Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

Ellsberg on the Cuban Missile Crisis

If Khrushchev had not, surprisingly, initiated an abrupt, humiliating withdrawal of his missiles Sunday morning—without even waiting for an official American response to his proposal of Saturday morning, which Kennedy had argued to his advisors was “very reasonable”—there was every likelihood of the fuse to all-out war being lit by that afternoon.

How close did that come? As close as the unpredictable decision of one man to overrule two others on a Soviet submarine [preventing the use of a nuclear torpedo of which the Americans knew nothing], or the inaccuracy of Cuban antiaircraft gunners (improving every hour) on their first day of firing at live targets. Far greater than one in a hundred, greater that day than Nitze’s one in ten. And that was for reasons which I didn’t know, and no other Americans knew, for thirty and in some cases forty years. The world has yet to absorb the lessons of this history—the story of how the existence of humanity was placed in great, unjustifiable danger by men who had no intention of doing that, men who recoiled from ending human history, or from taking what they saw as a high or even significant risk of doing so.

A primary lesson I draw from this episode is that the existential danger to humanity of nuclear weapons does not rest solely or even mainly on the possibility of further proliferation of such weapons to “rogue” or “unstable” nations, who would handle and threaten them less “responsibly” than the permanent members of the Security Council, nor does it rest merely on the vagaries of the smaller and more recent nuclear weapon states of Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea (though these do enhance the dangers).

What a true history of the Cuban missile crisis reveals is that the existence of masses of nuclear weapons in the hands of leaders of the superpowers, the United States and Russia—even when those leaders are about as responsible, humane, and cautious as any we have seen—posed then, and still do, intolerable dangers to the survival of civilization.

Ellsberg, Daniel. The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Bloomsbury, 2017. p. 220–1

Living history

‘History fan’ and master of long-form podcasts Dan Carlin circulated an email yesterday which describes several things which I have also been powerfully feeling:

But, we ARE living through absolutely momentous times (and dangerous ones). Don’t allow yourself to be gaslit about that. Any fan of History can see it. And as someone who fretted for years (and bored the people around me to tears) about the trends we are now seeing play out, it’s personally a bit of a crisis for me. I spent my life since I was a teen paying attention to ideas, and approaches and arguments to keep from reaching the point we’ve reached. I wrapped my whole career around it. I am less well equipped (and of course totally inexperienced) with dealing with things now that we have arrived here. I feel I have less useful commentary to offer. I don’t know how to get us out of the mess we’re in. At that point what’s there to say that’s helpful? I am sure there’s something. But I haven’t figured out yet what it is.

But it’s haunting me. And it is thwarting me. It is sapping my energy and I feel angry and I feel stuck. Normally when I have things to say I will talk your ear off. I am silent these days. I’ve turned inward and want to read and study, rather than communicate. Even around the house. My wife is driving me nuts saying “are you ok?” all the time. But I am worried about the future. I think all intelligent Americans are. And like a computer that gets co-opted trying to figure out the value of pi to the last digit, my mind goes over our circumstances, endlessly and without answers or resolution.

…

I still go in the studio every morning. It just is slow going and frustrating, and the days when the energy and Muse/inspiration come together as they need to for a successful end result are fewer per week than they used to be. And maybe this is just age, maybe it’s that the traditional vast amounts of coffee seem almost powerless over me now, or maybe its the weight of the times in which we live. It would be nice to not be thinking about politics or the latest dangerous, divisive nightmare every day from the moment we wake up. But that’s not the reality in which we currently live.

I share that sense of having prepared all my life for this moment, and yet often feeling uncertain and disempowered now that it is here.

Daybreak

At Massey College last night I got the chance to play Daybreak: a cooperative board game about solving climate change.

I played with another couple of beginners, but got two crucial strategy tips. Like in real life, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning in the past persist and accumulate, creating an important incentive to cut quickly as a higher priority even than building green energy to keep up with growing demand. Second, since it’s a cooperative game, all the players should be working to help keep anyone from getting in too much trouble.

As Europe, my two big contributions to the game were stressing the strategy of rapid cuts right from the beginning and using an ability to rescue ‘communities in crisis’ anywhere in the world. It’s nice to see a game that demonstrates the huge range of solutions which can help humanity control the problem, although the game structure where everyone accepts cooperation and works together exists in painful contrast to actual global climate negotiations.

I enjoyed the game a lot and took considerable inspiration from it both in terms of physical game design and implementing game mechanics. I’d like to make a tactile version of my Rivals sim where each player’s completion card goes in a mini-briefcase which can be closed during breaks to keep it secret, and where the steps toward weaponization are represented as physical tokens that get added to the briefcase.

I’m grateful to have had the chance to play a game like this, and to meet more of the sort of people interested in playing. This likely creates new avenues toward finishing development on Rivals and getting people playing.

Carney caving on Keystone

More evidence is emerging that Prime Minister Mark Carney is choosing to ignore what he knows about climate change economics to do precisely the wrong thing. He is thinking of reviving the Keystone XL pipeline.

As a world expert on climate change economics, Carney could tell you that the crucial thing is to avoid locking in inappropriate long-term investments in fossil fuels which we will need to scrap early and which will delay and raise the costs of dealing with climate change. Unfortunately, the political imperative to cater to the planet-wrecking industry has overpowered his expertise, honesty, or integrity. The sad fact is, once built, even the dirtiest projects are politically agonizing to shut down. Carney is ignoring the most elementary requirement of controlling climate change: to stop building the fossil fuel infrastructure that causes the problem.

Related:

Poverty and forced obedience

Nothing stands out from the autobiographers’ testimony more strongly than the way in which rising levels of employment pushed up family incomes in meaningful and much appreciated ways. Yet the autobiographies suggest that there was something else at stake. Poverty forced our writers’ hand in other walks of life. The decision to marry, the timing and content of their sexual lives — such things could be controlled to some degree by more powerful neighbours when a couple’s outlook for raising their children by their own labour was poor. And how did a man challenge the religious or political views of his employer in an era of low employment? Offending one’s master meant certain dismissal — a risk that could not be taken when there were no other employers to whom one might turn. Low levels of employment obviously meant low incomes, but it also restricted the personal and political expression of the labouring poor. It continued to restrict working women’s scope for self-improvement and political activity well into the twentieth century. And it is perhaps here that we see most clearly the grounds for emphasising the ways in which the industrial revolution enhanced rather than destroyed patterns of life. Critics will argue that the material gains for most families were small. But they were just enough to drag wage-earners out of the servile submission that poverty had forced on them since time immemorial.

Griffin, Emma. Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution. Yale University Press, 2013. p. 246-7

350.org activities largely suspended in the US

Very sad news from Politico:

Environmental group 350.org, which spearheaded the movement to block the Keystone XL oil pipeline, will “temporarily suspend programming” in the U.S. and other countries amid funding woes, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.

The move comes as environmental groups have struggled to find their footing and raise money under President Donald Trump, whose threats to investigate left-leaning organizations and rapid-fire dismantling of environmental rules have hamstrung green groups.

The letter to outside organizations from Executive Director Anne Jellema said 350.org had suffered a 25 percent drop in income for its 2025 and 2026 fiscal years, compelling it to halt operations. The group will keep three U.S. staff members in hopes of reviving operations in the future.

“In making these very tough choices, we considered a range of factors, including the political context, the relative need for 350’s work based on the strength of other actors in the ecosystem, the presence or absence of an enabling environment for civil society, and the ability to resource the work needed,” the letter said.

Climate change has never been more serious, and our leaders have never been more unserious about controlling it. It’s a disturbing time to see a group advocating for a better future be forced to cut back.

Open Process Manifesto

This document codifies and expresses some of my thinking on cooperation on complex problems, for the sake of the benefit of humanity and nature: Open Process Manifesto

It is based on the recognition of our universal fallibility, need to be comprehended, and to be able to share out tasks between people across space and time. To achieve those purposes, we need to be open about our reasoning and evidence, because that’s the way to treat others as intelligent partners who may be able to support the same cause through methods totally unknown and unavailable to you, across the world or centuries in the future.

Our entry into Lyra’s world

I have long considered the opening chapter of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass to be a masterful lesson in worldbuilding in speculative fiction. He does a magnificent job of introducing a subtly different alternative world, without ever relying on crude exposition or just telling the reader that some things are different and what they are. The biggest obvious difference with our world — that the people in hers have daemons — is revealed unobtrusively and naturally from the perspective of characters who consider it normal. We learn everything crucial about Lyra’s bond with Pantalaimon just from the character of their conversation in this short timespan.

Yesterday, during a discussion with ChatGPT about Lyra Bellaqua and Sherlock Holmes, I had the assisted realization that what the chapter also achieves, even more importantly, is to establish Lyra’s character through the same method of compelling and unobtrusive narrative storytelling. When we meet her, she is conniving to sneak in to the exclusive Retiring Room for Jordan College scholars, which is forbidden to her, driven by her consuming curiosity about what happens there. Right away, we see that she is inquisitive and bold, willing to defy the rules to learn, and unwilling to defer to stuffy authority. Then, when she observes the Master’s attempt to poison Lord Asriel’s wine, her choice is to intervene: revealing the fundamental moral framework that drives her. Even at a risk to herself, she will make a substantial effort to save someone else, as later revealed at a much grander scale with her Bolvangar rescue.

It is said that all speculative fiction is really a commentary on the present, and Pullman’s is sharp and relevant. The Golden Compass reveals the monstrosities that emerge from the unchecked power of the heartless, and presents selfless individual moral courage as a response. Comfortable and exclusionary systems of power which are free from outside oversight drift into seeing right and wrong in terms of their self-interest, if they even persist with thinking about morality at all. Lyra reminds us that, while it is never safe, we always have the choice to resist and to assert a standard of morality based on respect for the individual and repugnance at their exploitation and sacrifice for outside agendas. The arc of that demonstration all begins with the insight into her mind provided by that opening chapter, and that’s why it stands out as some of the strongest worldbuilding in fiction.