This was a really interesting way of framing the escalating geopolitical tensions! I am out of my depths with the science (posts like these make me wish I had taken more science classes in college!), but your approach to the underlying dynamic of chaos vs order reminded me of the Right-Hemisphere vs Left-Hemisphere competing paradigms. (John Carter has a good primer on this topic, derived from the work of Iain McGilchrist: https://barsoom.substack.com/p/left-and-right-brains-and-politics.) Though I'm over-simplifying, I take it that the Right Hemisphere is more willing to acknowledge the chaos and, when it is in the driver seat, to manage it with humility, whereas the Left Hemisphere is prone to hubris and trying to impose its will on Reality without understanding the risks or acknowledging the potential unknowns. (These differences are apparent when contrasting stroke victims with damage to one hemisphere but not the other.) An analogy would be that of a surfer riding a wave: the surfer cannot oppose the wave and make it do his bidding, but if he accepts it and works with it, he can harness its power and ride atop it. The Unipolar party to geopolitical conflict is trying to impose its view of order (like the artificial but orderly models of reality preferred by the Left Hemisphere), while a more responsible and holistic Right-Hemisphere dominant way of thinking would accept the reality of a Multipolar world and harness those forces in a manner analogous to the surfer riding the wave.
Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking post, as well as for the shout-out of my own piece!
Been awhile since I read Mearsheimer but am a big fan. Can't argue against fundamentals. As for understanding the Big Picture: we'd spend less time discussing things before magic media screens if we lived in the woods and did good psychedelics around the campfire while singing and dancing.
Also: until we can detect and confirm the existence of mother butt-loads of dark energy/dark matter, our current understanding of and extrapolation via modern physics is potentially just so much Ptolemaic concentrically infinite digressions.
Yes, modern physics works swell... up to a point. Way more than we knew how to do 1,000 years ago, but not nearly the full gamut of magic trix the cosmos seems to delight in.
I won't miss the Anthropocene. Hard to hear the voice of God with so many homo saps telling each other what is/isn't, God is/isn't etc. If Jeebus died for our sins, maybe we can die for our own?
The apparent breakdown of classical physics is a simple failure to perceive the massive timescale event-rate differential between your reality and that at the subatomic level.
Yes, but. It isn’t a breakdown of classical physics. It’s a question of perception. A mirage, brought about by the massive difference of scale.
This was a really interesting way of framing the escalating geopolitical tensions! I am out of my depths with the science (posts like these make me wish I had taken more science classes in college!), but your approach to the underlying dynamic of chaos vs order reminded me of the Right-Hemisphere vs Left-Hemisphere competing paradigms. (John Carter has a good primer on this topic, derived from the work of Iain McGilchrist: https://barsoom.substack.com/p/left-and-right-brains-and-politics.) Though I'm over-simplifying, I take it that the Right Hemisphere is more willing to acknowledge the chaos and, when it is in the driver seat, to manage it with humility, whereas the Left Hemisphere is prone to hubris and trying to impose its will on Reality without understanding the risks or acknowledging the potential unknowns. (These differences are apparent when contrasting stroke victims with damage to one hemisphere but not the other.) An analogy would be that of a surfer riding a wave: the surfer cannot oppose the wave and make it do his bidding, but if he accepts it and works with it, he can harness its power and ride atop it. The Unipolar party to geopolitical conflict is trying to impose its view of order (like the artificial but orderly models of reality preferred by the Left Hemisphere), while a more responsible and holistic Right-Hemisphere dominant way of thinking would accept the reality of a Multipolar world and harness those forces in a manner analogous to the surfer riding the wave.
Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking post, as well as for the shout-out of my own piece!
Been awhile since I read Mearsheimer but am a big fan. Can't argue against fundamentals. As for understanding the Big Picture: we'd spend less time discussing things before magic media screens if we lived in the woods and did good psychedelics around the campfire while singing and dancing.
Just sayin... https://youtu.be/bchTF-WWG14?list=RDbchTF-WWG14
Also: until we can detect and confirm the existence of mother butt-loads of dark energy/dark matter, our current understanding of and extrapolation via modern physics is potentially just so much Ptolemaic concentrically infinite digressions.
Yes, modern physics works swell... up to a point. Way more than we knew how to do 1,000 years ago, but not nearly the full gamut of magic trix the cosmos seems to delight in.
I won't miss the Anthropocene. Hard to hear the voice of God with so many homo saps telling each other what is/isn't, God is/isn't etc. If Jeebus died for our sins, maybe we can die for our own?
You are thinking too hard.
The apparent breakdown of classical physics is a simple failure to perceive the massive timescale event-rate differential between your reality and that at the subatomic level.
So too are global influences, simpler.