Jim's Blog

Jesus as game theory: In a world of imperfect information, one tit for two tats.

Old Testament marriage and family law as game theory: If you are stuck with with each other, the deal is going to generate value even if the value very unequally distributed, but if not stuck, prisoner’s dilemma. Negative sum actions are likely to be individually beneficial.

It might seem obvious that if everyone could correctly predict the outcome of a war, no one would go to war. But a little application of game theory reveals that they would, and must, because individually optimum behavior is to act unpredictably.

But in fact most wars do not result from rational actors. It is indeed true that there would be, not no war, but considerably less war if the parties were rational and well informed, albeit rationality is apt to result in concealing information and providing misinformation. (Similarly the market for lemons.) Rather, the problem is that no one can negotiate with the Global American Empire because there is no one to negotiate with. As the Russians say “not agreement capable”. World War I was the same. Austria told Serbia to choose war or peace, because Serbia had been simultaneously pursuing war and peace, and was incapable of choosing.

The Global American Empire consists of “the rules based international order” where only they get to interpret the rules. Which results in them shutting down all efforts by adversaries to communicate. The Taliban was telling us what they were about from 1996 onwards on every channel of communication they could use, and the Global American Empire still to this day has absolutely no idea.

Without the possibility of communication, war.

A hegemonic world order where the hegemon can hear what other parties are saying is likely to be peaceful and cooperative, though obviously most of the value created by that cooperation is going to go to the hegemon, and rather less to the rest. Similarly Mosaic marriage and family. Everyone benefits, but most of the value goes to the husband, and considerably less to the wife. Efforts to remedy this by increasing the power of the wife have necessarily resulted in defect/defect equilibrium, the game of players and bitches. You need a King, and the husband has to be king under his own roof. The sovereign cannot rule alone, and has to support each little king in his own little domain, which little domain excludes all other little Kings, and largely excludes the sovereign.

If benefits of positive sum behavior are distributed in a too severely unequal manner, people will want to change that distribution, which is most effectively done by negative sum behavior.

American soft power consists of shutting down all other voices, so that the Harvard and Mainstream media interpretation of the rules and of the distribution of costs and benefits is the only one that can be heard. Thus one hears no end about white violence against blacks, and nothing of the immensely greater black violence against whites, and similarly for the sexual conduct of men and women.

The trouble with this form of power is: Know your enemy, know yourself, you will prevail in every battle, know yourself but not the enemy, you will lose half the time, know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will lose every time. The Taliban knew America better than globohomo did, but globohomo had absolutely no idea what the Taliban was about, despite the Taliban attempting to tell them loudly and clearly in excellent idiomatic English on every channel that they could. The Global American Empire wanders into wars with no idea what is on the table, or what the enemy intends, for not only is the enemy’s beef with them unspeakable and unthinkable, their beef with the enemy is also unspeakable and unthinkable.

We need everyone to agree, perhaps reluctantly, on a distribution of the benefits of cooperation that may well be rough on some of the parties, but is still fair enough that everyone will be reasonably willing to go along with it, for no man rules alone.

But what is a fair distribution of the value resulting from positive sum behavior? What is every man’s due? Thus game theory and game theoretic marginal economics. Which means people have to know what the rules are, and they also need to know how other people are benefiting or being harmed by those rules. Those rules need to sustain an order such that everyone benefits from cooperation, even if the benefit is apt to be rather one sided. Today, however, no one knows what the rules are and what the costs and benefits are except that whites are always in the wrong, men are always in the wrong, and the Global American empire is always upholding freedom and democracy.

Recent wars are the result of manipulating the flow of information about the costs, benefits, and values of the other parties. Similar to price control resulting in shortages by falsifying information. Globohomo told the Afghans they were doing them a big favor and believed it. The Afghans did not believe it. Globohomo did not hear, could not hear, what the Afghans were telling them in excellent idiomatic English on every channel they could get.

American GDP is fake and gay. American GDP is for the most part not riggers in red states lifting steel, workers on the assembly line, cattle ranchers raising cattle, nor even truckers, warehouses, and shops moving goods from where they are made to where they are used, it is people in blue states doing business in permissions that allow riggers to lift steel and ranchers to raise cattle. American GDP is the HR department, not the trucker.

America produces about a hundred and fifty tomahawk missiles a year. Russia has expended about five thousand or so similar missiles in the Ukraine. Nato is running out, Russia does not appear to be running out.

America’s largest and most capable aircraft carrier is the Nimitz. Built in 1967. Maintenance and repairs are piling up. The Navy has been trying, and failing, to produce new ships for some time, with the result that America’s fleet is shrinking, while China’s grows. The Navy cannot build what it used to be able to build, and cannot maintain and repair what it inherited. The Navy suffers the same disability that NASA suffers. How much of the stuff on the Nimitz is still in order suitable for use in battle?

The Nimitz can deliver that many missiles in a week. But how many missiles does it have to deliver? It was built for an America that could mass produce stuff like that. This is not that America.

The most important, powerful, and effective weapon in the US arsenal is a fifty year old plane firing seventy year old cannons scoured from museums and looted from ancient forgotten overseas arms depots.

In the conflict over the Ukraine, the hollowing out of western industrial capability is showing up.

Right now China could sink the Nimitz. It is in range of Chinese hypersonics at this moment. But order to sink it, it has to be able to see it. War in the Pacific is likely to lead to war in space – in which Musk is the superpower, though since much of his assets are in space, he is very much opposed to space war. America leads by far in space based observation capability, thanks largely to Musk’s ability to lift stuff. But to remove other great power’s capability for space based observation may require assistance he is likely to be reluctant to provide. But he may not have much choice with all his ground assets US based.

Russia and China have crude satellite weapons. But the winner in a space war is likely to be whoever has greater capability to lift stuff to orbit.

All Global American Empire approved political candidates are saying “Russia will be defeated”. You should not want to defeat a nuclear power. You want to push it into an unfavorable deal with military pressure. Which is what the US has been doing for eight years in the Ukraine, except for the deal part. They seem congenitally unable to make a deal. Defeating a nuclear power is likely to become unpleasant. If no deal eventually nukes.

What happens if Nato goes directly to war with Russia?

Well, most of Nato lacks actual soldiers, as became amusingly apparent in the Serbian wars. As I am fond of saying, Britain has a hundred generals, but can only put a hundred boots on the ground. The US has actual soldiers, or had, the number is rapidly diminishing. Probably some Nato countries have actual soldiers. The Ukraine does have actual soldiers, having conscripted just about everyone. Right now they substantially outnumber Russian soldiers in the Ukraine. But they are dependent on Nato logistics, and Russian shells clearly outnumber Ukrainian shells. Direct Nato involvement will not help much with the logistic crisis.

Reagan’s strategy for defeating the Soviet Union was logistic exhaustion, to bleed them in a hundred little wars. That worked, and today the Global American Empire strategy is the same: “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a nuclear power”. This time around however, does not look like it is working. “Russia will be defeated” rests on the claim that Russia is rapidly exhausting its stockpiles. Maybe, but they are not acting as if they are exhausting their stockpiles.

Some time ago the Ukraine tweeted a chart supposedly showing Russian stockpiles and weapons production. According to that chart, they should have run out quite some time ago. Global American Empire quasi state media have been reporting for months that Russia is about to run out. They are drinking their own koolaide.

A few days back, Russia started using what it calls “end guided bombs” to good effect, though it would be more accurate to call them bomber launched glider drones. Obviously these are not coming from its stockpiles. Further, bomber launched glider drones are a more effective, advanced, and modern weapon that what the USA calls end guided bombs.

Some time ago the west decided to send its highly advanced tanks to the Ukraine. These wonder weapons would make short work of the Russians, we are told. They have not arrived. I conjecture a conversation took place that went something like

“How many tanks do we have ready to roll?”

“Well, when they arrive in the Ukraine, certain maintenance procedures will be required, and we will have to make arrangements for those maintenance procedures to be deployed in the Ukraine”

“How long will that take?”

“Well, we are having some delays in deploying them here.”

Perhaps I am being unduly cynical, but the west has a whole lot of warplanes that are “not full spectrum combat ready”. Perhaps it has a similar problem with tanks. The Global American Empire military industrial complex is in the same pickle as Nasa. It has a whole lot of enormously impressive terrifyingly powerful stuff lying around from the days of half a century ago, that it can no longer make, maintain, nor competently use. Exhibit A being the Nimitz and the space shuttle engines. The US Navy is not rapidly shrinking because of budgetary decisions to shrink it. They budgeted to expand it. It is shrinking for the same reason as Nasa was begging the Russians for lifts to the space station. They tried to build warships, and just failed. Tanks and warships are a similar technology. If you cannot build warships, maybe you are only pretending to build tanks.

It is hard to say, for the first casualty of war is truth, but the way the wind blows now, it is not Russia that is running out.

This is related to an earlier post on the fakeness of American GDP afflicting American consumers. Used to be that every moderately competent, moderately industrious, man could afford a home, a garden, children, and a stay at home wife. Used to be that American shopping centers looked like shopping centers for rich people. Now they look like shopping centers for third world people. I was very recently in a big top end third world mall. Looked very nice. On the whole, wealthier, more attractive, and more comfortable ambiance than what I see around here, though most people in that town do their shopping in places more typically third world and Singapore has much nicer places. But if you look at a nice shopping center in Singapore, and what you can find in America, it is like night and day. Singapore shopping centers imply a considerably higher quality of customer than American shopping centers. A typical Chinese restaurant just has a nicer ambiance than the typical American restaurant, the typical Chinese car is nicer than the typical American car, and the typical Singaporean car is way nicer.

They say the pleasant and beautiful old malls disappeared because of economics. Could not compete with Walmart prices. Maybe, but outside the Global American Empire, and on its periphery, I see pleasant and beautiful malls going up.

We have received two huge benefits from the Ukraine war. One is that when Putin intervened in the Ukraine conflict, the Global American Empire everywhere overnight stopped enforcing worship of the awesome and mighty covid demon. The public announcements that masking and jabs were compulsory continued for a while, but everyone ignored them, and gradually they are stopping. Kind of like everyone started ignoring female emancipation when they tossed it in the lead up to World War II, even though it officially remained in force.

Putin cured Covid.

And the other big benefit is Yandex search.

Type a thought crime into a search engine, any search engine in your browser’s list. For example “gay needs to be suppressed”.

You will likely get slim pickings. Similarly, search for information on the war in the Ukraine, or the jab.

Type it into Yandex.com, you get a reasonably balanced collection of links from both sides of the debate.

Replacing your default browser search with yandex is likely to be difficult. You will have to find some little used and obscure ui for adding unlisted search engines, and will have to supply the search url, which for yandex is https://yandex.com/search/?text=%s&lr=10619 (Your browser will replace %s with the actual search string.

Next up, I hope for a Russian reply to GPT3

I had hoped for SWIFT replacement, but nothing good yet that I know of. El Salvador is fighting the good fight there. Meanwhile the Afghans continue to cheerfully demonstrate how easily and smoothly one can erase female emancipation.

Military summary channel gives daily reports on the war in the Ukraine. His account is one of continual struggles for high ground and observation points, with Russians advancing over low ground at high cost to grab a high point.

Wagner’s movie of the war depicting one small but horrific battle for one small observation point. (hat tip Kunning Druegger) This account is fictionalized but was produced by people who waded through blood, and is consistent in detail with the real life tactics, weapons systems, and terrible costs summarized in the military summary channel. We may conclude that though fictionalized, it accurately depicts war as it is being fought today.

It depicts a battle for a nine story building, which they need so that they can put spotters on top. A whole lot of good men die, and a whole lot of very expensive military equipment gets blown up. Enormous amounts of expensive ammunition are expended.

What the &@%&? My drone can fly nine stories up. For the cost of one of the heavy weapons that gets blown up in the movie, you could give every grunt in the movie a pile of drones and computers like mine.

The Russians are continually fighting for the high ground, for observation. This should not be happening in the information epoch. Every grunt should have his own small drone, and teams should have larger drones. The sky above the battlefield should be thick with drones, and an AI should weave their data into a big google style map using Postgis rather than messages going up and down the chain of command. Getting the top of a nine story building should not matter. Every grunt should be able to look at google style map with live images from his drone and his platoon’s drones showing up the map.

What happens in the movie is that a drone spots a target, the spotter calls the commander, the commander calls the artillery. The first shots go wild, so the spotter calls the commander again, the commander calls the artillery crew again The artillery crew should be able to see their target on a google earth style map, and see their shots land on a live window into that map. Why are we involving chain of command in the information epoch? Targeting information is not well suited for being conveyed in words.

Do it in postgis. In the movie, the Ukrainians lose a building because humans are piss poor at doing what postgis does much better.

The drone video should be passed directly from the drone to the artillery team, as well as to a central postgis database, and the artillery team’s computers, knowing their position and the drones position from their respective integrations into the central postgis database, should overlay artillery coordinates on the image. This is not a job appropriate for chain of command to do. It is not even a job appropriate for the central database to do. The artillery team should have their own local computers that have low level access to all the information needed to do their job. And their own drones that answer directly to their own computers. The man who is physically aiming the gun should look at the screen to see the target on a google earth style map with drone’s eye view, and his computer’s artillery coordinates overlayed on the map, before firing it, then look again after firing to see his shots land on the screen, and then adjust his aim. Humans should not be transmitting this data to each other by talking about it. Words are not a good medium for this kind of data. It needs to be seen, and the gunner needs to see it.

Because of wind and weather, and because artillery is apt to get banged up, the coordinates will not be exactly right, and the team will still have to walk their shots in every time the wind changes, but the commander back in the rear should not be involved. No words should need to be spoken about this kind of information, which should be presented in images organized and marked up by postgis.

In the movie, the wind changes, and the Wagnerites have enough time to get a foothold in the next building before the Ukrainian artillery team realizes. It is stupid that the Wagnerites are fighting for a nine story observation point, and it is stupid that the Ukes are quarreling over who is at fault when their fire goes wild. In the movie the fire goes wild, the Wagnerites wait a bit, see it is not being corrected in a timely manner, then rush their objective. The scriptwriter depicts the delay as Ukrainians quarreling through the chain of command over what is happening, which is presumably a guess, but a highly plausible guess. Discussing in words what is happening when the participants each have an incomplete and imperfect view takes time, and if chain of command is in the middle, takes a great deal more time.

Data should pass from a grunt’s drone to the grunt’s tablet, integrated with local postgris data previously downloaded from the central database, and then, later, from the platoon commander’s tablet to the central database. Chain of command and words just get in the way. And big centralized databases also have a tendency to get in the way. The grunts need direct immediate access to the drone data, while the central database only needs to get eventual and delayed access. The grunt needs live video. The central database does not, and is unlikely to be able to provide it in a timely fashion to those who need it even if it had it. Postgris databases tend to less than fast, and when you try to make them go fast, you hit data consistency and coherence problems. Queries against data subject to a high massively parallel update rate is going cause trouble in a postgris database. It needs to stick to passing out position and scale data on live images and stale google earth style data on the larger geographical context in which those live images are displayed. The live data needs to go direct to the people with their fingers on the trigger, and the postgris database can get around to digesting it later, and the commander can look at it after postgris has digested it. We don’t want the central database in the way, and even less do we want the commander in the way. The commander ordering big gun fire in detail is a waste of his time and even bigger waste of time for the big guns and the men with their fingers on the trigger. He should order fire in general terms and not very often, and the men with their fingers on the trigger should take care of the details.

The delay depicted in the movie, which lost a building and a whole lot of lives, would not have happened if the men actually aiming and firing the big guns could see their shells landing in a live window inside a stale map marked up by the commander when he ordered big gun fire support.

They attempted a blitzkrieg to surround and cut off the “city” of Severodonetsk

A tiny insignificant city about twenty five blocks by fifteen blocks.

The city center consists of a supermarket, a couple of gas stations, a couple of auto repair shops, a car accessory store, a food takeaway shop, a bank, a nail salon, a hotel cafe, a pub, and a remarkably large number of government offices. The town appears to exist to service government employees and people’s cars.

They had a go, lost of bunch of military vehicles. OK, you try these things, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

And then they had another go, same result. And another. And another. And another. All up they lost seventy five military vehicles.

That is not OK. When it does not work, you stop and try to do something different.

This is reminiscent of the early days of World War I, where they repeatedly tried bayonet charges. Each and every bayonet charge was wiped out with enormous casualties. Not one bayonet charge inflicted any damage at all. Not one bayonet reached one enemy. And they just kept on doing it because they just did not know what else to do.

Russia is also finally starting to do some Information Epoch warfare, and getting results. But rather piddling results so far because their network penetration is crap. They have had a few goes at nailing more important people, but as yet, no successful hits.

The first thing Putin needs to do is ask his spy IT organization what computer networks in Russia they are unable to penetrate. And then demote his spy IT people and put the people who created impenetrable networks in charge of state IT, officially in charge of making state computer networks secure, and secretly in charge of penetrating other people’s computer networks. NSA is a long, long, long way, ahead of him, but the NSA have recently made Shaniqua tech lead, and are starting to lose ground fast.

The next thing he needs to do is to do what the Polygon has long been doing. Insert undercover entryists into enemy human social networks. He has a long way to go.

But an entryist organization needs a faith. What faith would that be?

Well, handily, the Ukrainian regime is terrorizing, imprisoning, and murdering, old type Christians. And there are a pile of Ukrainian Christians in Russia and Russian controlled territories that have fled this. So …

In the Information Epoch tanks are irrelevant. Manned warplanes are irrelevant. Artillery is only relevant if your enemy is dumb enough to refight World War II. When Trump defeated ISIS, did he use tanks, artillery, and bombers? Learn how to fight wars in the in the Information Epoch from those who have successfully done so.

Trump destroyed ISIS.

And in Afghanistan?

The US was suffering endless and terrible casualties in Afghanistan. Trump cut a deal with the Taliban whereby US forces continued to control key cities and key roads in Afghanistan, and suffer no further casualties. The Taliban accepted a deal that was a severe defeat, because they figured they could wait Trump out. US casualties completely ended in Afghanistan. Taliban casualties did not end. This does not sound like a very good deal at all. Why did they agree?

Well, during the negotiations:

Taliban negotiator:

Why are you sending me a picture of my house?

Trump:

Think about it.

That is how you fight an Information Epoch war. The side that has the best human network and computer network penetration wins. Battleships, tanks and artillery are one with bayonet charges. Observe that artillery and tanks failed take a couple of thousand surrounded Azov brigade holed up in a bunch of reinforced concrete buildings. Russians now have to starve them out.

The Information Epoch solution for that kind of problem has been tested and demonstrated, though no one has deployed it yet to my knowledge. You send a swarm of pigeon sized drones, with line of sight communications with each other, one end of the swarm out in the open with line of sight communication to base, and the other end swarming through narrow the twisty spaces where your enemy is holed up and destroying your artillery and tanks, and find the exact location of your enemy. Having found them, destroying them becomes trivial. Drone capability to swarm through narrow twist spaces using time based spread spectrum communication has been demonstrated, but as yet not applied. You need a communication technology that gives each drone the exact distance from every drone that it is in communication with, enough drones in line of sight with each other than they can exactly locate each drone with respect to the position of all of the others, and drone ai that can recognize walls, floors, ceilings, and mobile objects. And then you follow them up by destroying the mobile objects.

But killing a whole lot of grunts inherently takes a lot whole lot of time, effort, and money, and grunts are rather easily replaceable. Far better to take out the central vertices of the organization that funds and commands them. And for that, you need, not drone swarms, but human and computer network penetration. Thinking too much about killing grunts is a distraction.

In the Information Epoch, the surviving statelike groups with military capability will be those that not only have good computer and human network penetration, (hackers and entryists) but have good resistance to hacking and entryism (good encryption and an inquisition) and high tolerance of damage to key vertices (capability to swiftly rotate decision making roles while continuing to act cohesively, and brave and loyal men in those decision making roles.) Hordes of grunts will not matter very much, and columns of tanks no longer matter at all. Just as the winning organizations of seventh to seventeenth century relied on brave men in elite positions and were willing and able to take substantial casualties and keep on going, the winning organizations of the Information Epoch will rely on brave men in elite positions and will be willing and able to take substantial casualties and keep on going. Another aristocratic era is coming up.

This is not exactly defeat – Russia has grabbed a lot Russian speaking Ukraine territory, and has connected the Crimea to Russia by land. It has also inflicted huge costs on the GAE, the Global American Empire, or rather it has provoked the Global American Empire into inflicting huge costs on itself.

You may have heard that the Russian financial system is in chaos. Nope. The Russian financial system is fine. Their problem is that they were using the Global American Empire’s financial system, and it is in chaos.

But it is very far from victory.

When this war started, I predicted it would be over in twenty days, a prediction I hastily qualified by saying it would still be a spectacular victory if it took forty. Well, it has been more than twenty days, and it looks highly unlikely it is going to forty.

The problem is that Russia was carrying out twentieth century warfare, blitzkrieg and tanks, which has been stopped by twenty first century warfare, man carried autonomous self guided anti tank missiles. You point the missile in the general direction of the tank, and tell the missile to take care of it.

Ukraine has received a huge supply of man carried autonomous anti armor missiles, which makes blitzkrieg impossible and suicidal, and has just received thirteen of the latest Turkish drones, which makes bombarding cities impossible and suicidal.

These drones, if given instructions to fly an autonomous mission, cannot be jammed. The Russians appear to have destroyed the earlier drones. To take out a drone operating under human guidance you jam it, it becomes stupid and predictable, then you kill it. Ukraine will lose these drones like it lost the others if it tries to fly them under human guidance.

The more recent drones are capable of autonomous warfare, and figure out where they are by looking at the scenery.

Giving them the instructions they need to carry out an autonomous mission is difficult, and the UI is dreadful, which does not make it any easier.

But the Ukrainians have managed to figure it it out, so it will be impossible for the Russians to bombard cities.

Needs smart operators and a better UI, but if directed to go on an autonomous mission, they take off by themselves, fly to the destination by themselves, recognize four targets in succession, take them out, find a friendly airstrip by themselves, and land by themselves. Difficulty is telling them how to recognize the targets. UI needs to be improved.

Now that the Turkish drones are capable of autonomy, flattening cities will not be possible either. Takes artillery a while to flatten a city, and it is not going to survive long enough to do so.

Blitzkreig and artillery bombardment is twentieth century warfare, as obsolete as the cavalry charge.

There was the stone age, the Bronze Age, and the iron age, the materials ages. Then there were the energy ages, the age of steam and the nuclear age.

And now we are in the information epoch, which unlike the others, began at an exact time: 1970-01-01_00:00:00

And now information warfare is dominant. You deliver a quite small amount of explosives, currently around one or two kilograms of high explosive and getting smaller every year, to exactly the right spot at exactly the right time. Which means you have to know the right spot and the right time.

Albeit the minimum useful size for a nuclear warhead is still rather large.

A typical example of information warfare is Trump taking out the top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a civilian airport with insignificant collateral damage.

Trump taking out Isis headquarters similarly – a lightning strike by a handful of elite warriors who entered deep into hostile territory, destroyed everything, then immediately vanished. In the future, similar strikes will employ a small nuclear warhead or a rod from space.

Trump was the first twenty first century military leader. His great failure was his failure to deal with his enemies within America in the same manner. He needed to have better connections to the front of the spear, and he needed to understand that normality is over, the republic is over, which he failed to do, and is still failing to do. Julius Caesar similarly failed. Took his adoptive son, Caesar Augustus, to figure it out.

Ukraine has hastily learned twenty first century warfare.

Russia is not going anywhere until it can do the same.

I await the appearance of a twenty first century military leader with military and political power. Trump failed because he failed to understand that normality is over, the Republic is over, and the time of holy war has begun. Putin understands this just fine, but unlike Trump, failed to understand we are now in the age of information warfare. Blitzkrieg is over. Georgia was the last blitzkrieg.