Links for 2022-03-02
War links:
Scott Alexander takes a look at some predictions related to the conflict over Ukraine https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ukraine-warcasting
All evidence so far — e.g. driving around with tanks without infantry support and running out of fuel — seems to indicate that the Russian armed forces are stunningly incompetent: “Every conversations have displayed a disturbing lack of coordination between units, sometimes even firing at each other. But also, in addition to the simple fact that they are equipped with analogic radios, a lack of logisitical support.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498619303717142529.html
Russian pilots use US-made GPS receivers during combat missions in Syria https://www.google.com/amp/s/defence-blog.com/russian-pilots-use-us-made-gps-receives-during-combat-missions-in-syria/%3famp
Russia's military is weak and backwards. https://www.newsweek.com/shocking-lessons-us-military-leaders-learned-watching-putins-invasion-1683625
Here is why we need to spend much more on our military strength in the future: The Chinese Internet Is Cheering Russia’s Invasion [The New York Times] https://archive.fo/Sjwxv [Without overwhelming military power, politicians will be reluctant to stand up to China, even if a victory was theoretically possible. Even if you can beat someone in a streetfight, they might still hurt you badly. That's why you rather avoid it, if possible. And they know this. This means that you need an overwhelming advantage.]
Huge shift in the mentality of the German public:
“The fact that the Federal Government wants to significantly increase defence spending with immediate effect and provide the Bundeswehr with 100 billion euros for equipment and weapons is...
Correct: 78%
Not correct: 16%”
Source: @ntvde / Forsa, 1002 tel. respondents (28.02.2022)
Russia likes to claim that Ukrainians are Nazis because of a handful of Nazis in a country with 44 million inhabitants. A country that elected a Jew to be their president!
If you are looking for actual antisemites, you might want to check this out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_of_the_Houthi_movement
Compliance with international law or the UN charter is not a decisive criterium for me in deciding what party I side with.
The Rwanda genocide should have been stopped by force, irrespective of what international law had to say about such an intervention. UN forces should have engaged Serb forces in Srebrenica, no matter what the UN charter said.
Vietnam invaded Cambodia and destroyed most of the Khmer Rouge's forces. This might have been illegal but I would have absolutely supported it.
Something related I wrote last year:
It's wrong to think that the United States lost the Vietnam war. Humanity lost it.
Vietnam had a similar potential as South Korea, Japan, or Germany. Without communism, we would now likely buy Vietnamese cars and smartphones.
Winning that war would have been worth it.
And now consider what a united Korea could have achieved. Or look at Taiwan or Singapore and imagine the vast amount of value a China led by someone like Lee Kuan Yew could have generated.
America shouldn't have stopped in Berlin and Tokyo. America and its allies should have taken the opportunity to occupy Moscow and Chongqing. The world could now be fantastically more advanced.
More links:
A few years ago, something strange happened in Tourette's clinics. The typical patient used to be a young boy aged 5-7, with simple tics such as blinking. But now doctors were seeing something new: teenage girls with acute, explosive tic attacks. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/social-media-illness-teen-girls/622916/
An amazing new method to determine which neurons significantly respond to a stimulus. https://elifesciences.org/articles/71969
"A centimeter-long bacterium with DNA compartmentalized in membrane-bound organelles", Volland et al 2022 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.16.480423v1.full
"new family tree hints that humans first arrived in North America 56Kyr ago, much earlier than is currently estimated, and points to human migration to Papua New Guinea a full 100Kyr before the earliest documented evidence of habitation in that region" https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxqzp/scientists-unveil-unified-genealogy-of-modern-and-ancient-humans
“What is Time? Or, Just What do Philosophers of Science Do? This question, we are told, is "...a deep question, and it has no simple answer." That is wrong. It is a trite question that gains the mere appearance of depth cheaply by hidden presumptions.” https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/What_is_time/index.html
Some crazy correlations: Geopsychology of instrumental aggression: daily concurrence of global terrorism and solar-geomagnetic activity (1970-2018): “…statistical analyses of historical data from 500 BCE to 1914 CE demonstrated that the most acute/severe human conflicts and violent revolutions occurred around maxima of 11-year solar activity (sunspot) cycles and that cultural development tended to flourish at solar minima.” https://psyarxiv.com/brmns/
Has the IPCC now been captured by activists like so many other institutions?
References:
1. Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3
2. “In combination, SSP5 and RCP8.5 is called ‘SSP5-8.5’. On SSP5-8.5, we would emit a further 2.2 trillion tonnes of carbon by 2100, on top of the 0.65 trillion tonnes we have emitted so far. For reference, we currently put about 10 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning and industry.” https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ckPSrWeghc4gNsShK/good-news-on-climate-change