James Dasher

Philosophy, history, religion, anthropology, poiitical economy.

(Mostly here for the news feed until I started @readthisnextnet.)

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

Never, ever leaving this website.

[Jon Elder @BlackLabelAdvsr]

@james_dasher Means you are still lost and going to hell.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@imetatronink It’s one thing to block someone who’s harassing you. Someone with too much free time on their hands, and a lot of certainty about their ignorance.

But I continue to have no respect for public figures who block levelers of substantive criticism.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@AuronMacintyre Not accurate. Abortion is downstream of contraception.

Take whatever position you like, pro-life/anti-abortion or pro-choice/pro-abortion, but saying abortion causes the listed social ills is like saying a hammer and nails caused the Crucifixion.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@Athens_Stranger Wait, what?! You’re the reason? I missed something— possibly about a death and rebirth of Homer as fundamental for philosophy?

To catch up: best to winnow through your Twitter feed? or your Substack?

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@odavies9 Joining the trend originally set by, if memory serves, Liberty University.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@Athens_Stranger Hah yes. Lenin agreed. Though he tended to punch in the face, rather than twist the knife in the belly.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@imetatronink The conclusion of this war was obvious by mid-March. Dragging it out like this implies a level of delusion, helplessness, and paralysis among governing elites that truly boggles the mind.

Hope you’re wrong, Will, but you haven’t been so far.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

Actually March of 2023:

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

I privately speculated about the end of Israel within 5 years, back in … April? 2023. Friends on the text thread thought I was way out on a limb.

3 years later…

[Haaretz.com @haaretzcom]

Netanyahu will go, but the state will die with him
https://t.co/M0bzxaU1SH

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

Thoughtful nerds going hammer-and-tongs over justice, integrity, and public life?

[Ryan Holiday @RyanHoliday]

Lol what kind of crime do you have to commit in a past life to be condemned to white knight for a member of the most corrupt family in the history of American politics? You're a fucking goober.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@policytensor @Matt_Bracken48 If the ruler or “sovereign” set up the original regime, who or what plays the role of the sovereign of the regime in subsequent phases? E.g., the hollowing out phase was presumably conducted by actors participating legitimately?

What’s the underlying governance model?

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@ripplebrain Iran is the new Hamas

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@TankerTrackers Hey TT what do y’all think is going on: is this truly reactive by Iran, because storage space is running out, and they’re adapting on-the-fly? Or is it planned, for transfer to UAE in a couple days for shipment out past the blockade? Or some other scenario?

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

“Skeptical is the verb of paralysis dressed in the costume of choice.”

The war is over. We’re only waiting now to see how much damage the US and Israeli regimes inflict on themselves (and on us, their citizens) as they work through the 5 stages of grief.

[Donald J. Gorbachev @donaldgorbachev]

The five-second epistemology of skeptical of an offer that was never an offer.

The headline. Trump is skeptical regarding Iran’s recent offer to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran did not make an offer. Iran legislated a toll. The toll is on the books. The toll is being collected. The toll is in rials. The toll is denominated by tonnage and origin port. The toll has a parliamentary record. The toll has a clearing mechanism in Omani draft. The toll is not an offer. The toll is the new operating condition.

The empire calls the toll an offer because the empire needs the home audience to read the situation as a negotiation. Negotiations have offers. Negotiations have counteroffers. Negotiations have a moment where the strong party considers the weak party’s request and decides whether to be generous. The empire is staging the moment. President ALL CAPS is performing the consideration. The man is being skeptical. Skeptical is the verb of someone who has the option to say yes or no. The man does not have the option. The toll is being paid. The empire’s own shipping companies are paying. The empire’s own insurers are writing the policies for the paying. The empire is the customer. The customer cannot decline the bill. The customer can only be skeptical about the bill.

Skeptical of an offer that was never an offer. The offer was the toll. The toll was the announcement. The announcement was the new arrangement. The new arrangement does not require the empire’s signature. The empire is being asked to sign anyway because signing is what the empire does. The empire signs treaties. The empire’s role in the world is the signing. If the empire does not sign, the empire’s role is over. So the empire stages a negotiation it is not in. The empire is skeptical of the offer it imagined Iran made because Iran did not make an offer and the empire needs an offer to be skeptical of so the empire can perform the skepticism so the empire can perform the role so the empire can stay in the room.
The room is empty. The room has been empty since Day 1. Iran is not in the room. Iran is at the toll booth. The toll booth is open. The empire is in the room being skeptical.

Karoline Leavitt said the bottom line. Open Strait plus enriched uranium handover. Two demands. The Strait is open the way Iran says it is open. The Strait is not open the way the empire wants it open. The empire’s open is free. Iran’s open is paid. The empire wants the price below the price. The price is the price. The price is being paid. The bottom line is the line below the floor. Iran is on the floor. The empire is below the floor demanding things from above the floor.
The negotiator is dead. The man who closes deals has not closed a deal in fifty-nine days. The man cannot accept the toll because accepting names the toll. The man cannot reject the toll because rejecting requires stopping the toll. The man can only be skeptical. Skeptical is what is left when accepting and rejecting are both unavailable. Skeptical is the verb of paralysis dressed in the costume of choice.
The cosmic joke. The empire is skeptical of an offer Iran never made. The empire is skeptical of a deal that is already done. The empire is skeptical of a price the empire is already paying. The skepticism is the only product the empire still ships. The skepticism is shipped from a podium to a wire to a headline to a home audience that needs to believe the empire is choosing. The empire is not choosing. The empire is paying. The skepticism is the receipt.

Day 59. Skeptical of an offer that was never an offer. The toll is on the books. The empire is paying. The negotiator is dead. The man is skeptical. Day 59.
ذكية، كاملة. هوشمند، کامل.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

Not an expert on any of these subjects, but this analysis seems “off”.

Preserving this prediction to revisit in a few weeks or so. Gonna learn something, either way.

[Amit Segal @AmitSegal]

This has already become a prewritten script: every time the United States moves to strike a Middle Eastern dictatorship, it is preceded by a nerve-racking wait, followed by feverish diplomatic contacts—and above all, the local dictator refuses to grasp the severity of his situation until it is too late.

Abbas Araghchi will not be the first foreign minister to fly urgently to meet Americans in an attempt to prevent war. Before him came Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz, in a futile meeting with his counterpart James Baker. Saddam Hussein promised both President George H. W. Bush and President George W. Bush that the United States would discover hell in Iraq, that its forces would die there in droves, and that his country would stand firm. Aziz ended his life in a Baghdad prison; Saddam went to the gallows.

The Iranians are no more flexible, no less fanatical, and burdened with the same problems as their hated Iraqi predecessors. Their almost last hope of preventing action lies with the Sunni states of the Middle East. Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia publicly warn that an American strike could escalate into a regional war. In practice, a Middle East expert told me this week, what truly worries them is the almost inevitable outcome of eliminating the ayatollahs’ regime: Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

One does not need to believe Turkish President Recep Erdoğan’s fantasies about Israeli attempts to conquer Mount Ararat, nor buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories about a secret Netanyahu government plan to restore the days of the Kingdom of David, to understand the pressure. Nadim Koteich, a leading journalist in the Arab world and a harsh critic of Iran, wrote last week: “Regardless of your political views, the following fact cannot be denied: Israel is emerging from the post–October 7 era with unprecedented military and intelligence dominance. Its operations systematically dismantled the Iranian proxies, reshaped the security architecture of Lebanon and Syria, and demonstrated strike capabilities unmatched by any other actor in the region. Its recognition of Somaliland and expansion into the Red Sea signal ambitions broader than the traditional ones. For Saudi Arabia, which cannot normalize relations with Israel without some Israeli-Palestinian agreement, this creates an uncomfortable reality: the strongest military power in the region is not subject to any influence from Riyadh.”

For years, the Iranian threat troubled the Middle East but also bound Israel and most of its resources to the struggle against Tehran and its proxies. Now, the Iranian carcass lies in the middle of the room. For most of the Middle East, it is convenient for it to remain there—without a death certificate and without a new, far more Israeli Middle East.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

A deal? War? Conflict frozen?

The best prediction comes from the best model of actors and motives:

[Policy Tensor @policytensor]

The following statements are true.

1 — P(BOMB | DEAL) < P(BOMB | WAR) < P(BOMB | FROZEN).
2 — E(PAIN | DEAL) < E(PAIN | WAR) < E(PAIN | FROZEN).
3 — P(RISK | DEAL) < P(RISK | FROZEN) < P(RISK | WAR).

Where,

BOMB = Iran gets the bomb,
PAIN = global economic pain,
DEAL = a negotiated peace agreement,
WAR = large-scale hostilities,
RISK = destruction of the gulf,
FROZEN = long low-intensity conflict.

By weak rationality, one simply means that the decision maker is directionally pain-averse and risk-averse. A weakly rational decision maker prefers DEAL to both FROZEN and WAR. A risk intolerant decision maker is one who prefers FROZEN > WAR. A pain intolerant or impatient decision maker is one who prefers WAR > FROZEN. A crazy decision maker is one who prefers WAR > FROZEN > DEAL.

With these definitions, we can say that Bibi is crazy. Trump is not crazy but weakly rational, and he cannot convince Iran that he is crazy. In fact, by chickening out his escalation threat, suing for peace, walking away from Islamabad, and then trekking back to Islamabad, he has signaled that he is a risk intolerant decision maker, FROZEN > WAR.

WLOG, we can model the armed bargaining as a costly process where the Iranians make offers that the US can accept or reject but each rejection increases the cost to Trump by a small amount (equivalently, the price of rejection is a small probability of war).

Iran’s problem is to offer the most advantageous DEAL such that Trump still prefers DEAL > FROZEN. Trump has an incentive to pretend that FROZEN > DEAL is he thinks that Iran’s next offer will be so attractive that it makes up for the cost of one rejection.

What is the equilibrium? One thing we can say for sure. The equilibrium is costly not efficient bc at least one offer has already been rejected.

Can FROZEN obtain in equilibrium? Yes, if, for whatever exogenous reasons, Iran cannot afford to make an offer such that Trump prefers DEAL > FROZEN, we get FROZEN in equilibrium.

Can WAR obtain in equilibrium? That’s unlikely given the revealed preferences. If it does obtain, it would signal that Trump has been outmaneuvered by the crazy lobby.

——
P(X | Z) is the probability of X conditional on Z and E(X | Z) is the expected value of X given Z.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@Majhul1776 @donaldgorbachev Copied the same line for an adulatory comment, then saw you beat me to the punch!

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@Athens_Stranger Narratives abound— the Durants, Strauss, “modernity” etc.

Readings in my favorite college philosophy seminars followed the historical line. But discussions/assignments focused on what the author was saying. Personal interpretations were weeded kindly but ruthlessly.

Such a gift

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

“To give new life to old things: that is my mission.”

[Learn Latin @latinedisce]

Nearly 200k people follow this account.

I know not all are committed to learning Latin, and most are here out of simple curiosity.

But even that is a victory for me: rekindling the flame of a language many call dead.

To give new life to old things: that is my mission.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@RWApodcast Thought it was weird to get called a thirdworldist for noting that “jihadist insurgent” usually means US-backed.

Just the fact observed. No moral judgment or emotional commentary.

Still can’t tell if they’re bots or highly propagandized people:

https://t.co/fl5UL0dugw

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@corentin_keller @sentdefender Hah true. Haven’t seen anything conclusive about the French in this weekend’s conflict, but the history, plus the geography of the conflict in the north, suggest the possibility.

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@MenchOsint Isn’t this just for this year’s SCO meeting, scheduled last year?

[James Dasher @james_dasher]

@EliStrawmaning @sentdefender You don't have to be familiar with the facts of a situation to venture an opinion, but it's still a fact that Mali is predominantly Muslim. A "holy war against non Muslims" is ... not the situation.