Uncorrelated, Not Uncaused VI

Thoughts.

• Some of my relatives had a traffic delay on their way to Tombstone, Arizona, because of some giant mining machinery—the thing apparently took up two lanes' worth of space. I wasn't with them, but their account got me thinking: maybe that's why Scarabs have the legs. After all, they were invented as mining equipment. It'd certainly be more convenient if your mining machinery could just step over traffic.


• Speaking of Tombstone, you know when idiots think "this isn't the Wild West" is an actual thought on the matter of gun control or self-defense? Yeah, well, the per capita murder rate in several of the Western states is higher now than in the 1870s; "wild" means more than one thing.


• So my brother replayed Twin Snakes on the Game Cube. I did not remember this game being so childish, but holy God what a twit Kojima is. He makes Tarantino look like an organized crime expert.
  
  But it's interesting: Kojima's anti-American bullshit is not the type of anti-American bullshit typical of Japan. That's usually right-wing, oh-boohoohoo-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki-but-Nanking-never-happened type stuff. No, Kojima's is, by the book, the American type of anti-Americanism. Metal Gear games' takes on the military, history, politics, economics: each and every one is the standard set of American, specifically Hollywood, talking points. That's probably why the games often do better here than they do there, but shouldn't Kojima be ashamed of only knowing about the world through movies?


• I love the way so many of the characters act surprised that Snake isn't a Terminator kill-bot. I mean, Mei Ling's got an Air Force rank: it seems unlikely to me that she'd be completely unacquainted with military people (Marine jokes about the "para-military branch" notwithstanding). Kojima does know everyone in the military goes through basic, right?
  
  It's sorta like in the second one, not only do the Marines not just shoot Ocelot when he shows up uninvited (they totally would), but Whatshisname Dolph calls himself a soldier. Okay, maybe this is more a flaw in the translation, but Marines do not refer to themselves as soldiers, ever. Remember, marines are Marines; soldiers are members of the
  Aren't
  Ready for
  Marines
  Yet.


• Which reminds me, why don't people get that whether an enemy soldier is good or evil is immaterial to military ethics? It's not an execution; it's war. Moral agency has no bearing on the question of whether or not someone—or something—poses a threat that must be removed by force; a grizzly isn't a sinner, but you might have to shoot it anyway. The only time when questions of guilt, innocence, informed consent, and the rest enter into that sort of question, is in the context of retaliatory military action.
  
  War, by the way, is the form of conflict, between two communities, where the two sides have recourse to force to achieve their aims. Once the conflict, and recourse to force to resolve it, are determined to be justified, it is in principle always moral to kill combatants on the other side. Surrendered military personnel have relinquished combatant status, so killing them is like killing greengrocers; non-combat military personnel, similarly, are exactly like civilians who happen to be building bombs—you aren't allowed to directly target their lives, but they are ethically permissable collateral damage. That's why you can bomb munitions factories, but nerve-gas is off the table.


• You know how it's rather difficult to explain the relativistic model of space-time? I find things like the expanding universe easiest to explain by the concept of a 3d grid: the points may stay at their old coordinates, but the grid itself is getting bigger.
  
  Similarly, I believe it was xkcd that mentioned the flaw in the "mattress pressed down by bowling ball" analogy, for relativistic gravity (i.e. space-time curvature): namely, what's pressing it down? It's inelegant to use a model that includes the thing you're explaining. So I came up with another: imagine the space-time grid as a net of wires, going in three directions at 90° from each other, and masses as objects of varying volumes, bending the wires around themselves.


• Have you ever heard that Objectivist canard that says something like "nobody can oppress you without your consent"? I was just reminded of it by someone, criticizing Whittaker Chambers' famous review of Atlas Shrugged, because he said "It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it." And of course they chimed in about Rand's contempt for mere force.
  
  Snerk. Rand didn't hold force in contempt, she merely held physical force in contempt. Every other form of power—monetary, intellectual, sexual, etc.—she held not merely above the law, but as constituting a new law. But what do you expect? She was just as much of a weakling as Nietzsche, but both more self-aware and less healthy; while he admired physical force though he lacked it, she despised it, ruled it out of bounds, because she lacked it. And also because force blows her theory that "we choose to be victims" clean out of the water: you don't have to consent to be killed. Someone has to meet you at least partway, to use economic, intellectual, or social power against you; absolutely anyone, indeed anything, can use force.
  
  Another factor in her hatred of force is there is no spinning it: absent treachery, the winner of a fight is the stronger fighter. It is absolutely vital to a cult-leader like Rand that she can twist out of any test that might disprove her—and the fact that Objectivists would make one shitty-ass army means she has to avoid a fight like the plague. Also, force is fundamentally egalitarian—compare the most arrogant Indo-European warrior aristocracies, for instance, to even the humbler Confucian intellectual aristocracies. Bullets don't care how many stars are on your epaulet or stripes are on your cuff; they can't be bribed, guilt-tripped, seduced, or double-talked. They'll just kill you.
  
  If I might quote a far better Russian thinker, "Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe; maybe. I've yet to meet one that can outsmart bullet."


• Where do people get their weird ideas about hereditary rank? For instance, did you know that in most systems that developed hereditary leadership, the leadership was originally elected? Usually the wealthy clans of a group would elect one of their number to lead them. Eventually, of course, either one of the elected was so powerful, or else one clan got elected so often, that the post became a part of the hereditary rights of the clan.
  
  Personally, I can't see how any rational person can object to hereditary rank, at least in theory (whether you think any current system of hereditary rank works properly is another matter). If people have a right to leave property—which, again, is a much less controllable form of power than political office—to their descendents, then why can't they leave political office? Plus, while we essentially expect middle-school civics to be sufficient training for leadership, a hereditary system can raise its leaders from infancy to cope with their obligations.