High trust civilization (the west) could use warranty rather than skin. So what happened that the west stopped demanding warranty?
Source date (UTC): 2017-03-02 21:36:08 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/837416253845299205
Reply addressees: @nntaleb
Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/837123578634125312
IN REPLY TO:
@nntaleb
Skin in the game, almost finished https://t.co/6sEm1JDeWg
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/837123578634125312
The west differs from the east. We never conflated law with other fields. And the skin of the loan IN put = the warranty OUT put.
Source date (UTC): 2017-03-02 21:35:04 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/837415987062444032
Reply addressees: @nntaleb
Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/837123578634125312
IN REPLY TO:
@nntaleb
Skin in the game, almost finished https://t.co/6sEm1JDeWg
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/837123578634125312
WESTERN CIV ON SKIN IN THE GAME
Your narrative is exceptional – as wisdom. But wisdom cannot be converted into law unless in a formal, deflationary argument.
The west differs from the east. We never conflated law with other fields. And the skin of the loan IN put = the warranty OUT put.
High trust civilization (the west) could use warranty rather than skin. So what happened that the west stopped demanding warranty?
Without low trust SKIN IN -or- high trust WARRANTY OUT, western civ kept high trust population but low trust economics and policy.
Now, if the west relied upon high trust warranty, how could we rely once again on high trust, or must we move to low trust Skin?
When you discuss cultural deltas I hear (a) levantine low trust with (b) mathematical and literary platonism. Not Natural Law.
Source date (UTC): 2017-03-02 16:47:00 UTC
James Augustus
My central argument is that Europe benefited by having an evolutionary environment that allowed for a high frequency of cultural, institutional and intellectual iterations, and that truth, sovereignty and natural law produce an existential advantage, so that what survived is what we call Western Civilization and its peoples.
It is easy to look back at what survived and construct a rational narrative, but by doing so we are being fooled by randomness as Taleb is so succinct at pointing out.
Evolutionary arguments are superior inasmuch as they point to what didn’t survive (via negativa) deterministically due to selection pressures.
Source date (UTC): 2017-03-01 18:29:00 UTC
EUROPE AND EAST ASIA ‘HAVE DONE BETTER’ BECAUSE OF TERRITORIAL ADVANTAGE WITHIN GEOGRAPHIC FORTRESSES
Fortress Europa obtained non-territorial advantage by:
A COLLECTION of hypotheses that include:
a) europeans have higher neuroticism (creativity)
b) europeans have lower clannishness (dislike of outsiders)
c) europeans have dramatically reduced the size of the underclass ( produced a higher distribution of Iq, and lower distribution of testosterone)
d) there seems to be a longstanding IQ advantage in the north and an intellectual tradition into pre-history in the british isles (the ‘athens’ of pre-literate europe).
e) the yamnaya brought aryanism (realism, sovereignty, martial rule, hierarchical organization, testimony, jury, common law ) to europe. And that this has been our most meaningful competitive advantage.
f) that each wave of europeans out of Ukraine has been as much an ‘improvement’ over the prior as each wave out of Africa was an ‘improvement’ over the prior – for the same reason; africa and the steppe are brutal evolutionary furnaces.
As far as I know all these hypotheses survive all possible scrutiny without requiring a particular genetic advantage other than perhaps reduced clannishness common among circumpolar peoples.
This is why I adhere to this solution. Because it does not depend upon ‘magical’ genetics evolving by accidental mutation in the european genome, but merely adaptation to local conditions from a marginally indifferent set of homo sapiens in the past.
As far as I know all human variation is in intensity of expression of possibilities extant already in the genome.
Source date (UTC): 2017-03-01 11:49:00 UTC
—“Western Europe was the richest region in the world for nearly all the last 2,000 years. The only exception is 1000 AD. Secondly, Western Europe has virtually always been richer than Eastern Europe. This was true long before communism came into the picture. Third, in 1 AD Africa was richer than Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia. In 1 AD Africa was also richer than Africa in 1820 AD. Progress is not inevitable.”—
http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2017/01/09/civilization-powered-by-the-west-threatened-by-the-rest/
Source date (UTC): 2017-03-01 10:04:00 UTC
THE DISTILLATION OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
If you would be sovereign, you must fight.
If you would be sovereign and win, you must equally confederate.
If you would be sovereign and confederate, you must equally compromise.
If you would be sovereign and equally compromise, you must equally forgo opportunities for gain at another’s loss.
If you would be sovereign and equally forgo equal opportunities to gain at another’s loss, your actions are limited to those that are productive, fully informed, warrantied, and voluntary, and limited to productive externalities.
If you limit your actions to those, then the ONLY possible rule is rule by Common, judge-discovered, Natural Law of Non Imposition of Costs, and therefore, voluntary markets in everything: association, cooperation, reproduction, production, production of commons, production of dispute resolution, production of institutions, productions of monuments, production of war, productions of generations,
This is Western Civilization: the choice of Sovereignty once made produces all that we have done. Small things in large numbers have vast consequences.
If you would be Sovereign, and reap the benefits of Sovereignty, you must fight – fight to deny others all possible alternatives.
If you will not fight you cannot be sovereign.
You may beg the Sovereigns for commercial liberty, or physical freedom, or charity, in exchange for compensation. But you may never be in fact sovereign.
by William Butchman, Eli Harman, and Curt Doolittle
Source date (UTC): 2017-03-01 09:56:00 UTC
http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2017/01/09/civilization-powered-by-the-west-threatened-by-the-rest/?fb_action_ids=1717545211841844&fb_action_types=og.commentsTHE DATA YOU WANT ON THE WEST VS THE REST
Via William Butchman
http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2017/01/09/civilization-powered-by-the-west-threatened-by-the-rest/?fb_action_ids=1717545211841844&fb_action_types=og.comments
As Butch mentioned above, (I just saw this post tonight, on March 1st) I’m increasingly confident that what accounts for the west consistently competing faster than ‘the rest’ is sovereignty, and its requirement for deflationary truth, and everything else results from it. The question is, why does it appear that westerners to have had this rather aristotelian bias “realism” or “military epistemology” even into prehistory? The only explanation that fits consists of a small number of related traits: (a) the lack of clannishness that seems to be a predisposition of near-arctic peoples everywhere in the upper hemisphere, (b) the long term use of metallurgy outside of the authoritarian mysticism necessary to organize irrigation in the river valleys, and (c) the battle tactics of raiders who family-financed bronze, horse, and wheel: beginning with voluntary membership in the ‘venture’, selection of leaders (generals), contractual adherence to promised battle plans even at risk of death, contractual distribution of proceeds from battle, and the merciless demands of military epistemology – a discipline we still practice in basic training today: testimony.
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-28 22:51:00 UTC
CULUTRAL OBSERVATIONS
“Trendy” Coffee Shops. Chatter.
Central Connecticut: Construction.
Seattle: Careers (tech and medicine)
San Francisco: Opinions.
Kiev: Opportunities.
L’viv: Friends and Family
That’s the content. But what’s the structure? How other people don’t do what you want them to. How the world would be better if they did. Wishful statements of emotional or status credit and debt. And little else. “Please help me feel my signal accounts are higher than I assess them to be.”
Content reflects how well people know each other. Higher signaling in higher anonymity (search algorithm). Higher trust confirmation in low anonymity (preservation algorithm)
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-28 10:17:00 UTC
Our first wave settled all the way to the northern limits and developed a copper civilization across europe – including our monumental stone henge.
And we rested.
Our second wave created a bronze civilization in central europe, and advanced all of europe by doing so.
And we rested.
Our third wave out of the Ukraine combined horse, wheel, bronze, and aristocracy to conquered the world from Spain to china and then slowly drag humanity out of ignorance, superstition, poverty, disease, dysgenic reproduction, and tyranny.
And then we rested.
Then we dragged the mediterranean world out of ignorance superstition, poverty, dysgenic reproduction, and tyranny.
And then we rested.
Then we dragged the european world out of ignorance, and superstition, physical labor, poverty, and disease.
And we did not rest.
Then we dragged the rest of the world out of ignorance superstition, poverty, dysgenic reproduction, and tyranny.
And we cannot rest.
We are never first. We are always fastest. Most innovative. And best.
When we do not rest.
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-26 15:26:00 UTC