I.
Last Saturday still haunts me.
I wish my mind still grasped the happiest moments of last weekend. Learning how to brew beer? Check. Hawks game? Check. New cologne and a full spring wardrobe? Check. Caught up on sleep? Check.
But one tiny encounter scares the crap out of me.
My Wife took me out to meet a co-worker and his girlfriend. Tapas. I love Tapas. Sangria makes me smile.
My Inner Beta still carries a possessive streak: who the hell does this guy think he is, trying to meet my Wife in the twilight hours? Even if I am there, still, it's inappropriate. Or, that's what my instinctive defensiveness says.
Victor came in first, followed by a guarded bitch, who immediately turned her nose up at us. It's the girl I noted first. My Wife told me this girl practices law. What was her name? I can't even remember, but by God she carried herself exactly like a Roissy-caricatured stuck-up lawyer, refusing to even look at us.
Afterwards, my Wife wondered aloud how she might persuade Victor to dump this girl, with a name I still cannot recall.
Victor did not seem so threatening then. Short. Overweight. Poorly dressed. Under-educated. Passive.
II.
We talked for the rest of the night, and I really liked Victor. He was smart, and insightful. He discussed literature, poetry, and cooking. And he had a big nerd streak: the new Daredevil on Netflix captivated his imagination that night, and he convinced me that I need to have a watch one of these nights.
So he won me over. Enough that I don't hate him, anyways. He was a little Jon Stewart snarky at times, but nothing rubbed me too terribly.
My Wife said she knew we would get along.
And then she added that a lot of people at work don't like him much. She sees how smart he is, and wants to give him more work, but his reputation drags him down to peon-level work. He is a stand-offish guy, who doesn't really do the busy work that keeps the office together.
So everyone hates him. And they badmouth him to management. And while my Wife tries to give him important work, and likes the work he does, her managers won't let her train him any further.
And that's what kills me.
Because that's how people probably see me.
III.
Today, I cussed myself out while driving to work. I had forgotten about a "high-dollar" claim that needed to be rebilled, and wasn't sure if the billing window was open on the 22nd or the 21st.
Background:
We've had a number of issues with Insurance Companies. CMS has reversed a large number of claims for incorrect NPI numbers. NPI numbers are doctor IDs. Go ahead and look up your primary care doctor on the NPI Search Registry.
Since, oh, 2011, CMS has actually enforced NPI verification for prescriptions. Before, pharmacies were filling prescriptions with the NPIs of Veterinarians, Social Workers, you name it. Believe you me, Medicare does NOT like paying for some girl's Plan B medication, submitted with the fake NPI
2223334444, from "Doctor Plan B."
Anyways, we had a claim reversed, which, because of that whole "Doughnut Hole" thing, caused our pharmacy to lose a lot of money. After months, our Managed Care team finally managed to get permission to rebill this claim.
To me....well, it's $7,000. So it matters.
But, seriously?
Low on the damn list.
This week our Sales Team was only hours away from issuing a report declaring a Medicare client in violation of their contract by $1.5 million. That's a BIG FREAKIN' DEAL. Then we had another million dollars in Administration Fees in another account. That's a big freakin' deal. And did I mention the $750,000 dollars still missing from a different account last year?
Let's add in the white paper I had to write for upper management, as in upper management 2 levels removed from CEO, for the $1.5 million someone else owes us.
There's a lot of BIG FREAKIN' DEALS going on right now, and most of them are in shit-shape.
But to these people, this $7,000 was Heaven and Earth and it needed to be resolved.
And I sort of forgot. Today was the day. But if it were yesterday? Lost money.
Because I sometimes (usually?) filter out little ticket items like that.
IV.
Not everyone does this.
Small correction: almost no one does this.
When I look at my Wife work, she does not usually set "priorities." She makes To-Do lists. She loves to-do lists. Whatever she feels needs to be done, gets put on the list, and she keeps working until she finishes, or is emotionally drained.
She does not, however, sit down and think about more efficient ways of doing things, or the most effective things to do. It's the same thing day in, day out. "This is what I need to do today," she says, and I've never seen that To-Do list change, not unless I prod her to change.
The Account Managers in my department respond to routine work emails quickly. Usually within minutes.
People really like this attribute, especially managers. There's a lot of monotonous drudgery in every major corporation. 3 hours of every day, or more near month-end, consists of standard reporting, manual journal entry, data corrections, that kind of think. Even "well-paid" workers tend to spend a lot time doing what is essentially "bitch work."
Managers don't want to think about this. They want to delegate it, and they want it be done.
Our newest Account Manager worked 70-80 hours as an entry-level employee and built a lot of friendships. When the Account Manager opened up, she was the "natural" fit.
These guys do tedious work very well, without complaint. They get reward for it.
V.
What do they not do well?
Original research. Trouble-shooting. By god, do they ever suck at it.
Last week we identified a possible problem with our billing software. It's resulting in us getting short-paid claims. This is to the tune of $50,000 every few months.
My Account Manager spent an hour at his desk trying to figure what was causing the issue, and, more importantly, trying to justify his original conclusion "India screwed up."
Finally he threw his hands up and said he was right, even though he couldn't tie out the numbers.
Keep in mind, he is an Accountant.
When I wanted to push this issue further, we took the issue to our Manager. Our Manager yelled at us for bothering her with such an unimportant issue. That was last Thursday, and since then there's been no movement. I'm amassing a large sample of claims, but the whole INTJ in a corporate environment means I have no idea who the hell I would even approach.
There have been times when the Account Managers plugged away at $2,000 issues for well on 2 hours on a conference call, with twenty people listening in absolute boredom.
Priorities? Insights? Big picture thinking?
Nope, not what they do well at all. I am of the opinion that this is a large reason why our whole operation has become atrociously ineffective, particularly with the major outsourcing. They can't micro-manage, and they no longer have enough busy-bodies to cover the endless hours of work that characterize corporate jobs. Worse, a lot of time now gets wasted in pointless efficiency meetings, that arrive at no useful conclusions, and result in the same pontifications over and over again.
It is amusing to hear the Account Managers parrot the actual Managers, though. Around 6 months ago, my Manager started saying "If you're talking, you're on mute." This because the India team, when asked a question, would say nothing for several minutes. Now all our Account Managers say the same thing, resulting in a chorus of "You're on mute" on every single phone call.
VI.
Can you imagine why I might want to leave?
When I was young, I dreamt I was in Hell. Hell seemed idyllic: a perfect suburban community, playing baseball. But then night fell across the town, and my 12 year old friends looked up at the sky, and discussed the twinkling fireflies.
Fireflies? No, I said, they were stars. Stars!
My friends laughed and said they were fireflies.
I woke up, felt disgusted, and showered for an hour.
I could avoid the stupid in school, but now there's just no avoiding it. Honestly? If I knew I would've ended up here, I would've worked a lot harder.
Not because of the salary, not because of the benefits, not because of the travel. Because of the stupid. Stupid is a virus, an insidious nightmare draining your brain and replacing its contents with toxic meme-ology.
VII.
But how to escape?!
That's what scares the hell out of me. I wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for breath, because there is no possible way to escape. Or, at least, that's how it feels.
Because the people in my environment will not let me advance. They won't even give me time or tools to fix the major problems I know need fixing! They blather on and on during our conference calls, burning precious hours my team needs to work my accounts. They accidentally sabotage major initiatives. They have no buy-in for solutions and try to sell their half-baked "ideas".
That's a pathetic mind-set, part of me knows, but a larger part of me feels trapped in a cage, slowly drowning in a sea of noxious menial work and obvious nicompoopery. Sometimes I come home, stare at the wall for half an hour, and wonder why none of my neurons will fire, why my passion seems to burn so low.
Victor? My Wife thinks Victor is smart. But because he comes off as lazy, he has no future.
That's what scares the hell out of me.
I do not want to end up like that.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Getting Through the Beta Week
Lots of great weather in the Chicago area lately. The mornings start cool, something around 40 degrees, but the mercury tops 60 by early afternoon. A light jacket, brisk walk, and open skies warm body and soul. Even the daintiest come out this time of year.
Plus: It's the middle of the month, a great time for an accountant. Taxes are in, the mortgage was approved. Why not enjoy the spring?
All I got was a damn Tuesday. A Tuesday at Wrigley Field, yeah, but this was the highlight of the week:
Cubs couldn't even pull off a Win! First place my foot.
On Monday, I received an "emergency" meeting invitation from a panicked co-worker. Apparently, one of the insurance companies on our bad-boy-list got fed up with us, and made some serious complaints, to some very high level people at our company.
So, my company assigned some kind fellow, 3 levels down from CEO, to oversee our whole operation.
This is the first we have heard from this insurance company in two months, and they owe us $1.5 million. My attitude is nothing less than livid. My opinion? If their CEO is bitching to us, that means we've got them on the ropes and we should hammer those buggers for all their worth.
Unfortunately, no one wants to hear the opinion of a 28 year old in a room full of people with salaries in the low six figures at the lowest and seven figures at the highest.
When I came home today, I expected some time on the patio, maybe a sunset walk around the lake. Instead, I'm clearing the ice out of the freezer: looks like we may have a clogged defrost drain. I really hope not, because my defrost panel is NOT easily accessible. Why General Electric installed bolts instead of screws, I have no idea. Seriously, my biggest complaint with everything as I get older is that routine maintenance and repairs are a bitch. Now I understand why the Navy loves the F-18 hornet.
Daily drudgery of Beta life has set in, and I'm not even a Father yet!
In times like these, you try to yourself you are getting saddled with garbage because you are important. That if you show off your skills, you can impress the correct people and move on to greater roles.
Honestly, that's proving a struggle. We met with the Vice President today: we are exactly where we were 7 months ago, and no one had the cajones to suggest actually moving things forward. Instead, the agreement was that ADBG needs to do more work, pull more numbers, and then we can go back to the insurance company with "hard numbers."
We can change the numbers to whatever, we still don't have buy-in for resolution. For example, the insurance company says they can't pay us, because they can't bill their clients. It doesn't matter what the total dollar figure is, that's not budging, and that's been our key hang-up for 3 years now.
No one bothered mentioning this in our meeting, which we've all known, for 7 months. Or any of the other key issues.
It's hard to respect the organization when the organization cannot discern basic facts.
But whining gets you nowhere: I am enrolling in some advanced Microsoft Office classes and testing out the job market. We'll see if the new resume lands any bites.
I'm going to put that out as an important part of the life I want to build. I want to fix problems. Next up is the broken dryer. Then there's a car that needs an oil change. My sister-in-law needs a birthday present. And I'm going to find a new job where I can fix problems, or at least explain problems, rather than sitting silent while more senior people get even the most basic facts wrong.
And it could always be wrong. Reba sure as hell knows:
Plus: It's the middle of the month, a great time for an accountant. Taxes are in, the mortgage was approved. Why not enjoy the spring?
All I got was a damn Tuesday. A Tuesday at Wrigley Field, yeah, but this was the highlight of the week:
Cubs couldn't even pull off a Win! First place my foot.
On Monday, I received an "emergency" meeting invitation from a panicked co-worker. Apparently, one of the insurance companies on our bad-boy-list got fed up with us, and made some serious complaints, to some very high level people at our company.
So, my company assigned some kind fellow, 3 levels down from CEO, to oversee our whole operation.
This is the first we have heard from this insurance company in two months, and they owe us $1.5 million. My attitude is nothing less than livid. My opinion? If their CEO is bitching to us, that means we've got them on the ropes and we should hammer those buggers for all their worth.
Unfortunately, no one wants to hear the opinion of a 28 year old in a room full of people with salaries in the low six figures at the lowest and seven figures at the highest.
When I came home today, I expected some time on the patio, maybe a sunset walk around the lake. Instead, I'm clearing the ice out of the freezer: looks like we may have a clogged defrost drain. I really hope not, because my defrost panel is NOT easily accessible. Why General Electric installed bolts instead of screws, I have no idea. Seriously, my biggest complaint with everything as I get older is that routine maintenance and repairs are a bitch. Now I understand why the Navy loves the F-18 hornet.
Daily drudgery of Beta life has set in, and I'm not even a Father yet!
In times like these, you try to yourself you are getting saddled with garbage because you are important. That if you show off your skills, you can impress the correct people and move on to greater roles.
Honestly, that's proving a struggle. We met with the Vice President today: we are exactly where we were 7 months ago, and no one had the cajones to suggest actually moving things forward. Instead, the agreement was that ADBG needs to do more work, pull more numbers, and then we can go back to the insurance company with "hard numbers."
We can change the numbers to whatever, we still don't have buy-in for resolution. For example, the insurance company says they can't pay us, because they can't bill their clients. It doesn't matter what the total dollar figure is, that's not budging, and that's been our key hang-up for 3 years now.
No one bothered mentioning this in our meeting, which we've all known, for 7 months. Or any of the other key issues.
It's hard to respect the organization when the organization cannot discern basic facts.
But whining gets you nowhere: I am enrolling in some advanced Microsoft Office classes and testing out the job market. We'll see if the new resume lands any bites.
I'm going to put that out as an important part of the life I want to build. I want to fix problems. Next up is the broken dryer. Then there's a car that needs an oil change. My sister-in-law needs a birthday present. And I'm going to find a new job where I can fix problems, or at least explain problems, rather than sitting silent while more senior people get even the most basic facts wrong.
And it could always be wrong. Reba sure as hell knows:
Saturday, April 11, 2015
A Week and an End 4/11/2015
Do you know any accountants?
Do you have any idea how much we despise month-end?
Between the 24th and the 6th, my life is living hell. Upper management expects reports about practically every aspect of the business around this time. Unfortunately, some of the information they want involves pulling data from every single transaction submitted, across an entire month. For a Fortune 50 company, that's a LOT of data.
So I generally spend hours, staring at a screen, copy-pasting, editing columns, following up with deliqenquent clients...
And none of this improves our bottom line. At all.
Because month-end fell on the weekend, and Easter weekend at that, this week proved challenging. We spent days catching up on all sorts of stuff we would have normally done on the 4th or 5th, and begging our managers for extensions.
The hard part is that this ruined my entire week of home life. When I come home late and wiped out on Monday, I do not cut up my vegetables, or clean my dishes. Which leaves the work piling up for Tuesday, and then Wednesday, and then....
One of my goals in my standard Beta Life is to stop problems from ruining entire weeks. When children roll around, the Beta household will be a constant mess with rapidly evolving situations and a need to adapt, AND WORK, continuously. Any down-time available needs to be grabbed and cultivated, or else my quality of life will take a huge hit.
Same for Mrs. ADBG.
Then you start eating out more often. Which drains your bank account and makes you heavy. You become lethargic. You stop walking and exercising. Laundry piles up.
Before you know it, you're a standard American household.
No thanks, that's not the standard for the ADBG household.
Really, energy is the key problem. I know what I have to do on a day-to-day basis, and I have technology to bail me out whenever I don't know how to something. Like opening a coconut. Thank God for Youtube.
But energy? Passion? Inspiration?
Nope.
And rebuilding your inspiration sucks when you spent 8 hours crafting a report that will not help the company save a single dime.
I think that's a big problem in American culture, especially with the collapse of religious attendance. We have lost sight of any overarching vision, community, or purpose. Right now, we paper over that loss of meaning with smartphones, but Instagram and Facebook cannot fill a soul's hole: that wound has no bottom.
Ironically, this is where my Beta vision of life really helps. Even after a miserable day, I know that the last 10 hours were a mere snapshot of my existence, and little reflection on its meaning. Focusing on that Cash Flow report reflects an inner myopia, a kind of self-obsessed narcissism that can only result in pain, even on the best of days.
My true meaning is a tangential point on The Long Arc of History. If I want to draw meaning, I need to remember that I am part of a grander culture, that emerged from the Fertile Crescent and evolved over thousands of years. Despite numerous set-backs, including a few World Wars and a plague or two, my civilization now offers the best standard of living and freedom to over 300 million people, and safeguards the liberty and prosperity of others worldwide.
My role in that is a small one, but I am a cog in a larger whole that has accomplished wondereous things.
People frown on Betas. Men and women alike think us weak. I prefer to think those of with a more enlightened view merely take the correct perspective on our place in the world, and have much to offer our nations, whenever our nations choose to end their pointless crusades against us and realize our contributions to their well-being. We may be deluded, and perhaps not always the most violent, or wealthiest, or most attractive of the litter, but we certainly drive the nation forward, day by day, enduring great hardships with little complaint.
That's the kind of mentality that keeps me going, keeps me cutting up vegetables, keeps me cooking, keeps me working out, keeps me from blowing my money on booze or drugs, keeps me working on the car.
There's a lot of value in that, even if people no longer respect it.
Do you have any idea how much we despise month-end?
Between the 24th and the 6th, my life is living hell. Upper management expects reports about practically every aspect of the business around this time. Unfortunately, some of the information they want involves pulling data from every single transaction submitted, across an entire month. For a Fortune 50 company, that's a LOT of data.
So I generally spend hours, staring at a screen, copy-pasting, editing columns, following up with deliqenquent clients...
And none of this improves our bottom line. At all.
Because month-end fell on the weekend, and Easter weekend at that, this week proved challenging. We spent days catching up on all sorts of stuff we would have normally done on the 4th or 5th, and begging our managers for extensions.
The hard part is that this ruined my entire week of home life. When I come home late and wiped out on Monday, I do not cut up my vegetables, or clean my dishes. Which leaves the work piling up for Tuesday, and then Wednesday, and then....
Same for Mrs. ADBG.
Then you start eating out more often. Which drains your bank account and makes you heavy. You become lethargic. You stop walking and exercising. Laundry piles up.
Before you know it, you're a standard American household.
No thanks, that's not the standard for the ADBG household.
Really, energy is the key problem. I know what I have to do on a day-to-day basis, and I have technology to bail me out whenever I don't know how to something. Like opening a coconut. Thank God for Youtube.
But energy? Passion? Inspiration?
Nope.
And rebuilding your inspiration sucks when you spent 8 hours crafting a report that will not help the company save a single dime.
I think that's a big problem in American culture, especially with the collapse of religious attendance. We have lost sight of any overarching vision, community, or purpose. Right now, we paper over that loss of meaning with smartphones, but Instagram and Facebook cannot fill a soul's hole: that wound has no bottom.
Ironically, this is where my Beta vision of life really helps. Even after a miserable day, I know that the last 10 hours were a mere snapshot of my existence, and little reflection on its meaning. Focusing on that Cash Flow report reflects an inner myopia, a kind of self-obsessed narcissism that can only result in pain, even on the best of days.
My true meaning is a tangential point on The Long Arc of History. If I want to draw meaning, I need to remember that I am part of a grander culture, that emerged from the Fertile Crescent and evolved over thousands of years. Despite numerous set-backs, including a few World Wars and a plague or two, my civilization now offers the best standard of living and freedom to over 300 million people, and safeguards the liberty and prosperity of others worldwide.
My role in that is a small one, but I am a cog in a larger whole that has accomplished wondereous things.
People frown on Betas. Men and women alike think us weak. I prefer to think those of with a more enlightened view merely take the correct perspective on our place in the world, and have much to offer our nations, whenever our nations choose to end their pointless crusades against us and realize our contributions to their well-being. We may be deluded, and perhaps not always the most violent, or wealthiest, or most attractive of the litter, but we certainly drive the nation forward, day by day, enduring great hardships with little complaint.
That's the kind of mentality that keeps me going, keeps me cutting up vegetables, keeps me cooking, keeps me working out, keeps me from blowing my money on booze or drugs, keeps me working on the car.
There's a lot of value in that, even if people no longer respect it.
Differential Diagnosis, Economics, and Running Game
I.
2016 Election Season draws near. Every morning my smartphone's warm glow shows another preliminary poll, another electoral move, another exploratory committee, another announcement, another scandal. Then a "what does this mean?!" segment fills some morning NPR air, months before we can even seriously discuss the Iowa Caucus.
Who really cares? No matter the issue, no matter the cycle, Democrats and Republicans strike the same notes. Either the rich have stuck a siphon into the economy's coffers and drain daily millions of dollars from the wealth of the righteous peasant, or we need broad-based tax cuts to lower the cost of business and create a New Renaissance. No matter the issue, no matter the state of the economy, both parties offer their textbook solutions, couched in the same over-hyped rhetoric.
When someone sells you the same solution for everything? They sell snake oil. Economy in the gutter? Snake oil. Iranian nuclear weapons? Snake oil. Bugs in your house? Snake oil. In the real world, there's no policy proposal, not one, that can fix everything, or is even appropriate for all situations.
Since every crisis bears a character unique to itself, just like every man bears a unique fingerprint, every policy proposal needs nuance.
Unfortunately, politicians are not at fault for this. No, our human brains, in the hunt for simplicity and on the run from hard work, tend to generalize solutions across all ranges of problems. This is why, on every forum, I see people harkening the lessons of Munich when dealing with Iran. Or pointing to the example of Iraq. People of all rank, station, and intellect fall prey to this fallacy.
II.
This line of thinking came up in the recent Tyler Cowen/Jeffrey Sachs discussion. For those not familiar with Jeffrey Sachs, a brief introduction may be in order. Sachs was the youngest economics professor ever to achieve tenure in the United States. A prodigy in almost every conceivable metric, many governments called on him when the Berlin Wall fell, so that the Eastern European economies could develop quickly and freely. He is greatly responsible for the "Shock Therapy" transition from Communist Central Planning to Market Economics.
But, Shock Therapy proved too simple, too universal a concept. You cannot treat Russia, Poland, China, Chile, and Bolivia the same. Sachs, crisis champion extraordinaire, maintained this was his greatest lesson. Each nation, with its own unique history, and with its own unique advantages, requires unique solutions. There can be similarities in prescription, of course: every nation needs schools. But, still, attention to details defines ultimate success or failure.
Sachs drew an analogy to his Wife, a pediatrician. In the medical field, they use a practice called differential diagnosis. Essentially, this is a line of questioning designed to determine what ails you when your symptoms resemble numerous conditions. Or....if you show up with a headache, a million different things could be wrong with you. How do we determine what is actually the problem, and rule out other conditions?
If you showed up to a doctor's office with a headache, and he prescribed chemotherapy because you MIGHT have a tumor, how would you react, as a civilized and learned man?
The same situation applies to any failing economy. India and North Korea and Egypt all have failing economies: What is your solution? If you propose the same solution in every single instance, with no adjustment for nuance, we can simply rule out your opinion. Or at least judge it incomplete, and in need of substantial revision before roll-out.
III.
Based on what we just talked about above, do you think this is good advice?
Neo-Masculinity routinely sustains attacks for simplifying categories and providing false, one-size fits all advice. It is suggested that we never pay attention to individual situations, that we twist facts to suit theories. It is strongly suggested this indicates a failed ideology, lacking vision or honest prescriptive remedy.
But just look at that Blue Pill nonsense! This is the garbage we were told on a daily basis for years, given new packaging today with terms like "authenticity" and "vulnerability." Yet, this fundamental advice, if you can call one-line sound bytes advice, bears in every respect total similarity to the propaganda practices of the major political parties.
Essentially, if anyone is telling you to "Just Be Yourself," they are selling you snake-oil.
Blue Pill attraction theories are based almost entirely on JBY, along with healthy doses of "magic," "chemistry," and "It Just Happened."
Contrast that with the Neo-Masculine Community. We have Cocky-Funny game. We have Day Game. We have Night Game. We have SNAG Game. We have Beta Game. We have Guitar Game. We have....
The list goes on and on.
The Neo-Masculine movement, far from embracing one-size fits all solutions, games out hundreds, if not thousands of scenarios, and applies lessons from the collective fieldwork of thousands of men. This is not simplification, but deep thought.
Hell, just read one of Roosh's books. These are not one-size fits all guides, but comprehensive analysis of entire nations, with deep understanding of cultures, multiple suggestions for different strengths, etc. That's the point of going international, even! Women are not all the same. Women are different in every culture. You must adapt to maximize your romantic prospects.
It's even okay to be Beta!
On the other hand, Blue Pill strategies revolve entirely around "magic" and "just be yourself." This is not advice. This is snake oil. If someone peddles snake oil, you can be sure they are trying to make a quick buck, at your expense.
IV.
But why all the emphasis on Alpha and Beta?! Isn't that a simplification.
Yes.
But let's examine why this works, by making a comparison to a different field.
Why do we teach Supply and Demand? Supply and Demand, especially in what we call Perfect Competition, does not exist in the real world. If this dynamic does not exist in the real world, ever, at all, why bother teaching this? That remains a fundamental critique of economics education, despite the fact that every undergrad class I attended started and ended the same way with supply curves and demand curves.
The reason we teach Supply and Demand is to clarify thinking for new students, even if this might lead to simplified conclusions. We compare costs to benefits, and teach young adults to think at the margins. We tell them to think about trade-offs, and how interconnected networks interact with each other. We hope our students will make more informed decisions in the future, and based on the post-war economic boom, I'd say we've done an alright job.
A good example of economic analysis is why water is less expensive than gold, despite being more important to life. There's a lot more of water than there is of gold, so it's not worth a whole hell of a lot. This also means, on the margin, putting more of your investment into gold than water supplies, will make people happier.
Economics is a difficult subject to learn. Hell, Jeff Sachs is a genius, and he learned the same way all the rest of us did: making mistakes over the course of decades. That does not mean his entire model needs disposal, or that he knows no more than the bum on the street.
This analogy applies to simplified discussions Alpha v. Beta. We are stuck with young men who have absolutely no knowledge of human attraction. Worse, they have negative knowledge, since society jams a decade of filth into their mind before we even start our education. Much of what we do involves unlearning, before we can even begin the process of real education.
Because of that, we talk about simplified Alpha vs. Beta, in the Nice Guy vs. Jerk dichotomy most young men have seen first-hand. We focus on the trade-offs women make, the contradictions they speak, and the negative aspects of their personality.
That's not an attack on women. We love women. But we need to teach men not to pedestalize women, as they have been trained to do, often for decades before we can reach them. We teach them to treat women as real, fallible beings, not as morally pure Madonnas.
We teach them that there is nothing magical about attraction, that it is the result of a series of factors. We teach them that there are certain things men can do to demonstrate high value, like playing guitar or telling funny jokes or being tall. We tell them a coherent story (that may or may not be true) of how this is the result of women's biological programming, over millions of years of evolution, that this is hard-wired and women cannot change.
We teach them that women have been socialized differently and often think differently than men. We can look at the same social situation, and see entirely different mechanics at work, and draw different conclusions. This is not meant to attack women: this meant to teach men the feminine point of view, and the strengths and weaknesses thereof.
From there, we can start getting into more specific details, like the behavior of women and men given different life experiences, different environments, etc.
But we need some sort of simplified intellectual basis, or else we cannot lead our wayward sons from their mental prisons.
2016 Election Season draws near. Every morning my smartphone's warm glow shows another preliminary poll, another electoral move, another exploratory committee, another announcement, another scandal. Then a "what does this mean?!" segment fills some morning NPR air, months before we can even seriously discuss the Iowa Caucus.
Who really cares? No matter the issue, no matter the cycle, Democrats and Republicans strike the same notes. Either the rich have stuck a siphon into the economy's coffers and drain daily millions of dollars from the wealth of the righteous peasant, or we need broad-based tax cuts to lower the cost of business and create a New Renaissance. No matter the issue, no matter the state of the economy, both parties offer their textbook solutions, couched in the same over-hyped rhetoric.
When someone sells you the same solution for everything? They sell snake oil. Economy in the gutter? Snake oil. Iranian nuclear weapons? Snake oil. Bugs in your house? Snake oil. In the real world, there's no policy proposal, not one, that can fix everything, or is even appropriate for all situations.
Since every crisis bears a character unique to itself, just like every man bears a unique fingerprint, every policy proposal needs nuance.
Unfortunately, politicians are not at fault for this. No, our human brains, in the hunt for simplicity and on the run from hard work, tend to generalize solutions across all ranges of problems. This is why, on every forum, I see people harkening the lessons of Munich when dealing with Iran. Or pointing to the example of Iraq. People of all rank, station, and intellect fall prey to this fallacy.
II.
This line of thinking came up in the recent Tyler Cowen/Jeffrey Sachs discussion. For those not familiar with Jeffrey Sachs, a brief introduction may be in order. Sachs was the youngest economics professor ever to achieve tenure in the United States. A prodigy in almost every conceivable metric, many governments called on him when the Berlin Wall fell, so that the Eastern European economies could develop quickly and freely. He is greatly responsible for the "Shock Therapy" transition from Communist Central Planning to Market Economics.
But, Shock Therapy proved too simple, too universal a concept. You cannot treat Russia, Poland, China, Chile, and Bolivia the same. Sachs, crisis champion extraordinaire, maintained this was his greatest lesson. Each nation, with its own unique history, and with its own unique advantages, requires unique solutions. There can be similarities in prescription, of course: every nation needs schools. But, still, attention to details defines ultimate success or failure.
Sachs drew an analogy to his Wife, a pediatrician. In the medical field, they use a practice called differential diagnosis. Essentially, this is a line of questioning designed to determine what ails you when your symptoms resemble numerous conditions. Or....if you show up with a headache, a million different things could be wrong with you. How do we determine what is actually the problem, and rule out other conditions?
If you showed up to a doctor's office with a headache, and he prescribed chemotherapy because you MIGHT have a tumor, how would you react, as a civilized and learned man?
The same situation applies to any failing economy. India and North Korea and Egypt all have failing economies: What is your solution? If you propose the same solution in every single instance, with no adjustment for nuance, we can simply rule out your opinion. Or at least judge it incomplete, and in need of substantial revision before roll-out.
III.
Neo-Masculinity routinely sustains attacks for simplifying categories and providing false, one-size fits all advice. It is suggested that we never pay attention to individual situations, that we twist facts to suit theories. It is strongly suggested this indicates a failed ideology, lacking vision or honest prescriptive remedy.
But just look at that Blue Pill nonsense! This is the garbage we were told on a daily basis for years, given new packaging today with terms like "authenticity" and "vulnerability." Yet, this fundamental advice, if you can call one-line sound bytes advice, bears in every respect total similarity to the propaganda practices of the major political parties.
Essentially, if anyone is telling you to "Just Be Yourself," they are selling you snake-oil.
Blue Pill attraction theories are based almost entirely on JBY, along with healthy doses of "magic," "chemistry," and "It Just Happened."
Contrast that with the Neo-Masculine Community. We have Cocky-Funny game. We have Day Game. We have Night Game. We have SNAG Game. We have Beta Game. We have Guitar Game. We have....
The list goes on and on.
The Neo-Masculine movement, far from embracing one-size fits all solutions, games out hundreds, if not thousands of scenarios, and applies lessons from the collective fieldwork of thousands of men. This is not simplification, but deep thought.
Hell, just read one of Roosh's books. These are not one-size fits all guides, but comprehensive analysis of entire nations, with deep understanding of cultures, multiple suggestions for different strengths, etc. That's the point of going international, even! Women are not all the same. Women are different in every culture. You must adapt to maximize your romantic prospects.
It's even okay to be Beta!
On the other hand, Blue Pill strategies revolve entirely around "magic" and "just be yourself." This is not advice. This is snake oil. If someone peddles snake oil, you can be sure they are trying to make a quick buck, at your expense.
IV.
But why all the emphasis on Alpha and Beta?! Isn't that a simplification.
Yes.
But let's examine why this works, by making a comparison to a different field.
Why do we teach Supply and Demand? Supply and Demand, especially in what we call Perfect Competition, does not exist in the real world. If this dynamic does not exist in the real world, ever, at all, why bother teaching this? That remains a fundamental critique of economics education, despite the fact that every undergrad class I attended started and ended the same way with supply curves and demand curves.
The reason we teach Supply and Demand is to clarify thinking for new students, even if this might lead to simplified conclusions. We compare costs to benefits, and teach young adults to think at the margins. We tell them to think about trade-offs, and how interconnected networks interact with each other. We hope our students will make more informed decisions in the future, and based on the post-war economic boom, I'd say we've done an alright job.
A good example of economic analysis is why water is less expensive than gold, despite being more important to life. There's a lot more of water than there is of gold, so it's not worth a whole hell of a lot. This also means, on the margin, putting more of your investment into gold than water supplies, will make people happier.
Economics is a difficult subject to learn. Hell, Jeff Sachs is a genius, and he learned the same way all the rest of us did: making mistakes over the course of decades. That does not mean his entire model needs disposal, or that he knows no more than the bum on the street.
This analogy applies to simplified discussions Alpha v. Beta. We are stuck with young men who have absolutely no knowledge of human attraction. Worse, they have negative knowledge, since society jams a decade of filth into their mind before we even start our education. Much of what we do involves unlearning, before we can even begin the process of real education.
Because of that, we talk about simplified Alpha vs. Beta, in the Nice Guy vs. Jerk dichotomy most young men have seen first-hand. We focus on the trade-offs women make, the contradictions they speak, and the negative aspects of their personality.
That's not an attack on women. We love women. But we need to teach men not to pedestalize women, as they have been trained to do, often for decades before we can reach them. We teach them to treat women as real, fallible beings, not as morally pure Madonnas.
We teach them that there is nothing magical about attraction, that it is the result of a series of factors. We teach them that there are certain things men can do to demonstrate high value, like playing guitar or telling funny jokes or being tall. We tell them a coherent story (that may or may not be true) of how this is the result of women's biological programming, over millions of years of evolution, that this is hard-wired and women cannot change.
We teach them that women have been socialized differently and often think differently than men. We can look at the same social situation, and see entirely different mechanics at work, and draw different conclusions. This is not meant to attack women: this meant to teach men the feminine point of view, and the strengths and weaknesses thereof.
From there, we can start getting into more specific details, like the behavior of women and men given different life experiences, different environments, etc.
But we need some sort of simplified intellectual basis, or else we cannot lead our wayward sons from their mental prisons.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Struggle upon Struggle: A multifactor INTJ Problem
I.
So Iran keeps its extensive nuclear infrastructure. That's the end conclusion of 12 years of negotiations. This wasn't the initial plan: after discovering the illicit Iranian nuclear program, the Security Council insisted on a complete enrichment ban in the Islamic Republic. Only then could sanctions fall and negotiations even commence.
The United States did not insist on such rigid conditions. That was the consensus decision by the entire Security Council.
Thing is, we couldn't actually stop Iran from getting a nuke, if she really wanted one. Under the sanctions, so horrible that Iranian had to turn off oil wells (and thus permanently damage them), Iran developed a huge stockpile of 20% enriched uranium. Which is awfully damn close to full weapons-grade uranium. Every day they turned on hundreds more centrifuges, and neared completion on their Arak heavy water reactor.
Basically, we weren't accomplishing a damn thing. The defiant Iranian hard-line regime continued on, rubbing our faces in the fact that they could do whatever they want with nary a US response.
So we got this deal. Not that we didn't give some other methods a good ol' college try.
II.
Enter Stuxnet. Now forgotten, this mystery virus erupted onto the global scene just a few short years. Unlike most malware in the world, this virus specifically targeted Iran: more than 50% of Iranian computers were infected with the Stuxnet virus on Day Zero, with some minor infections in India and Indonesia.
Almost immediately, Computer Security experts concluded this virus was an intelligent design by a state apparatus. There were some naysayers, of course: no evidence of US government involvement! But the code apparently was hysterically complex, reflecting years of work by someone, simply far more complex than any other virus.
And it wasn't just the complexity, but the features! Stuxnet, if you got it, wouldn't even affect your computer, unless it detected certain Siemens industrial software. Hell, I could have gotten it: I wouldn't know, because Stuxent would have infected my computer, saw I didn't have Siemens ERP, and then rendered itself inert.
Even more alarming, every Stuxnet virus erased itself in June 2012. What. The. Hell?
Stuxnet targeted a specific vulnerability in the Siemens industrial systems. Which happened to be used by Iranian centerfuges in Natanz, Iran's enrichment facility.
And then...it sometimes sped up the spin cycle...and sometimes slowed it down..and sometimes sped it up...and who cares if it did that to my laundry machine or something?
But to a nuclear centerfuge spinning at high speeds, those fluctuations are fatal. For months, the Natanz reactor was entirely shut down and enrichment ceased.
Oh yeah. Think about all the design features of this. It is specifically targeted at one specific industry, one specific site even, and has numerous safeguards programmed into it, so it didn't accidentally turn all the Ford robots into Killer SkyNet Death Machines.
Now, Stuxnet is pretty much universally regarded as a Israeli-US designed bug. A very complicated one. Even today, because Stuxnet is so pervasive in Iran, Iranian engineers have to be careful what USB sticks they plug into their computers.
But ultimately, even this failed. Iran wiped their computers. They installed patches. And they got pretty damn close to having enough fissile material for a weapon. Well-integrated systems are hard to break down.
III.
This is actually why Saudi Arabia, despite wanting to copy Iran's development, probably won't get anywhere close. They aren't going to get a Heavy Water reactor or plutonium reprocessing, which would be the easiest way of getting a bomb. Iran doesn't have it, Saudi Arabia won't get it.
So Saudi Arabia would need to go the Uranium-enrichment route. Only....
Saudi Arabia doesn't have any damn uranium.
Right now, they don't even have the infrastructure to mine the most basic ingredient of a nuke program, uranium. Granted, Jordan actually produces a fair share, around 2% of the world's reserves. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have a small nuclear agreement, but the US is pressuring Jordan to act like the UAE and rule out uranium enrichment.
Probably not likely given the above deal with Iran, but if US safeguards go into place, Saudi Arabia will not have a source of its own uranium. That means they will be perpetually be at a disadvantage to Iran, vis a vis nukes. Iran controls every step of the nuclear process and can develop their own bombs if they really, really want to. Saudi Arabia, cannot.
It's just a multi-factor problem, with multiple points of failure, and Saudi Arabia can't control them all. We had to unleash Stuxnet on Iran just to slow them down. For Saudi Arabia, the US just needs to blockade the country. UN sanctions would permit seizure of all ships heading into the country, and deals with Jordan and Egypt would limit smuggling.
It's an inherent disadvantage. Saudi Arabia does not have a native capacity to enrich uranium.
IV.
So what's the best option for Saudi Arabia? Here's we introduce a little concept called "lock-in." Lock-in means you have a relationship that you cannot easily leave. The modern example is the Apple iTunes eco-system. Once you get an IPhone, all your music comes in iTunes format.
Do you want an Android in 2 years? Well, fine. Now you need to export all your songs, and import them to your new Android phone. That's a huge hassle for the standard IPhone user: they got Ipods back in 2001 because they were cool and MP3s too hard. You think these kids will sit at their computer for hours, trying to figure out how to file-transfer 100 gigs of illegally downloaded music?
Nahhhhh.
Saudi Arabia is in a similar relationship, but this is with the United States. The US and Saudi Arabia have a long-standing relationship, going back to the 1950s. We kept them afloat and empowered them for a long while, because they were counter-weights to the pro-Soviet Arab nationalism. Yemen and Oman both had civil wars involving communist insurgencies in the last few decades: Saudi Arabia was a great ally.
This relationship is close enough that the US even briefly suspended aircraft sales to Israel, when Israel protested the US providing advanced AWACS to Saudi Arabia.
It's a pretty deep relationship.
And they are pretty locked-in. They have an extensive economic, software, and military network built on alliance with the United States. That means their easiest method to improve security is to cooperate with the United States. Does the US want to base some radars in Saudi Arabia? Let them, and maybe you'll be covered by SM-3 missile defense systems. Maybe you'll get some F-35s (since the Eurofighter project is such a disaster Saudi Arabia cancelled its order).
Certainly you'll get intelligence support! Saudi aircraft are bombing the hell out of Yemen right now, guided by US satellite and US drones.
V.
Unfortunately, this kind of relationship might be something Saudi Arabia does not want. US influence can be beneficial, but the viral nature of democracy undermines everything it touches. Egypt was a key US ally, but the US tossed Mubarak to the side when it had the chance. Our post Cold War history is full of relationships with dictators, but also forcing dictators out of office or changing governments. South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Panama, these governments were all dictatorships at one point or another, and US pressure and the power of media toppled them all.
You'll notice that this doesn't happen to Belraus, or Myanmar, or North Korea, or Uzbekistan, which have not been forced to democratize, regardless of whatever pressures the universe throws at them. Why are Ukraine and Belarus so much poorer than Poland and Lithuania?
Goes into a little something called Path Dependence. Ukraine and Belarus were extremely close to Russia. Poland was considered an essential objective to be integrated into Europe at almost all cost, with Solidarity, an extremely strong anti-Communist Party institution. Plus it had some serious distance from Russia.
This more or less meant Poland was guaranteed admission to all sorts of European institutions. Ukraine, with its numerous nuclear warheads, unguaranteed borders, and the entire Soviet navy, was destined to stay in the Russian orbit, at least for a while. The decisions the nations made in the past, mattered for decisions made in 1991, and into the present day.
Saudi Arabia staying a US ally means that Saudi Arabia will inevitably change, and that scares the hell out of at least some parts of the Saudi royal family. We really don't know where this will lead, not until a moment of decision, when pressures become too great to resist. At that point, Saudi Arabia will choose to democratize, like South Korea, collapse like Iraq, or become hardline like China (or more likely North Korea).
Iranian nukes make the world dangerous for Saudi Arabia. Ironically, if Saudi Arabia remains locked-in to the United States, pursue a strategy of LIMITED confrontation with Iran, and eventually democratizes, this is actually a GOOD thing for us!
VI.
Contrast this with Israel, which has had a totally different degree of path dependence that created their modern nation-state. At its founding, France thought Israel an immensely powerful tool to enforce its strength in the Middle East. So Israel got unrestricted access to French nuclear technology, which was a pretty big deal back in the day. Dimona is still run on heavy water procured by the French, which means Israel can make as many nukes as it wants.
Again, that option is not even on the table for Saudi Arabia even more!
Israel had a small nuclear supply in the 1970s, as far as we can tell, which may have saved its bacon in '73. But what really mattered is Ronald Reagan.
See, the US wasn't too fond of Israel, back in the day. We didn't like all these nukes. We didn't like the settlements. We didn't like their treatment of the Palestinians. Kissinger threatened to "reset" relations in the region, which ushered in an extremely dark time for Israeli-US relations.
This changes dramatically with Ronald Reagan. Reagan was big on regional partnerships. That's why Saudi Arabia got AWACS in the 1980s. It's also why Israel earned the unique right to spend US defense dollars on its own defense industry, instead of US military goods. By most accounts, Israeli nuclear technology expanded greatly in this period, we absolutely knew about it, and we covered it up, because why not?
Israel now has a small nuclear deterrent. Not enough to deter any of the big guys: Russia or China would wipe them off the face of the Earth. But it's enough to make any invading Arab army think twice, which is all Israel really wants.
Saudi Arabia isn't going to get that deal. It's from a long degree of historical accident and Path Dependence. Nope, Israel and the US and Saudi Arabia all have a locked-in relationship, but it's locked-in on totally different terms.
VII.
Why do I mention INTJs in the title....
Over at Just Four Guys, we've had a lengthy discussion about personality types, whether personality types even bother telling us anything useful, whether we can put people into neat little categories.
For Christmas, my Wife bought me an "INTJ" t-shirt. I wore it a New Year's Eve party, so you can tell I thought it a fitting gift!
There, we met a friend, a quiet, glasses-wearing Asian guy, who spent some time on a cooking show. He doesn't like Gordon Ramsay much, but that's a story for another day.
He said, "oh, wow, you're an INTJ. I am also an INTJ. I did notice something odd about you."
Then my Wife looked at our friend the cook, back at me, then at our friend again, then back at me.
The lightbulb turned on over her head.
"OH!!!!!!!"
The two of us look substantially different, at least at first. He's a committed amateur chef, who rarely gets more than a few hours of sleep per night. He has immense knowledge in practically every facet of the kitchen, from your range to what cleaner to use on your Butcher Block (which you shouldn't have anyways). He's also single, experimented with a lot of experimental drugs, and works in IT, and moved several times in the past year.
I'm a married man, living on a road so straight and narrow it might well be a planck-thickness super-string, work in accounting, and have not changed locations or jobs very frequently in my whole life.
Plus, at first glance, we look so different! I drink a lot, am quite touchy, and share a ton of jokes. He is quiet, reserved, stereotypically nerdy, speaks deep and calm.
VIII.
These differences blinded my Wife to our obvious similarities, which both myself and my INTJ friend could pick up on, almost immediately. It's why we are relatively good friends, despite knowing each other for only a few months. It's why he comes over and cooks, and I give him books on Asian Economics, and then we sit down and talk about Tom Wolfe.
There's a lot of mental similarities and a lot of overlapping interests that generate a lot of common ground. That means we can establish a pretty good friendship.
But it's important not to overlook those key differences. I'm a married White guy and there's better than even odds I'm voting Republican. He's a single minority guy and odds are good he's voting Democrat in 2016. We probably have divergent opinions about religion and music and a whole host of other things. You can't just say "INTJ" and presume you know everything about a person, much like you can't say "Middle East" and presume you know everything about a nation.
The interesting parts come when you look into those mental processes, and see how they interacted with the environment to create the people we see today. I lived at home all throughout my years at college, while he dormed. We both had insomnia problems, but I never had any compulsion to use my kitchen, not when Mother Dearest made home-cooked meals every night, so instead I learned a LOT of history and economics. He headed to the kitchen and learned everything about souffles, at a chemical level.
We both had some issues fitting in when we were younger, and both had some temptations with illegal substances in college. He indulged massively: i indulged lightly. I had to drive home....he partied until 7 the next morning and that difference created a hugely different personality.
I found Roissy. He didn't. A multi-year effort to overhaul my personality created a marriagable man. He tried flirting with Jenna, and got shot down within minutes.
There are differences, yes, but a lot of these differences are predictable based on environment. I'd say it's Nature vs. Nurture, but that's wrong. It's Nature VIA Nurture: the environment pulled out different parts of our Nature and created different people. But we have very similar natures, at least based on our cognitive stacks.
IX.
How to wrap this up? A lot of people think Neo-Masculinity (aka the Red Pill) is some sort of binary thing. You are Alpha or you are Beta. All women are whores (unless we have a Madonna-Whore complex). And obviously the depth of human experience cannot possibly be captured into these two categories.
Therefore Neo-Masculinity is wrong! Hallelujah!
My point is that the intellectual thought behind this movement, if not the scientific rigor, represents an extremely deep well. There is no One True Alpha, there is no Absolute Loser Beta. We tend to believe in continuums and distributions more than categories, and believe this is a multi-variable problem. This is both on the masculine side, and the feminine side: women are not all uniformly "whores" that are all equally likely to cheat on us at any given moment.
No, this is fiction of the highest sort. No Neo-Masculine man believes that, just like few Neo-Masculine men believe women should not hold the franchise.
What we object to are Blue Pill delusions and deliberate obfuscations, designed to prevent debate. We can acknowledge the differences between my INTJ friend and I, but we are interested in how these differences emerged despite similar mental faculties. We are particularly concerned with the difference in relationship outcomes, and obviously my exposure to Roissy must be fundamental to that, and must not be a negative if I could have ended up married and he still single.
These are avenues we would like to explore, with the full depth of our reason. We are not simple-minded hawks, demanding the bombing of Iran "because," nor doves that demand a negotiated deal no matter what "because," nor are we relationship "takers" that demand women have no rights. But also we are not relationship givers, who conitnually demand be held to single-sex standards and uniquely obligated to sacrifice all their collective interests to appease those of women.
This is an ideology of thought, concern, and nuance. When we use terms, rest assured, we know the dangers of categorization. We know about path dependence, about distributions (normal and otherwise!), we know about lock-in, we know about growth mindset, and all that.
Put aside the simple-minded binary Blue Pill thinking that brought you to ruin. You'll find something a lot more thought-out here.
So Iran keeps its extensive nuclear infrastructure. That's the end conclusion of 12 years of negotiations. This wasn't the initial plan: after discovering the illicit Iranian nuclear program, the Security Council insisted on a complete enrichment ban in the Islamic Republic. Only then could sanctions fall and negotiations even commence.
The United States did not insist on such rigid conditions. That was the consensus decision by the entire Security Council.
Thing is, we couldn't actually stop Iran from getting a nuke, if she really wanted one. Under the sanctions, so horrible that Iranian had to turn off oil wells (and thus permanently damage them), Iran developed a huge stockpile of 20% enriched uranium. Which is awfully damn close to full weapons-grade uranium. Every day they turned on hundreds more centrifuges, and neared completion on their Arak heavy water reactor.
Basically, we weren't accomplishing a damn thing. The defiant Iranian hard-line regime continued on, rubbing our faces in the fact that they could do whatever they want with nary a US response.
So we got this deal. Not that we didn't give some other methods a good ol' college try.
II.
Enter Stuxnet. Now forgotten, this mystery virus erupted onto the global scene just a few short years. Unlike most malware in the world, this virus specifically targeted Iran: more than 50% of Iranian computers were infected with the Stuxnet virus on Day Zero, with some minor infections in India and Indonesia.
Almost immediately, Computer Security experts concluded this virus was an intelligent design by a state apparatus. There were some naysayers, of course: no evidence of US government involvement! But the code apparently was hysterically complex, reflecting years of work by someone, simply far more complex than any other virus.
And it wasn't just the complexity, but the features! Stuxnet, if you got it, wouldn't even affect your computer, unless it detected certain Siemens industrial software. Hell, I could have gotten it: I wouldn't know, because Stuxent would have infected my computer, saw I didn't have Siemens ERP, and then rendered itself inert.
Even more alarming, every Stuxnet virus erased itself in June 2012. What. The. Hell?
Stuxnet targeted a specific vulnerability in the Siemens industrial systems. Which happened to be used by Iranian centerfuges in Natanz, Iran's enrichment facility.
And then...it sometimes sped up the spin cycle...and sometimes slowed it down..and sometimes sped it up...and who cares if it did that to my laundry machine or something?
But to a nuclear centerfuge spinning at high speeds, those fluctuations are fatal. For months, the Natanz reactor was entirely shut down and enrichment ceased.
Oh yeah. Think about all the design features of this. It is specifically targeted at one specific industry, one specific site even, and has numerous safeguards programmed into it, so it didn't accidentally turn all the Ford robots into Killer SkyNet Death Machines.
Now, Stuxnet is pretty much universally regarded as a Israeli-US designed bug. A very complicated one. Even today, because Stuxnet is so pervasive in Iran, Iranian engineers have to be careful what USB sticks they plug into their computers.
But ultimately, even this failed. Iran wiped their computers. They installed patches. And they got pretty damn close to having enough fissile material for a weapon. Well-integrated systems are hard to break down.
III.
This is actually why Saudi Arabia, despite wanting to copy Iran's development, probably won't get anywhere close. They aren't going to get a Heavy Water reactor or plutonium reprocessing, which would be the easiest way of getting a bomb. Iran doesn't have it, Saudi Arabia won't get it.
So Saudi Arabia would need to go the Uranium-enrichment route. Only....
Saudi Arabia doesn't have any damn uranium.
Right now, they don't even have the infrastructure to mine the most basic ingredient of a nuke program, uranium. Granted, Jordan actually produces a fair share, around 2% of the world's reserves. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have a small nuclear agreement, but the US is pressuring Jordan to act like the UAE and rule out uranium enrichment.
Probably not likely given the above deal with Iran, but if US safeguards go into place, Saudi Arabia will not have a source of its own uranium. That means they will be perpetually be at a disadvantage to Iran, vis a vis nukes. Iran controls every step of the nuclear process and can develop their own bombs if they really, really want to. Saudi Arabia, cannot.
It's just a multi-factor problem, with multiple points of failure, and Saudi Arabia can't control them all. We had to unleash Stuxnet on Iran just to slow them down. For Saudi Arabia, the US just needs to blockade the country. UN sanctions would permit seizure of all ships heading into the country, and deals with Jordan and Egypt would limit smuggling.
It's an inherent disadvantage. Saudi Arabia does not have a native capacity to enrich uranium.
IV.
So what's the best option for Saudi Arabia? Here's we introduce a little concept called "lock-in." Lock-in means you have a relationship that you cannot easily leave. The modern example is the Apple iTunes eco-system. Once you get an IPhone, all your music comes in iTunes format.
Do you want an Android in 2 years? Well, fine. Now you need to export all your songs, and import them to your new Android phone. That's a huge hassle for the standard IPhone user: they got Ipods back in 2001 because they were cool and MP3s too hard. You think these kids will sit at their computer for hours, trying to figure out how to file-transfer 100 gigs of illegally downloaded music?
Nahhhhh.
Saudi Arabia is in a similar relationship, but this is with the United States. The US and Saudi Arabia have a long-standing relationship, going back to the 1950s. We kept them afloat and empowered them for a long while, because they were counter-weights to the pro-Soviet Arab nationalism. Yemen and Oman both had civil wars involving communist insurgencies in the last few decades: Saudi Arabia was a great ally.
This relationship is close enough that the US even briefly suspended aircraft sales to Israel, when Israel protested the US providing advanced AWACS to Saudi Arabia.
It's a pretty deep relationship.
And they are pretty locked-in. They have an extensive economic, software, and military network built on alliance with the United States. That means their easiest method to improve security is to cooperate with the United States. Does the US want to base some radars in Saudi Arabia? Let them, and maybe you'll be covered by SM-3 missile defense systems. Maybe you'll get some F-35s (since the Eurofighter project is such a disaster Saudi Arabia cancelled its order).
Certainly you'll get intelligence support! Saudi aircraft are bombing the hell out of Yemen right now, guided by US satellite and US drones.
V.
Unfortunately, this kind of relationship might be something Saudi Arabia does not want. US influence can be beneficial, but the viral nature of democracy undermines everything it touches. Egypt was a key US ally, but the US tossed Mubarak to the side when it had the chance. Our post Cold War history is full of relationships with dictators, but also forcing dictators out of office or changing governments. South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Panama, these governments were all dictatorships at one point or another, and US pressure and the power of media toppled them all.
You'll notice that this doesn't happen to Belraus, or Myanmar, or North Korea, or Uzbekistan, which have not been forced to democratize, regardless of whatever pressures the universe throws at them. Why are Ukraine and Belarus so much poorer than Poland and Lithuania?
Goes into a little something called Path Dependence. Ukraine and Belarus were extremely close to Russia. Poland was considered an essential objective to be integrated into Europe at almost all cost, with Solidarity, an extremely strong anti-Communist Party institution. Plus it had some serious distance from Russia.
This more or less meant Poland was guaranteed admission to all sorts of European institutions. Ukraine, with its numerous nuclear warheads, unguaranteed borders, and the entire Soviet navy, was destined to stay in the Russian orbit, at least for a while. The decisions the nations made in the past, mattered for decisions made in 1991, and into the present day.
Saudi Arabia staying a US ally means that Saudi Arabia will inevitably change, and that scares the hell out of at least some parts of the Saudi royal family. We really don't know where this will lead, not until a moment of decision, when pressures become too great to resist. At that point, Saudi Arabia will choose to democratize, like South Korea, collapse like Iraq, or become hardline like China (or more likely North Korea).
Iranian nukes make the world dangerous for Saudi Arabia. Ironically, if Saudi Arabia remains locked-in to the United States, pursue a strategy of LIMITED confrontation with Iran, and eventually democratizes, this is actually a GOOD thing for us!
VI.
Contrast this with Israel, which has had a totally different degree of path dependence that created their modern nation-state. At its founding, France thought Israel an immensely powerful tool to enforce its strength in the Middle East. So Israel got unrestricted access to French nuclear technology, which was a pretty big deal back in the day. Dimona is still run on heavy water procured by the French, which means Israel can make as many nukes as it wants.
Again, that option is not even on the table for Saudi Arabia even more!
Israel had a small nuclear supply in the 1970s, as far as we can tell, which may have saved its bacon in '73. But what really mattered is Ronald Reagan.
See, the US wasn't too fond of Israel, back in the day. We didn't like all these nukes. We didn't like the settlements. We didn't like their treatment of the Palestinians. Kissinger threatened to "reset" relations in the region, which ushered in an extremely dark time for Israeli-US relations.
This changes dramatically with Ronald Reagan. Reagan was big on regional partnerships. That's why Saudi Arabia got AWACS in the 1980s. It's also why Israel earned the unique right to spend US defense dollars on its own defense industry, instead of US military goods. By most accounts, Israeli nuclear technology expanded greatly in this period, we absolutely knew about it, and we covered it up, because why not?
Israel now has a small nuclear deterrent. Not enough to deter any of the big guys: Russia or China would wipe them off the face of the Earth. But it's enough to make any invading Arab army think twice, which is all Israel really wants.
Saudi Arabia isn't going to get that deal. It's from a long degree of historical accident and Path Dependence. Nope, Israel and the US and Saudi Arabia all have a locked-in relationship, but it's locked-in on totally different terms.
VII.
Why do I mention INTJs in the title....
Over at Just Four Guys, we've had a lengthy discussion about personality types, whether personality types even bother telling us anything useful, whether we can put people into neat little categories.
For Christmas, my Wife bought me an "INTJ" t-shirt. I wore it a New Year's Eve party, so you can tell I thought it a fitting gift!
There, we met a friend, a quiet, glasses-wearing Asian guy, who spent some time on a cooking show. He doesn't like Gordon Ramsay much, but that's a story for another day.
He said, "oh, wow, you're an INTJ. I am also an INTJ. I did notice something odd about you."
Then my Wife looked at our friend the cook, back at me, then at our friend again, then back at me.
The lightbulb turned on over her head.
"OH!!!!!!!"
The two of us look substantially different, at least at first. He's a committed amateur chef, who rarely gets more than a few hours of sleep per night. He has immense knowledge in practically every facet of the kitchen, from your range to what cleaner to use on your Butcher Block (which you shouldn't have anyways). He's also single, experimented with a lot of experimental drugs, and works in IT, and moved several times in the past year.
I'm a married man, living on a road so straight and narrow it might well be a planck-thickness super-string, work in accounting, and have not changed locations or jobs very frequently in my whole life.
Plus, at first glance, we look so different! I drink a lot, am quite touchy, and share a ton of jokes. He is quiet, reserved, stereotypically nerdy, speaks deep and calm.
VIII.
These differences blinded my Wife to our obvious similarities, which both myself and my INTJ friend could pick up on, almost immediately. It's why we are relatively good friends, despite knowing each other for only a few months. It's why he comes over and cooks, and I give him books on Asian Economics, and then we sit down and talk about Tom Wolfe.
There's a lot of mental similarities and a lot of overlapping interests that generate a lot of common ground. That means we can establish a pretty good friendship.
But it's important not to overlook those key differences. I'm a married White guy and there's better than even odds I'm voting Republican. He's a single minority guy and odds are good he's voting Democrat in 2016. We probably have divergent opinions about religion and music and a whole host of other things. You can't just say "INTJ" and presume you know everything about a person, much like you can't say "Middle East" and presume you know everything about a nation.
The interesting parts come when you look into those mental processes, and see how they interacted with the environment to create the people we see today. I lived at home all throughout my years at college, while he dormed. We both had insomnia problems, but I never had any compulsion to use my kitchen, not when Mother Dearest made home-cooked meals every night, so instead I learned a LOT of history and economics. He headed to the kitchen and learned everything about souffles, at a chemical level.
We both had some issues fitting in when we were younger, and both had some temptations with illegal substances in college. He indulged massively: i indulged lightly. I had to drive home....he partied until 7 the next morning and that difference created a hugely different personality.
I found Roissy. He didn't. A multi-year effort to overhaul my personality created a marriagable man. He tried flirting with Jenna, and got shot down within minutes.
There are differences, yes, but a lot of these differences are predictable based on environment. I'd say it's Nature vs. Nurture, but that's wrong. It's Nature VIA Nurture: the environment pulled out different parts of our Nature and created different people. But we have very similar natures, at least based on our cognitive stacks.
IX.
How to wrap this up? A lot of people think Neo-Masculinity (aka the Red Pill) is some sort of binary thing. You are Alpha or you are Beta. All women are whores (unless we have a Madonna-Whore complex). And obviously the depth of human experience cannot possibly be captured into these two categories.
Therefore Neo-Masculinity is wrong! Hallelujah!
My point is that the intellectual thought behind this movement, if not the scientific rigor, represents an extremely deep well. There is no One True Alpha, there is no Absolute Loser Beta. We tend to believe in continuums and distributions more than categories, and believe this is a multi-variable problem. This is both on the masculine side, and the feminine side: women are not all uniformly "whores" that are all equally likely to cheat on us at any given moment.
No, this is fiction of the highest sort. No Neo-Masculine man believes that, just like few Neo-Masculine men believe women should not hold the franchise.
What we object to are Blue Pill delusions and deliberate obfuscations, designed to prevent debate. We can acknowledge the differences between my INTJ friend and I, but we are interested in how these differences emerged despite similar mental faculties. We are particularly concerned with the difference in relationship outcomes, and obviously my exposure to Roissy must be fundamental to that, and must not be a negative if I could have ended up married and he still single.
These are avenues we would like to explore, with the full depth of our reason. We are not simple-minded hawks, demanding the bombing of Iran "because," nor doves that demand a negotiated deal no matter what "because," nor are we relationship "takers" that demand women have no rights. But also we are not relationship givers, who conitnually demand be held to single-sex standards and uniquely obligated to sacrifice all their collective interests to appease those of women.
This is an ideology of thought, concern, and nuance. When we use terms, rest assured, we know the dangers of categorization. We know about path dependence, about distributions (normal and otherwise!), we know about lock-in, we know about growth mindset, and all that.
Put aside the simple-minded binary Blue Pill thinking that brought you to ruin. You'll find something a lot more thought-out here.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
REFORBAL
Death from Above in the 1983 REFORGER Exercise
Missed in the furor over the attacks on Mariupol are recent US troop deployments in Eastern Europe. What was once an area of the world slated for continual withdrawals, Russian aggression has resulted in the recommitment of massive US shows of force in the region.
How much of a show of force?
That's the former Soviet Union, and those are US troops parading in armored IFVs.
More interesting are US plans to preposition heavy material in the region. That's a huge shift. As part of the Global Pivot, US policy-makers had withdrawn most of our tanks and material from the European theater.
Now we're moving closer to the Bad Guys.
This doesn't sound like much. A couple hundred vehicles that close to Russia? Put this into the grand scheme of "logistics." A perrenial obsession of military planners ever since half of France's army never showed up to the Franco-Prussian War, good logistics dictate how quickly you can mobilize and supply soldiers for general offensives. It's the part that many historical generals overlooked and ended up paying the price for it.
Russia is a slow-moving bear and smarting from its numerous losses. Even now, Russian front-line forces in Ukraine are stuck pulling on equipment all the way from Siberia, as current forces are unable to field more than a few hundred men at a time. Putin has been amassing several field armies on the Ukrainean border for some time, a testament to how damn slow they move.
In contrast, the US has experience with flying in soldiers to man pre-positioned equipment. During the Cold War, the US ran annual exercises called REFORGER. These were some of the largest military movements post WWII and moved thousands of soldiers every day through the Civil Air Reserve Fleet. The soldiers would then land, pick up their tanks already fueled and loaded, and drive off to fight Warsaw Pact forces.
What this means is local superiority in forces, anywhere we want, which gives us time for a general mobilization. That's a lot better than the prior situation, which essentially left the entire Eastern defense up to Poland.
But this is more a worry for me than a comfort. This is nothing but a short-term fix, because, over the course of the next few decades, we can't count on a permanent US presence in the region. Already we had significantly drawn our German forces, and the Brits aren't there anymore either. We were fatigued, ready to leave, and looking towards our exposed Pacific allies.
That situation will only grow worse. Europe needs to start looking out for its own defense.
Only, there were no British, French, or German troops in that show of force. There are no plans to preposition Spanish or Italian troops in Romania. Hell, Europe can't even get its own budget in order. Many of the Southern tier economies still have unemployment rates well into the double-digits.
Over the long-term, the only real answer here is actual European unity. The kind that brings tanks and troops East, if the Eastern European allies need them. The worry is that as US troops draw-down, our European allies will remain complacent, continue to miss defense budget targets, run out of bombs attacking Third-World countries, and let the Alliance fall piece-meal to Russian aggression.
Note: This does not mean we should go fight Russia over Ukraine. Given the ZAPAD exercises, that certainly means a nuclear confrontation with Russia. It also does not mean we should give Ukraine weapons. If Ukrainean Kornets can knock out Israeli Merkavas, then Ukraine does not need Javelin missiles.
It's a Twilight Struggle, more than a call to arms.
Happy Easter!
Thursday, April 2, 2015
A Stepford Wife
A Modern Career Feminist, advancing her world-changing idea:
My Wife and I, along with Jenna, sat down to this movie last night. During the week, we enjoy something a little more carefree. Light-hearted. Funny. Hopeful?
Stepford Wives was my choice. Perhaps I could have done better, though the Frank Oz satire definitely gave my gut a few good heaving laughs! By the end of the night, Jenna and I were rolling on the ground. How could you not enjoy such a hysterical romp condenming the evils of modern feminism?
Oh, wait. That's not what it's about?
We're staring a predictable satire. The movie holds pretty true to the book: the men decide to create robots of their wives so they can have perfect lives. The movie introduces a twist when it turns out that *GASP* the whole thing is a conspiracy by a former career-driven ball-busting woman who just wants to enjoy a Midsummer Night's Waltz.
Men in the Neo-Masculine movement are often told we have unrealistic standards of women, that we merely want a "Stepford Wife." Real men like aggressive women, you know. Real Men cook. Real Men clean. Real Men of course change half the diapers, and nothing is sexier (over time).
Real men date real women who leave their houses like this:
Oh, sorry. Wrong image. That was Berlin after we bombed it for 4 years and the Soviets leveled it with 40,000 artillery pieces.
Here's a how real UnStepford Wife keeps her home (image from the movie):
You can see how my confused mind accidentally grabbed the wrong picture.
On more than one occasion, I visited my Wife's home when she lived alone, and found it shape much like the photo above. This is a common complain among virtually all my male friends: our female significant others are absolute slobs. This is not cute, this is not endearing, it's not the result from a "busy life," it's laziness and immaturity. When we first began living together, this is one of the character traits I sought to immediately mitigate in my Wife.
This took a great deal of time, but I am pleased to say that, at a minimum of tension, my Wife does not leave her purses on the floor anymore, she washes off her dishes and puts them in the dishwasher, and she keeps laundry clean on a daily basis. Lest the Froth Brigade resort to their normal "double-shift" nonsense, I washed the dishes when I came home, put away the clean dishes, seasoned my cast iron, and then sat down to this post, after working an extra hour and a half at work, with no lunch.
Do not bring your "Patriarchy" nonsense to a home more loving and by all indications more "egalitarian" than your own.
Obviously, while most Men do not want to date a robot, most Men do not want to live in the shelled-out remains of a post-war capital. Especially not with the twisted sort of "Careerist" mindset that celebrates Open Hypergamy in television form.
Most men do not want to date a Stepford Wife. But we absolutely do not want to date the "Successful" Women, who were so wildly sociopathic that they made their husbands prefer a cheap Wall-E imitation compared to a real person. Nor do they want to embrace on the clinically sexless "marriages" so frequently found in the Modern Era.
A Neo-Masculine man obviously prefers something a little more positive, even at the expense of "accomplishments." Even if the penalty is living in a drafty old house:
My Wife and I, along with Jenna, sat down to this movie last night. During the week, we enjoy something a little more carefree. Light-hearted. Funny. Hopeful?
Stepford Wives was my choice. Perhaps I could have done better, though the Frank Oz satire definitely gave my gut a few good heaving laughs! By the end of the night, Jenna and I were rolling on the ground. How could you not enjoy such a hysterical romp condenming the evils of modern feminism?
Oh, wait. That's not what it's about?
We're staring a predictable satire. The movie holds pretty true to the book: the men decide to create robots of their wives so they can have perfect lives. The movie introduces a twist when it turns out that *GASP* the whole thing is a conspiracy by a former career-driven ball-busting woman who just wants to enjoy a Midsummer Night's Waltz.
Men in the Neo-Masculine movement are often told we have unrealistic standards of women, that we merely want a "Stepford Wife." Real men like aggressive women, you know. Real Men cook. Real Men clean. Real Men of course change half the diapers, and nothing is sexier (over time).
Real men date real women who leave their houses like this:
Here's a how real UnStepford Wife keeps her home (image from the movie):
You can see how my confused mind accidentally grabbed the wrong picture.
On more than one occasion, I visited my Wife's home when she lived alone, and found it shape much like the photo above. This is a common complain among virtually all my male friends: our female significant others are absolute slobs. This is not cute, this is not endearing, it's not the result from a "busy life," it's laziness and immaturity. When we first began living together, this is one of the character traits I sought to immediately mitigate in my Wife.
This took a great deal of time, but I am pleased to say that, at a minimum of tension, my Wife does not leave her purses on the floor anymore, she washes off her dishes and puts them in the dishwasher, and she keeps laundry clean on a daily basis. Lest the Froth Brigade resort to their normal "double-shift" nonsense, I washed the dishes when I came home, put away the clean dishes, seasoned my cast iron, and then sat down to this post, after working an extra hour and a half at work, with no lunch.
Do not bring your "Patriarchy" nonsense to a home more loving and by all indications more "egalitarian" than your own.
Obviously, while most Men do not want to date a robot, most Men do not want to live in the shelled-out remains of a post-war capital. Especially not with the twisted sort of "Careerist" mindset that celebrates Open Hypergamy in television form.
Most men do not want to date a Stepford Wife. But we absolutely do not want to date the "Successful" Women, who were so wildly sociopathic that they made their husbands prefer a cheap Wall-E imitation compared to a real person. Nor do they want to embrace on the clinically sexless "marriages" so frequently found in the Modern Era.
A Neo-Masculine man obviously prefers something a little more positive, even at the expense of "accomplishments." Even if the penalty is living in a drafty old house:
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