes considering and experiencing mentally a lot of the possible setbacks and damage from the Opponent during the engagement.

A critical detail in the attrition context is the assembling of allies to protect the Artist from third-party interference while engaged with the Opponent. In the ideal case, the Artist must also ensure that allies do not come to his aid as he attacks the Opponent; any ally who cannot be trusted to refrain from intervening must be neutralized.

Take as an example a corporate environment where you are working on a project with a team of coworkers. Your supervisors have appointed someone else as project manager, but he has really bad ideas, which you know will torpedo the effort, undermining your own career goals. You can’t get rid of the PM because he’s the only one considered “qualified” and if he’s removed the project will most likely be abandoned. You have to attrition him out of the spot or informally take control of decision making to lead the team to success.

In this case, the preparation phase might take the form of ascertaining the support of superiors and other team members (for you personally), carving out extra work time for the duration of the actual engagement and making sure that the Opponent – the project manager – is fully and publicly invested in his toxic views. You must also make your own opposing views known publicly and repeatedly, so that they are remembered, and eliminate any alternatives other than your own (encirclement). This must take the form of challenging the feasibility of the plan rather than personal attacks on the competences of the Opponent. Yet, you must do your job at your very best, following the plan of the Opponent – earnestly and in every way you can, including with overtime. This ensures you’re not blamed for the collapse of the venture and further entrenches the PM by engaging more organizational resources behind him (entrenchment).

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Phase III: Engagement

The Artist’s attack only commences after the Opponent is fully entrenched and encircled. In the corporate example, the Artist would go full-tilt against the Opponent’s leadership only after the project has become so bogged down that it is obvious to everyone, including management. Combat must always be open, no passive aggression or subversion. For example, you may be asked to compile a progress report, so you make it facts-only – but stinging facts – rather than producing an opinion piece or marketing message. That makes for a great opening of hostilities. You ask the PM to sign off on the report you prepared. If he approves it, a deluge of embarrassing facts are handed over to supervisors. If he demands edits, you get another chance to voice your disagreement with the Opponent. It’s a win-win.

Phase IV: Attrition

You seek direct engagement at every opportunity: every private conversation with the Opponent, every team meeting, every public presentation. This can take the form of uncomfortable questions and facts presented dispassionately, exposing the futility of the Opponent’s solutions and decisions, highlighting flaws in execution etc. The goal is not to subvert or antagonize the Opponent, but to exhaust him, while subjecting your own views to his attacks, preferably in public. It would be particularly advantageous to be seen withstanding the Opponent’s verbal abuse in front of your mutual supervisors, so that maximum potential embarrassment is inflicted on you and your views are pummeled as hard as possible.

To anyone who has been involved in protracted public conflict, it must be obvious that this process would be extremely taxing on the Artist. Every damaging report must be prepared with meticulous fact-checking and attention to detail, every confrontation must be endured with equanimity and dispassion, every opportunity to pick a fight with the Opponent must be taken – no exceptions. This is why physical stamina, psychological mettle and fearlessness are the most important asset in entering attrition conflict, as Sun Zi would say about any adversarial engagement.

Phase V: Victory

If you have assessed the situation thoroughly at the preparation stage and executed well, time will be on your side. The Opponent will steadily be overwhelmed by your relentless attacks and the adverse circumstances that are the failing project. He will become increasingly emotional and reactive, making even more mistakes in the process. Ultimately, anger and fighting back will be replaced by implicit acceptance of his defeat. He could ask you to take on more responsibility or even manage the team under his supervision. It is best if the Opponent begs for your help in a meeting or other public setting. You refuse any compromise with appropriate justification. However, you privately prepare to take over and coordinate with allies, so that when senior management demands a change of course you have a strategy that can get going immediately. When presenting it, you ask to take over project management (you decide whether to discard the crushed enemy or retain him as a subordinate on the basis of his competences).

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Why Attrition and Not Subversion?

Attrition warfare is public, harsh and costly. It takes extreme care not to antagonize allies or expose yourself to third parties. And all these problems are what makes it a sublime form. In a single engagement, you are transforming yourself and the world around you, not just solving for an intractable Opponent. In your grand strategy, the Opponent is at best a tool for reaching greater goods.

The encirclement of the Opponent guarantees that the resolution is final and the issue at stake need not be revisited. Keeping everything transparent and factual establishes your credentials for fearlessness, expertise and intolerance for bullshit. The Artist’s exposure to public beatings by the Opponent shows his ruthless determination and his unwavering conviction and stamina as a fighter.

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Successful attrition combat fundamentally changes the atmosphere around the Artist. His allies and followers are inspired by his courage and ability. His example in expending resources and taking damage shows others that they too can build similar capability and take risks to improve their and their community’s wellbeing.

Nassim Taleb is a singular example of the virtu of attrition warfare. He fights most relentlessly and on multiple fronts. He publishes books, papers and missives on a variety of subjects, taking on establishment scientistic bullshit, rekking credentialed and tenured academics with six-figure salaries and “Nobel” prizes; political figures; media personalities and just about anyone who falls in his field of erudition. This is bound to be extremely time-consuming, mentally taxing and costing millions of dollars in potential speaking fees from scientistic and corporatist conferences. But no, thanks. I shall impale you instead.

Almost Every Time Nassim Taleb Told Someone to Fuck Off on the Twitter

Published 2018-02-27 by StartUp Daemon
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Maestro Nassim Taleb's latest volume of the INCERTO “Skin in the Game” is released stateside today, so I compiled a list of almost every time the mellow fellow has told people to fuck off on the Twitter. Because it will make you laugh and buy a very useful and enlightening book.

1. The first dispensation, in chronological order, is directed at Matt MacInnis, founder of an SFO startup, who appears to be a big fan because he still thanks NNT after being told off. MacInnis asks whether NNT has ever had a nuanced opinion on something, which is an imbecilic question (or a cheeky troll) if you have understood anything from the INCERTO. Once a subject is “understood” all the relevant nuance is incorporated, by definition. The word “nuance” is commonly used by BS vendors to weaken or co-opt legitimate opponents or to sneak their Base rubbish into legitimate research. NNT has a zero-tolerance policy for spineless compromise because compromise is a surrender to BS vendors. Hence, Minority Rule.

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2. Next, someone appears to be trolling NNT regarding a translation of a proverb from Levantine/Syriac? by implying it’s just broken Arabic. NNT has been crusading (pun intended) against Arabism – the pseudoscientific myth that Levantine Semitic speakers are Arabs (they are genetically and culturally Meds, and their language is likely descended from Aramaic or another pre-Muslim Semitic language, not Arabic). The Maestro says he doesn’t speak Arabic and sends the impostor to pound sand in the Nejd.

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3. In a related tweet, NNT explains that the Eastern Mediterranean was part of the Roman world and separation from Europe didn’t come until after Islam. The imbecilic response is that his is a very Western European view of history. NNT concurs and tells the respondent to fuck off. I shan’t explain this one because this missive is not intended for idiots.

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4. After the spectacular failure of all pundits, pollsters and other scientistics and astrologers in Election 2016, Steve Hanke tweeted NNT's earlier missive about how dangerous IYI’s are and how to spot them in the wild. Some idiot attempted to categorize Taleb as part of the same crowd, which is obviously wrong. We have clear evidence that NNT has got drunk with Russians, multiple times. The idiot (who probably hasn’t even read the missive) is told to fuck off.

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5. During the 2016 campaign, NNT had been giving reasons and repeatedly suggesting that Trump had a good (political and probabilistic) chance of winning. Soon enough, the low-IQ hallucinated that his risk-based perspective on voting decisions and street-smarts approach to understanding Trump is support for the candidate. In a flash of imbecility, an individual asked why Taleb is “in the tank” for Trump. He was told to fuck off because that is an utterly baseless categorization. Since the correspondent also replied to the fuck-off, we can assume he got the promised instablock as well.

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6. Speaking of hallucinations, you have no responsibility for the hallucinations of others. When NNT explains that US intervention in Syria has rekt the Christian communities there, some soyboy “worries” that such comments can be interpreted as anti-Muslim rather than antiterrorist, although there is no mention of Islam in the Maestro’s tweet. If you have been paying attention, you are aware that Taleb is does not accept invitations to surrender to Minority Rule. Instead, he doubles down with it in the opposite direction. You know how this interaction ends.

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7. If NNT considers anyone more dangerous and unpalatable than jihadis, it is his arch-enemy Monsanto (very educational thread). He explains that Monsanto hired an army of bots to silence online critics and sent 1,500 letters to NYU to have Taleb fired. He told them to fuck off.

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8. The jihadis resurface in the next tweetstorm, where NNT explains that they are far more dangerous than the Alt-Right in the US, yet protected by the media. Someone attempts to attack him by inferring that he is making predictions (NNT consistently derides attempts at predicting the future). This shows the person hasn’t gone beyond the surface of the INCERTO. The decision-making mechanisms NNT's ouvre sets up are about understanding optionality and risk expressed as possible outcomes (cost/benefit), not about prediction. NNT's original point is based on this method. Even if worst possible outcomes are considered, jihadis in charge is MUCH worse than Alt-Right in charge; jihadis on the rise is MUCH worse than Alt-Right on the rise etc. The mentally challenged individual is advised to fuck off because his level of imbecility is clearly unacceptable.

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9. NNT tweeted an interview in which he dragged through the dirt charlatan Ken Rogoff and other econophasters after the 2008 financial crisis. Taleb owns the room and the attention of the other participants with his big gestures and high energy. Yet, someone on Twitter says that NNT looks crazy and, worse, suggests that he should agree more with his opponents. This is not just bad advice but goes against everything NNT has shown himself to stand for. Fuck off.

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10. However, the fuck-off award special contributions to imbecility probably goes to Dan Ehrlich, who manages not to get at least three central points of the INCERTO at the same time and then hallucinates that NNT is a Trump supporter as a bonus. The conversation begins with NNT noting that, although it is stacked with members of the superrich class, Trump’s cabinet at least have real-world skills instead of useless academic credentials. Dan picks on “Fooled by Randomness” to start a personal attack, stating that NNT's past statements were chancy rather than attributable to skill. When exposed for not understanding the book, he shifts to claiming that his original comment was a critique of NNT's assessment of Trump’s cabinet. Poor Dan doesn’t get that “Fooled by Randomness” never says all success is due to luck, doesn’t get that skin in the game (real-world success) is a signal for some competence and doesn’t get that NNT uses every tweet he can to assault the Ivory Tower and is immune to personal attacks. Dan finally adds the familiar “Trump supporter” hallucination by suggesting NNT should write a “Fooled by Trump” sequel to the original book. Danny boy is sent off to read other authors who will confirm his political agenda.

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11. One of NNT's pet topics is the incidence of war and the misunderstanding that rarer wars equal an overall decrease of (the probability of) war-related violence and death. The scaling up of the state and weapons systems imply that while wars may become rarer (smaller frequency), a large-scale war with tens of millions of deaths or even a terminal war is actually more likely than before (more likely to have a higher level of casualties/damage per event). NNT picks on former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt’s ignorance of this fact and general lack of understanding of the balance of power in Europe. Someone attacks him for being impolite. To “assist” that point, the Maestro tells him to fuck off.

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12. The latest winner of the accolade is Barry Rithholtz, who invited NNT for an interview as “Skin in the Game” is being released on the American market. Just before the invitation, Rithholtz also retweeted a parodic “SITG” review in the Guardian. The Maestro told him to fuck off without much in the way of overture. Another NNT comment on the thread suggests that bad blood goes further back: “Never ever bite the hand that fed you. Gabish?” Minority Rule and SITG in a neat little package, which drew cheers from most commenters on the thread, who slammed Rithholtz for being a vacuous blowhard. Once again NNT practices what he preaches: ZERO tolerance for BS.

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Follow me on Twitter @startupdaemon because that's where it's happening.

Where China Is Headed

Published 2018-02-21 by StartUp Daemon
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The trend is your friend, but all trends come to an end. China’s resurgence is no exception to this time-tested maxim. Rising powers tend to get mired in multi-decade crises, often never to re-emerge. Such is the nature of the world and of human hubris. Yet, the consensus – including much of China’s own political and intellectual elite – gleefully extrapolates from the country’s meteoric rise. Just about everyone appears certain that within a decade or two China will surpass the US economically and mount a credible challenge to American military dominance in the Pacific. Reality and history, however, beg to differ. The foreseeable future is obvious: China’s current path ends in India.

To be sure, a quarter-century of breakneck economic growth has made China the envy of the world. Some half a billion people found new homes in its mushrooming cities. From skyscrapers and bullet trains to satellites and fighter jets, China quickly adopted just about every advanced technology. The country seemingly sailed through the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 as if it was happening on a different planet. More trillions of dollars of foreign ‘investment’ poured in at the tail end of a multi-decade industrial and real-estate boom. Invincible China’s omniscient leaders could make no misstep.

This mythic ascent to global pre-eminence has been just that – a myth. The reality is much less lustrous. Since the late 1980s, the state-controlled banking system has undergone several wholesale bailouts. China’s rulers blazed new ground in mathematics and statistics as the total of provincial GDPs quite often surpassed the central government’s nationwide figure. In leaked diplomatic cables, then-future Premier Li Keqiang was quoted as smiling that GDP numbers are ‘for reference only’. Yes, China’s economy has grown spectacularly, but probably much less so than widespread perceptions. And it happened on the wings of the most epic debt binge in human history. Years and decades of uncorrected malinvestment have inflated colossal bubbles in stocks, real estate and industrial capacity.

As the facts become too loud to ignore, the mainstream groupthink has struggled to find a counter-narrative. Chinese apparatchiks and foreign pundits peddled ‘soft landing’ as a substitute for the unravelling myth of economic miracle. But years of empty talk about rebalancing the economy have only added up to more – much more – of the same. China’s growth story was mostly based on debt-funded fixed investment: plants, real estate and infrastructure.

By 2014, fixed capital formation remained stubbornly anchored at about 45% of GDP, according to the government’s own statistics. In 2015, China still accounted for 57% of global cement output. The much-touted shift away from investment did not materialize. The country produced 30% more cement in the past three years than the US did in the past 116 years

Here is the problem. Any ‘rebalancing’ would require the instantaneous transmutation of tens of millions of semi-literate factory workers into computer programmers. Or laying them off. Neither is feasible, so Beijing has had to backtrack sheepishly every time real reform was attempted.

Every move to put the brakes on the rabid debt inflation that keeps China’s multiple bubbles from imploding has sent shockwaves through its banking system and the global economy. After housing showed signs of slowing, Beijing ushered in a stock bubble by allowing mom-and- pop day traders to lever up to the hilt. When that bubble burst, the prospect of social unrest forced a ham-fisted government takeover of the securities markets. Reports have surfaced that the authorities are busy inflating still other bubbles – this time in venture capital and commodities. Meanwhile, official statistics say fixed investment grew over 10% last year. Some rebalancing indeed.

Historically, explosive growth has invariably led up to a protracted and painful crisis period to correct for its excesses. China today is deeper in debt than the US at the outset of the Great Depression. Some recent data put Chinese bank ‘assets’ alone at 367% of GDP, up from 196% in 2007. A bank’s asset typically is someone else’s debt. And it is anybody’s guess how much more unserviceable debt festers on the balance sheets of local governments, state-owned enterprises and the shadow-banking sector, which collectively financed much of the fixed-investment rampage. The People’s Bank of China tallied new ‘total social financing’ at a neat $1 trillion just in the first quarter of 2016. Japan, with its measly 450% debt-to- GDP ratio, must have long been left in the dust by all-conquering China.

What China is experiencing is neither a rebalancing nor a landing, hard or soft; it is a crash. If American experience is any guide, the peak-to- trough contraction in China could easily reach 40% of GDP. It took the US stock market a quarter-century, a world war and a baby boom to recover to its 1929 levels.

Large-scale economic collapse, like market crashes, is not a singular event but a process that unfolds over many years. China’s economy has long been precisely this kind of slow-motion train wreck. And the 2015 stock-market plunge dealt a fatal blow to the soft-landing narrative. Hot money – foreign and domestic – rushed for the exits. Amid plummeting foreign trade, Beijing imposed ever more stringent currency controls while devaluing the yuan, thereby feeding an all-too- familiar vicious circle of capital flight.

According to consensus estimates, some $800 billion fled China in just a year. Chinese looking to park their money out of the country have caused epic property bubbles in major global cities. China’s debt problem is a threat not merely to its economy but the entire world. Yet, in terms of the country’s long-term prospects as a global power, the debt overhang pales in comparison to the demographic and environmental crises that are already baked in the cake. As a consequence of the one-child policy, ever-smaller cohorts with ever-greater job expectations are entering the workforce. China’s higher-education bubble has produced a generation demanding well-paid desk jobs but with even fewer marketable skills than its American counterpart. Meanwhile, millions of illegal immigrants from neighbours such as Vietnam and Burma already toil in China’s factory towns, as local Chinese become unaffordable for manufacturers to employ. This is Japanization writ large.

And then there is the aforementioned concrete. The permanent smog screen over the industrial heartland is one of the country’s lesser environmental challenges. Life in the cities is prohibitively expensive for many migrant workers. As they age and as industrial growth slows and reverses, millions of unlicensed migrants will have to head back, but may not like what they find at ‘home’. The Chinese have literally cemented over large swaths of what used to be agricultural land mostly populated by subsistence farmers.

There is no telling how much heavy metals and toxic chemicals have been dumped into China’s soils and aquifers. The effects of this yet-unfathomed ecological calamity will unfold for decades, impacting everything from productivity to healthcare costs in an already aging society.

Against this backdrop, expectations that China will inevitably subvert US dominance are premature. Granted, economic troubles are not much of an obstacle for nationalism and militarism. But China’s nationalist resurgence and recent maritime adventures are a sign of weakness rather than strength. Careening away from Maoism and towards Leninism underscores the leadership’s acute awareness that the economic story will not last much longer as a source of legitimacy for one-party rule. Such concerns are behind President Xi’s taking direct command of the army. Chinese elites may well decide to inflate a nationalism bubble, just as they encouraged stock-market speculation to deflect attention from real estate. Nationalism is both cheaper and more sustainable.

But then there is the geopolitical context. On the other side of the Himalayas, another giant is awakening from its stupor. India’s economy is much smaller than China’s and shares many of the same pollution problems. But India has three great strategic advantages in the ‘long game’ that China is playing. India has a much younger population and more than twice the population growth rate. It will surpass China over the next decade or two as the world’s most populous country. In addition, India is much closer to the Persian Gulf, where the planet’s most important energy source is concentrated. When it comes to petroleum, India literally stands in the way of China. It also has a tradition of worryingly friendly relations with Japan, which can be a source of capital if an alliance is pursued more actively. Finally, India’s government and economic system are decentralized. In a decentralized economic system, mistakes are more likely to remain localized and less likely to be perpetuated by large-scale bailouts. This is why India has been developing in fits and starts, but also why its growth will be much more sustainable than China’s.

With relatively low levels of debt, India’s explosive surge is just a matter of when. The talk of China’s economic decline does not even begin to capture the size and scope of the global impact. The sheer scale of economic mismanagement puts to shame all previous bubbles, so it is hard to say whether the world as a whole, not just China, will be able to dig itself from this hole without major war. Yes, China’s odds of recovering 20-30 years down the line are not terrible, but in the meantime the new rising power in Asia is going to be India. Per capita, India’s economy is still in its infancy. But watch out – they grow up fast.

This missive of mine originally appeared as a guest contribution on www.martin-van-creveld.com in May 2016. I'm republishing it with his edits, without alteration. You will want to follow Dr van Creveld because he is the greatest military historian and thinkerer of our time. Find his appearances on YouTube and you will know why.

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The Feminine “Mystique” of Kurt Vonnegut the Yoga Teacher

Published 2018-02-17 by StartUp Daemon
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This is Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement address to the MIT’s graduating class of 1997, which was never addressed to the MIT graduating class of 1997 and never authored in any way by Kurt Vonnegut.

Mary Schmich's satirical bit for the Chicago Tribune is remarkable not for being one of the most prominent mass hoaxes of the early Internet. Not even for nailing the Vonnegut down to the comma (the viral hoax is evidence Mary did an epic job of it).

It strikes me for two reasons. First, for being (surreptitiously) cognizant of so many life-altering things young men and women are often ignorant of. Second, for the subtle differences in detail between Mary’s work and a hypothetical equivalent written by a man (including Kurt himself). Differences in both substance and presentation.

I will not break this down line by line because it has to be interesting in order to be good teaching. Instead, I will focus on something from my personal experience, which ought to give a cue to the men and women amongst you, including my Russian bot followers. (It won’t help much if you are a dining table or a hovercraft.)

There are two huge challenges with the book I’m writing at the moment. One is that it is a “program” book: it must break your brain so bad that you be able to write back on it anything you want despite your earlier assumptions. The second – and much greater challenge – is that I want the book to accomplish this in equal measure with both men and women.

For the second reason, I put even more effort than before into grasping how women experience the world and how the world experiences them. One longtime observation of mine, which has become especially acute lately, is how oblivious young women are of what will happen to them as they age (this is, like so many troubles of youth, mostly due to parental ignorance and weakling pussyfooting around helping children understand how people operate).

Individual society in its actions (regardless of politically correct diktats) still considers young women precious and treats young men as dispensable cannon fodder. So, if you are a young woman and not utterly repulsive in manners and appearance, your relations with people are probably going much more smoothly than after you get past the four handle.

Because of my way of life, I’m surrounded by attractive young women and constantly entertained by the way they approach me (frequently as a stranger) and just ask for stuff. I adore people with courage and usually the requests are perfectly reasonable so I’m more than happy to provide. What makes it hard to contain my laughter is the observable expectation – indeed, assumption – on their part that they will be “serviced” just like that. I don’t want to imagine the sadness and crisis and confusion of these women when they get even 10 years older. I’m often tempted to do some teaching to soften that blow – and help them enjoy/take advantage of their youth more – but most of the time that ends up falling on deaf eyes and blind ears. As Mary would say: “advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young”. (I have skin in the game because I can't feel good when the women around me don't.)

The faux speech is also instructive because of how experiential it is. Mary's voice is firm and authentic, albeit faceitious, because she had skin in the game, if not enough sunscreen. The women amongst you will feel the mismatch between Mary's words and the experience of what she is talking about. That mismatch has little to do with her wordsmithing, which is quite evocative. Authentic knowledge acquired through experience, as Mary herself suggests, can only be diluted by words, however powerful the communicator. Those of you who are familiar with the INCERTO will appreciate Mary's authentic grasp of uncertainty and induction.

I was grown and bred by women, amongst women and for the pleasure and entertainment of women, so I’ve long wanted to do a women’s special which benefits all. Because we need – and want! – moar women active on the Twitter. This is a good place to begin, and I will be grateful if you find value in it.

To make the most of this bit, imagine what a man would have written differently in the subtle details of this “speech”. Find someone of the other gender, and compare yours with their prediction. Test yourself and each other. It might just blow your mind what you find out (or don't) even before you read my book.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you. Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Follow me on Twitter @startupdaemon because that’s where things are happening.

Blood in the Game

Published 2018-02-04 by StartUp Daemon
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As a kid, I deliberately cut myself with a knife. Several times. I did it on my own, no-one made me or encouraged me in any way. The proximate goal was to experience the pain of a flesh wound without actually being stabbed. It was extremely painful for a child, but I did it again. And again. More than the knife or a potential infection, I feared the adults would catch me do it or see the blood. There would be endless explanations followed by whining (not mine, obviously), arguing, possibly calling the doctor and the Armenian pope. I would not see the end of it for days and months. THAT would be pain.

I’d spend off-school summers at my grandparents’ farm and that’s where I ran all sorts of secret experiments (I don’t remember ever getting caught). We had livestock, fowl, even a farm dog, so there were plenty of animals around to torture. The animals I fed, groomed, cleaned after; the experiments I ran on myself. (No, I did not need an ethics class or a special message from “morality” to figure any of that out.) I did the trials for two reasons. The first one was curiosity and desire to understand the world around me. Ultimately: to tame fear of the unknown, of all that could happen, of death itself. My instincts must have told me that I had to figure myself out before laying claim to the world.

The second reason was that I was usually bored to death. There was only so much farm work that the adults would let me do, and there weren’t any kids around that I would want to play with. My despair was such that sometimes I would walk the country roads in the high-noon heat of summer, when even the birds hid from the deadly Sun. Just so I wouldn’t have to stay caged in the house doing nothing or in the slow decay of sleep. I suspect I instinctively felt that the distress and exhaustion would somewhat alleviate my existential dread. And of course, at least initially, the walks were another test – of how much heat and dehydration I could take.

Towards Wizardry

All my family cared for me, yet I had a most miserable childhood. Mind you, my parents didn’t impose any unusual restrictions on what I could do. When I was about 8 or 9, I inadvertently formatted my father’s only working computer and made all manner of unique data irrecoverable (again – out of boredom more than curiosity). I expected some form of dressing down for thinkering, but no. His genuine reaction was to have a laugh over not being able to recover anything because of how well I had done it. I couldn’t believe it, but immediately understood the lesson. We set about getting the machine to work right away. (I don’t want to imagine what helicopters do to their young to protect them from failure.)

It’s not like I did not have other strategies to fight boredom. I’d bring a pile of books when going to my voluntary exiles on the farm, but I’d run through them in days. An abyss of empty weeks and months would then stare at me before the dreaded school-year started (moar boredom). Thinkering was not just a way of life, but a way of survival. One of many desperate days, I climbed into the attic of my grandparents’ house and started digging through the old boring books for adults which nobody read. There I stumbled on a handbook about child development, which my parents had probably never cracked open.

The book, written about 1960-1970 in the Soviet Union, discussed things like sex, puberty and child psychology. I was 10, possibly much younger. That remains the most terrifying day of my life, although I have had three near-death experiences. I was so horrified that I could not put the book down; I had to start rereading it as soon as I had finished. Overnight I would hide it away, so it wouldn’t be used as kindling or “reorganized” somewhere.

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When I was about 13, I wrote my first essay on the psychology of the unconscious (for philosophy class in school). The teachers couldn’t believe what I had written and thought I had somehow cheated. That day was the first time I realized you cannot tell people what they are – you can only show them. (I would have to relearn that lesson many times.) I also got my first indication that people never really change their minds. You had to bulldoze over their predispositions and literally destroy their beliefs before anything new would be allowed to take root, let alone flourish. So I shifted my focus to books with more indirection and practical knowledge like “How to Make Friends and Influence People”.

None of this was some childish rebellion. It was the same inner drive, searching and being redirected less haphazardly and more constructively. I had effectively gained my independence from any parental control by about 14-15. That little adjustment took the shape of my not eating for three days, which I was already experimenting with secretly. I don’t remember the occasion and it doesn’t matter. Probably it was because of some parental lie which incited savage retribution. I could take any advice, bad decision or criticism from my parents, but lying got NO KUARTER.

As a teenager, my focus shifted from boredom-based experimentation to more deliberate savagery because girls. This included the obvious: physical training like lifting weights and doing 700 sit-ups in one go, or picking up karate – although the idea of being beaten up on the dojo in front of dozens of people absolutely petrified me. By age 16-17, I would get up at midnight, do any homework/studying that needed to be done (perhaps), take a cold shower by 5 and be on the public bus to school before most adults had even brushed their teeth. This after martial practice, which frequently ended late at night. So I could have coffee (and not infrequently vodka) with girls socially before first class for the day started. Thus, most “adults” were physically excluded from my daily life; I’d only see my parents having their morning coffee, and perhaps for a cigarette together before I left for “school”. And school was ludus hominum.

By the time I was 18, I had long been aware that people are irrational (myself included), and that many educated people are imbeciles regurgitating vacuous platitudes like “math is the language of the universe”. (My high-school math teacher didn’t say that because he was not an imbecile; teacher-wise I was very privileged.) Throughout my adult life, any attempt to share my experiences and discoveries crashed into a wall of fear, scientism and the illiterate junk that pervades popular “culture”.

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On the very last day before my high-school graduation, the philosophy teacher was doing oral exams for students who wanted to make up a grade. Girls in my class had nicknamed her “The Joker” because of the mounds of makeup on her face. Some minutes in, The Joker pontificated that the meaning of life was the pursuit of knowledge, possibly while (mis)quoting some ancient Greek author. By then, I knew better than to argue with idiots, but I was so aggravated that I could not contain myself. I explained politely that she was basically begging the question and there could not be received meaning to life on that basis. She suddenly was so infuriated that she stopped examining and many students didn’t get to improve their grades. I felt terrible about that, but after class, people were congratulating me instead of worrying about their grades. Even the worst students sensed that she was a fraud, and enjoyed having her exposed in public.

Scientistic Fraud, Slavery and the Base

Most of public education, particularly in the United States, is based on and proliferates some form of scientistic fraud. The differential diagnosis for scientistics is that the person assumes credibility for anything that follows the phrase “scientists say”. Scientistics includes the religious belief in science (scientism), but also the corrupt use of pseudoscience for imbecilic or untoward purposes. Most “science” coverage in the press is a form of scientistic fraud. Scientistic fraud is luddic almost by definition because most of the perpetrators have tenure or six-figure fellowships at “research” institutes and “think” tanks.

Some days ago, I wrote a missive on public savagery as an antidote to luddic fraud. The tweet went viral when NNT retweeted it. Hours after making that writing public, I received an email from a Washington lobbyist, which presented an opportunity for savagery. Although there is no expectation for privacy for any stranger who sends me unsolicited messages, I would not make it public if it did not begin with luddic name-dropping of former associates, who surely have not endorsed the lobbyist’s purpose (the author of the email would have mentioned it if they had and they would have reached out to let me know about the reference; altered their names to protect them from "guilt by association").

I will not pick apart the cited papers point by point. The email was striking not for using pseudoscience, but for abusing the claims of the respective authors without restraint. The Mercatus paper they cite deals mostly with federal regulation, is almost entirely theoretical and provides zero evidence for the specific issue. The Harvard paper makes no mention of credit card debt “collections” or the “statute of limitations” on them. But the lobbyists want help to defeat a Massachusetts bill that will make it easier for people with credit card debt to recover from delinquency.

This is the Base in pure form: disgusting, imbecilic, scientistically fraudulent and unabashed in its impertinence. In this case, the Base is to extend the terms of debt slavery for poor Americans, making sure that they never recover from the abuse of banks and debt collectors. In any situation where you observe the Base, there are only two paths which make sense. One is to remove yourself, the other – to remove the Base. No compromise, no kuarter. The only room in-between those options is in the solitary-confinement ward of a psychiatric hospital.

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Blood in the Game

Blood in the game is the most powerful antidote to scientistic fraud and the Base because it allows the practitioner to step outside the frame of “the system” while instilling fear and confusion, paralyzing away some of the toxic output almost immediately. Scientistics fear people with blood in the game because it indicates a certain level of “madness” by painoff: forfeiting academic appointments, awards and “the respect of the community” a priori. The same “headless chicken” reaction can be observed when someone with blood in the game penetrates any other bureaucracy such as a corporate or governmental environment.

In my experience, putting blood in the game has always produced a barbell of reactions. On one end of the distribution are people who value the outlandishness and effectiveness of my output and daring. On the other are headless chicken who do not understand it nor are able to resist it while alternating between paralysis and runaround panic.

It is impossible for the individual and society at large to grasp the complexity of what is. Uncertainty pervades existence and many retreat in fear. Some in the distractions of daily life, others in the false safety of charlatan forecasts, still others in their own lies. Blood in the game is largely driven by a recognition that one’s own life and experience are subject to the vagaries of the world. To improve one’s chances in a noisy world, one inflicts noise upon oneself. The key distinction between the weightlifter heading for the gym to practice for a competition and the hunter with blood in the game is that while gym practice has a predictable range of outcomes, only one thing is predictable about putting blood in the game – the painoff.

Blood in the game is about redrawing the game board with one's own. Someone with blood in the game often deviates from one’s own routines to “see what happens”. Self-disruption is the core distinction of blood in the game. This is not haphazard or necessarily reckless. There is a strong deterrent because routine-breaking is painful, almost by definition, and the painoff is immediate. With skin in the game, one learns from one’s mistakes by suffering losses. With blood in the game, one intentionally makes "mistakes" with guaranteed harm to oneself, with the purpose of improvement. No pain, no gain.

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The practice of blood in the game wasn’t born yesterday. A common theme among revolutionary thinkerers is that they frequently were social (self-)rejects and pursued innovation in spite of their immediate self-interest, often even in spite of their immediate self-preservation. Public humiliation, loss of job opportunities and even death are common amongst famous thinkerers (Galileo, Copernicus, Archimedes, Tesla).

During the 2016 US presidential election, Scott Adams predicted the win of D. J. Trump at tremendous personal cost, losing millions of dollars in speaking fees because of his unpopular views (not least, that people are irrational apes) and "guilt by association". For well over a year, he was subjected to public ridicule and regarded as a "fringe" wacko, then gradually even the mainstream started realizing that he might be right. His stated goal and idea was to build a new public platform and change the way people "think" about popular opinion, decision-making and "rationality".

Lack of blood in the game is a core reason social structures die because blood in the game is how innovation survives despite a seemingly “safe” environment. Steve Jobs ensured the survival of Apple and the successful launch of the iPod by merciless culling of existing products amid the discombobulated resistance of board members and executives. Then cannibalized the market appeal of the iPod (a hit product) with the iPhone. This is an example of a rare phenomenon: blood in the game implemented by a corporate head.

The blood in the metaphor is not just a reflection of the painoff. Think of blood here as a life force as well. Systems which accommodate individuals with blood in the game are more likely to develop antifragile properties than systems which stop at skin in the game. When you practice blood in the game, you become the life force of the world, but you may perish in the process.

The Great Mother Goddess and Her Son

As we often find in our distracted lives, what we see as new or profound was mundane to the ancients. Blood in the game is just another iteration – or the practical archetype – of the Thraco-Phrygian myth of the Great Mother Goddess and her Son. In the earliest known versions of this myth from Thrace and Anatolia, the Son’s blood must be spilt so that the Mother would be impregnated and the cycles of life resume. The Son’s sacrifice would ensure the renewal of the world – but not its repetition or replication. The myth was about rebirth, but it was world-ending. “What has been has been and must be set aside.” This savagery was embedded in Thracian ritual tradition. Thracian funerals were orgiastic celebrations, especially if the deceased had fallen in combat.

After the Thracian settlement of northwestern Anatolia, the cult of the Mother – by then known as Cybele – came to dominate the entire region and the later Hellenistic kingdoms of Phrygia and Bythinia. In Greece, she was Rhea, mother of all. Her main cult center may have been the Thracian city of Cabyle (KABYLH) near the Odrysian Valley of Kings. Meanwhile, the Son would evolve into the central Thracian deity Sabazios, a slaying horseman and god of sky and thunder.

Sabazios or his Orphic predecessors were adopted by the Greeks/Romans as Dionysus/Bacchus – god of fertility and, appropriately, profusion – alongside Thrace’s orgiastic traditions of honoring these gods with wine-drenched debauchery. The cult of Sabazios himself spread to Anatolia and ultimately throughout the Roman Empire. Demosthenes describes the ritual ecstasy of priestesses dancing with snakes to welcome the arrival of Sabazios, intoxicated by wine and the blood of sacrificial animals, which were often dismembered. A perfect example of mass hysteria. Even when depicted on horseback, Sabazios is often seen with an expression of rage, pain or madness, one hand reaching plaintively towards the sky.

The pervasive theme of the cults of Dyonisios, Bacchus and Sabazios is that of mystic ritual, not typical of native Greco-Roman traditions. It celebrates chaos and the abandonment of established order so that rebirth and renewal become possible. The semblance with the Hindu cult of Shiva, the ying-yang god of destruction and creation, is eery.

The cult of Sabazios may have influenced that of St George (a serpent-slaying horseman which originated in Anatolia) and St Elijah (prophet associated with thunder and the sky). The “-zios” term in the god’s name is a cognate of Greek “θεός” and “Zeus”. Peculiarly, “Saba-“ appears similar to Latin “salvare”. Can you think of any other Son who had to bleed so the world would be saved? Or should I draw you a picture?