Bad weekend for Russia. More videos of poor outdoor living conditions for conscripts and accelerating losses on both fronts. After the fall of Lyman, AFU seems to have been able to reorganize quickly, ahead of the Russians, and is advancing it what looks to be another attempted encirclement.

Videos from the pull out of Lyman suggest very high losses during the retreat/breakout. I'm a bit surprised they didn't have them sit tight and either force Ukraine to reduce the encirclement, inflicting attrition until the situation became totally untenable, or wait for an organized relief/breakout effort. That might just be because conditions in the pocket were already untenable, or it could be because resources for a relief effort would take significant time to mobilize.

Meanwhile, in the south Ukraine had the first major breakthrough in a long time, moving up over 15 miles over the weekend and seizing a major road that would allow it to carry out a large encirclement.

In terms of the information issues we've discussed, I think this suggests poor communications between field commanders and Putin himself. The decision to annex territories where you are set to lose substantial ground right after the annexation obviously isn't what Putin likely had in mind politically.




Also never a good thing to have your military leadership openly trash talking each other on social media, which came up this weekend.

You probably have to define profits here. Do we mean accounting profits (i.e. recorded costs are less than price) or economic profits (i.e. the firm is making more money doing X than it could doing anything else, that is, including opportunity costs when calculating profits). Economic theory suggest that many firms shouldn't make long term economic profits. Established industries tend to have fairly flat rates of return, which is why everyone chases higher investment yields by pouring into new technology sectors, even if old ones such as agriculture are still money makers. Economic profits accrue to owners, since the opportunity costs of workers aren't included in calculating it. You could include implicit costs for workers, but it gets much more complicated than doing it for firms; firms don't substitute leisure for earnings, which is a big wrinkle.

In general, profits go to:
Investments in capital to grow the business.
Payments on debt service for money borrowed to grow or operate the business (you could include these under costs more generally, but sometimes the debt service is for unrelated operations or even activity in markets the firm has since existed, so it's helpful to break it out)
Retained earnings, basically savings the business can draw down upon instead of relying on credit.
Payments out to owners, either dividends if stock has been issued, or profit sharing for partnerships. With sole proprietors, this just goes to one person.

I think what you are getting might be if profits are paid out to workers? This happens regularly in cooperatives, worker owners firms. Dividends go out to the workers. Or sometimes it is a hybrid where all workers get stock, but there are also public shareholders, so workers just get a share of the dividends based on their pay and/or years of service.

Profits can also be used to pay performance bonuses to workers. This isn't that uncommon in small firms, but in accounting terms we would say these are operational costs, and thus count against profits as costs, even if functionally they works very similarly to paying workers dividends. A benefit of incentive bonuses is that they can be targeted at the people who most contributed to the creation of the profit after a period has passed, where as dividends are based on earlier choices and the amount of stock someone has.

My wife's firm was a three member partnership and they would split profits each year into fourths, after deciding what to keep as retained earnings. The extra portion would go to the non-partner employees, and since there were only a handful, this would still be a meaningful amount. Profit sharing is a good way to get people to stick around until the end of the sharing period, but the problem is that then you can end up with a wave of retirements and resignations after the payout.

In many countries (e.g. Germany), labor representatives are on the corporate board, so there you have union workers getting input into how profits are used.

The logic behind workers not being entitled to profit necessarily is that they might not have a very good idea what the interests of the firm are. Managers are managers for a reason. Not everyone can read a balance sheet or revenue report competently. The other reason is that they have much less risk than the owner(s). If the form closes from misuse of profits, they might lose their job, but they won't be dealing with all the debts for the firm. When there are losses, workers still expect to be paid the same, while an owner will take a hit, this is a trade-off of stability for higher potential earnings that come with more risk. Owners have to always be on the ball too, there is a lot of unpredictability in owning a small firm, and sudden work can come up.

I think I probably generate about 50% more profit at my job than I earn, but I absolutely do not want to have to deal with more work in tending to company affairs. I took a pay cut to work less. I also don't want the risk. I know owners who have plowed a substantial amount of their personal savings into their company and pay themselves pretty poorly in lean times to keep it afloat.

But obviously the rationale for owner control gets less and less compelling as the company gets larger and the owners less involved in operations. At a certain size, labor should have a say in profit use.

The closest thing I can think of are "ontological commitments," in metaphysics. It's normally along the lines of "don't go down X road of accepting Y, because if you do you'll be logically forced to accept Z!" This happens in ethics too. It's the same sort of idea of telling someone that if they cross a given line there will be all these follow on consequences.

But definitely not quite the same thing. I don't think the game theory of brinkmanship comes up much in the actual arguments of philosophy, maybe in university politics though.

The 20th Gaurds Combined Arms Army was there, with an additional battalion group of Russians, so a fairly substantial concentration, but it's unclear if components made it out.

I misspoke on the unit there earlier. The 20th Gaurds Army (not the 20th division) is two divisions plus two artillery brigades, plus attached regiments. But the Russian order of battle is a mess right now, so it's hard to say what the current organization would be at full strength. Probably 22,000-28,000 soldiers under its pre-war organization. However, at current strength it could be far less because units with high casualties are being broken up and consolidated into new ones. They obviously wouldn't be all within Lyman unless they got rolled up in there. Some must have withdrawn though.

Russian "armies" are much smaller than US field armies, more analogous to a corps.

It's fine. They made surrender punishable by 10 years in prison and Putin gave a no retreat order, how can they lose?

Plus, the calvary is on its way. Just 90 miles away there are videos of civilian busses unloading fresh middle aged soldiers who are razor sharp from their two day refresher training and ready to go (...well as soon as their families supply them with sleeping bags, tarps, and medical equipment, and armor, optional supplies anyway). They can ride to the rescue like the powerful Third Corps did in Kharkiv!

The 20th Motor Rifle Division and Bars-13 are there, along with some number of LNR militia. It's anyone's guess how under strength they are, or how many might have retreated earlier, but this would be around 8-14,000 if the bulk of each is cut off. That's a pretty substantial figure, although I would think at least some decent proportion withdrew earlier.

I do wonder if deteriorating conditions, particularly as conscripts make up more of the Russian forces, along with a large influx of POWs, might swell the ranks of the Freedom of Russia Legion. The massive outflow of men since conscription was announced could do the same.

If you're a dictator, historically it's never a good thing to have your own citizens gaining combat experience and motivation fighting against you in your attempts to invade a neighbor. They tend to become the core of future partisans trying to remove you.

Belarus has a similar problem. For all the hay the Kremlin has made about Western foreign fighters (actually NATO soldiers in some tellings), it certainly seems like most come from within Russia (Chechens included), or former Soviet countries (the Georgian Legion, Tactical Group Belarus, and to a lesser extent Poles and Fins).

Putin's tactic of recruiting extremely heavily from minority populations while mobilizing a much smaller share of ethnic Russians, particularly those in Moscow and St. Petersburg, could definitely backfire if the sort of unrest going on in Dagistan continues. At a certain point, leaders of the republics might tell the MoD to fuck off entirely. At that point there is nothing but terrible options for Putin. If you try to force the issue, you risk ending up with a home front crisis requiring security forces, if you don't, more republics might do the same thing, or even escalate, demanding more autonomy, etc. To make matters worse, in such a crisis you now have minorities as a very disproportionate amount of your armed forces, and news of trouble back home will invariably reach then and hit morale there too.

IDK, someone should offer to let him flee with a bunch of his wealth to some other oligarch nation with protections against extradition. That might save a lot of lives, although his ego probably wouldn't allow it. I suspect a cease fire could follow that fairly quickly.

Satalite imagery shows than organizing columns, but the road out is covered by Ukrainian artillery and they may have had time to move forces in for an ambush by now. If that's the case, it'd be a situation similar to The Gauntlet at Kunu-ri, at which point the smart decision would be to sit tight and hope for a better opportunity to break out later. Or surrender.

Such a retreat is a terrible situation. US divisions had a massive firepower advantage on Korea but the Second Division was still shattered by that withdrawal.

Hell, they don't even have to dig that hard. The British MOD regularly posts conflict updates that point out poor Russian command decisions, as does ISW and other OSINT sources staffed by former military commanders. So do Russian nationalist milbloggers.

For Western officials, the judgement is likely that pointing out obvious incompetence will have a larger negative impact on Russian morale than it will a positive impact on Russian military decision-making. This isn't granular tactical data, it's obvious incompetence that would be corrected if there was an ability to do so. I mean, the recent Kharkiv offensive and the follow up around Lyman are almost exact duplicates of German advances in 1942, it's not like they were unpredictable.

This is a strawman.

You don't need to assume specific character traits to get insights into morale and discipline. It's an emergent phenomenon, and highly situational.

All militaries in earlier history looted, raped, massacred civilians, and tortured for intelligence. Reductions in this type of behavior are partially due to cultural norms, but are largely a function of professionalization and better leadership. This also depends on the leadership recognizing that "taking the gloves of" and allowing their soldiers to engage in these behaviors isn't a winning strategy, because it has very deleterious effects on discipline.

Poor strategic decision-making can break morale even if well trained forces. US morale hit near rock bottom after MacArthur's arrogance and poor decision-making led to the worst rout in US history when the Chinese entered the Korean War in force. It was restored when Ridgway began to demonstrate that the leadership was making prudent decisions and had a realistic vision of what the situation was like on the ground.

It's a hard thing to measure. It's not just about conditions. Montgomery was able to lead a late-fall/winter offensive into Canada through horrendous terrain with 1770s supply technology. Laying siege to a walled city in a northern Quebec winter, during a blizzard is no mean feat. But after the Montgomery's death and the fall back to Montreal the force lost any sense of purpose and that killed morale. These things are hard to pin down and ephemeral.

Russia's military spending is very high compared to the size of its economy (about the same as Spain). It's very low compared to the opponents it says it wants to be the peers of. It was below just the UK's spending in 2021. About a fifth of European NATO spending or Chinese spending, just 7% of US spending.

But the larger point is that this money was clearly largely stolen or misused. Russian expenditures are around 47% higher than the ROK, but the ROK has a more modern air force, arguably given the number of Russian tank losses before they had to pull out T-72s more modern tanks, and can definitely mobilize a larger active component despite a much smaller population. Hell, Israel, with a third of the budget and a population the size of a large city appears to be able to equip their front line infantry better, in similar numbers.

Russia has a large hardware advantage, but this is left over Soviet capital. It's become quite clear that the vast majority of this is not upgraded. Old models aren't necessarily a liability. The F-15 is an old air frame, but Korea isn't fielding the 1970s variant, the platform has seen continual upgrades.

And procurement is another issue. The FA-50 is racking up sales, already passing 1,000 units while the Su-57 has had six production models made, none of which seem fit for use. Aircraft development is incredibly expensive so there are serious issues when you make a supposedly high end air superiority fighter and try to drum up sales and then the project collapses.

Impossible to say. The collapse of the Kyiv and Sumny axes occured before most heavy equipment arrived and before Ukraine's summer's shortages of Soviet era munitions. Further progress by Russian lines into Ukraine would have just made supply issues more acute, perhaps offsetting the benefit Ukraine got from early arms shipments.

It would all be decided based on the level of Ukrainian resistance. Mariupol is right on the border, and was encircled rapidly. It didn't receive new aid and yet taking degraded Russian forces significantly. Similar levels of resistance in much larger cities where Russia was not able to use its air resources with impunity would likely exhaust the Russian military. But you'd see a much higher civilian death toll for Ukraine and far more destruction of infrastructure.

Even if Russia did eventually take these key cities, their force numbers are wholly inadequate for counter insurgency on this scale. So it would depend largely on if the additional costs Ukrainians faced due to a greater arms mismatch resulted in a large shift in resistance. If it didn't, I don't see Russia being successful in their maximalist aims. But certainly without Western support Ukraine would be hard pressed to retake dug in positions as they are now, so Russia would likely be able to keep some territory as long as they didn't fully exhaust their military.

Yeah, the Russian milblogger sphere seems to suggest that Lyman is essentially encircled. It seems for now that there is a substantial force caught in the pocket. If that's true, whether Ukraine is forced to reduce that encirclement or whether it surrenders will be a litmus test of morale.

It's not a catastrophic loss, but it positioning Ukraine closer to rail lines whose loss would prove catastrophic for Russia.

The M1 is also 25% heavier than the T-72, significantly larger, with more modern armor and counter measures, designed for a 105mm gun until armor and weaponry improvements led to a swap to 120mm. The T-72 always used a 125mm gun and also rounds with significantly more propellant. So yeah, the comparison is like 15-20% more material that might explode in 75% of the space, with less effective measures to make sure it doesn't explode.

And yes, 155mm shouldn't make tanks cook off with indirect hits. This might have something to do with having external fuel tanks on while in range of enemy artillery fire. I suppose this is a training and logistics issue rather than an equipment itself. You can have cook off without penetration anytime there is extremely high heat, or if unstable rounds go off from overpressure (more of an issue a very long time ago before more stable HE existed). Obviously not much can be done about a direct hit from 155 or 152mm on the top of a tank. I have to assume that most cases of that happening were with tanks that were stopped since it would be incredibly lucky otherwise (and even still).


Who knows? The problem with authoritarian systems is that over time the leader often gets very disconnected from reality. I would not be surprised with the Russian command had no real idea how many men they've lost, nor that they lie to Put in about how many they think that figure truly is. The information he receives is going to be fair removed from reality. On top of that, he's an old man who supposedly has cancer and a degenerative brain disease. I'm not going to assume his decision making is entirely rational.

Putin faces the nightmare scenerio for dictators, his interests in winning the war, even at extremely high costs, are rapidly becoming more divergent from Russia's national interests. Other powerful actors will see that removing him might allow them to end the war and Russia's isolation. But Putin has to double down, because he needs to ensure he keeps power, or that his brand is strong enough to ensure someone loyal to him takes power. If someone not loyal to him gets power, trying him and blaming him for ongoing problems would be a way to shift public resentment away from the new leader. That there is substantial evidence that Putin organized a terrorist campaign against Russian apartment buildings to aid his bid for power makes his risk much greater, regardless of if he actually did it or not.

The problem is that, even if he wanted to have a strong military, the political organization he has fostered is not designed to create one. A strong military requires cutting edge technological innovation, which requires an open society and an ability for people to dissent. Developing good strategy and tactics also requires a meritocratic system and an ability for people to dissent. A big problem for authoritarians is that they cannot let leaders of merit and ambition raise through the ranks because they create a rival to the strongman.

Why Nations Fail was pretty much "selecting of the dependant variable - the book," but I do think the point it makes about extractive economic regimes only being able to produce catch-up growth, not innovation, is largely true. As autonomous systems and vehicles, drone screens for tanks and ships, autonomous smart mortars for near instant fire missions and constant indirect fire support, loitering munitions, drone swarm cluster munitions, interceptor systems, HUD systems like IVAS, interconnectivity of air and ground assets from fighters to soda bottle sized zones to infantry into a single battle space intelligence system, etc. all scale up, technologically backwards forces are not going to be successful. I can only imagine the hit to morale if in a hard fought battle the damage you inflict on the enemy is mostly destroying a bunch of automated robots.

It's a catch 22. If Russia modernized and had a per capita GDP more in line with say Spain, it would be able to create a more effective military. But such a system would likely remove Putin from power and destroy the incentives to start such wars in the first place.

Because Russian arms manufacturers are incompetent and tests likely get rigged. There is plenty of other evidence for this. Putin is pounding the table about nuclear war and mobilizing old men, yet the Su-57 and T-14 are nowhere to be seen except parades. This implies they don't actually work. Why would you be using T-62s if you have functional stealth super tanks?

Not to mention an Su-57 just arrived in Russia's experimental aircraft graveyard, which is visible on satalite imagery. This strongly implied they tore the engine out of it (used in other planes) because the Su-57 isn't combat worthy. The fact that they never started major production also suggests this. They could certainly use a stealth fighter right now given they can't do SEAD and are losing fighters to MANPADs because they have to fly so low.

lol, it isn't hidden, there are tons of videos of tanks hurling their turrets due to cook off. There was also plenty of commentary from before the war that the Moskva, despite an impressive armorments (several S-400 systems essentially), was loaded with more munitions than most comparable ships in other navies, and that this necessarily increases the risk of secondary explosions. Leaked pictures of (if I recall from the Moskova itself in some of them) showing munitions strewn about corridors only added to that conception.

You could also come to this conclusion comparing the damage sustainable by the Stark when hit by an Exocet, versus the damage to a larger ship hit by a Neptune (similar payload), although impact site matters a lot. It's not exactly classified that there is a trade off between how many munitions you pack into any vehicle and how likely it is to suffer catastrophic cook off if it is hit by an explosive.

Cramming things with high explosive makes them more likely to explode. If there is a high incidence of this effect in combat vehicles that are supposed to be able to sustain such attacks, then you appear to have a problem. Although it might just be with armor quality for the tanks. And context matters. Cook off after a top attack weapon strike or big bore mortar strike that would likely be fatal anyhow is less of an issue than having a tank that appears to have survived an indirect 155mm shell explode a few seconds later. In the latter, it is the cook off that is destroying the tank and killing the crew.

I don't really disagree with anything you're saying, and I certainly don't have any great desire to defend Truss. It's just that I don't see this particular interaction as a great way to judge why she's (likely) going to be a shit PM.

You have the right reasoning on the Nord Stream comments. US comments about shuttering the second line before it opens imply that it might want to close the other pipeline as well (it hasn't been moving anything anyhow). The problem with Tucker's editing and commentary is that it is meant to strongly imply that Biden was making a statement about wanting to attack the currently damaged pipeline, when in context that is not what he is saying.

Notably, the Western responses to Russian nuclear threats was muted early on. When Putin put his nuclear forces on alert Biden didn't do anything with the US arsenal. The media is always going to pick this stuff up because fear sells, but official statements were fairly muted at the start of the war. There definitely seems to have been a strategy of "if we ignore it and don't rise to the bait, Putin's statement won't have the desired effect of spooking the public and weakening the resolve to publish him for the invasion."

What has changed is that Russia is now losing ground almost everywhere there is fighting and appears to be in danger of losing the war outright. Then Put in gives a speech about annexing territories that he doesn't fully control, where there is active combat, and in the same speech implies that Russia will use nuclear weapons if its territory is threatened, i.e. conquered parts of Ukraine are now parts of Russia that will be defended with the nuclear arsenal is counter attacks continue. He was careful not to make that explicit, but it is still a major escalation from the very vague threats early on, and he has more reason to resort to nuclear weapons as the conventional war gets more unpopular and Russia continues to lose ground. That is the key difference I see from hypotheticals about last resort strikes.

Don't undersell their commitment to historical restorations, they're now using T-62s and T-64s, they're using 60-70 year old tank designs.

Although to be fair, I did see a T-72 hit with several AT4s without being destroyed. Granted, it seemed to have severe mobility issues before getting hit, which is why infantry were teeing off on it so easily, but it did survive. And one guy on the crew has the sense to jump out and run off.

I think Russian tanks might actually be benefiting from the ammunition shortage. They were always cooking off before and throwing their turrets ridiculously far. That obviously wasn't from a Javelin alone. Russia just tends to stock their stuff with too much ammunition. This explains the BMP-2 killing destroying the T-80 with its autocannon as well, since it looks like it starts a cook off. Also why the Moskova went down to a fairly small payload (Iran hit a much smaller Israeli ship with a similar payload and it sailed home under its own power, but of course where the hit occurs matters a lot). The Moskova had a ridiculous amount of ordinance for its size and I suspect this is what killed it. Point being, less can be more, provided you have the trucks to keep supplies nearby.


If Russia has some magical wunderwaffen, there is no evidence of it. You might as well also suppose the US has some magical laser interceptor that counter it.

They have a hypersonic glide vehicle, but right now they have to launch it from planes that are already going quite fast, and which can be spotted and hit with standoff weapons.

The whole hypersonic thing is overblown. There have been all sorts of hypersonic weapons for decades. What would be new is a low flying hypersonic delivery vehicle, ideally one that could also maneuver. Low flying hypersonics are harder to detect, but if you have a clear trajectory on them other countermeasures in development like hypersonic interceptor loads fired from 155mm guns can destroy them. Obviously the Israeli laser interception system for mortars and drones is very exciting because you can't beat the speed of light for intercept timing, but there are huge difficulties using it at any long distance.

Making mountains from soundbites is a cancer in modern politics. There is a sea of solid, legitimate reasons to dislike Liz Trusts without resorting to that.

Context matters. This is like Tucker Carlson's latest shitty attempt to prove the US attacked the Nord Stream pipeline by playing a soundbite from a response specifically about Nord Stream 2, which never even opened, and was already canceled after the invasion began.

The context here is a hypothetical where the PM of a country with what is essentially a "no first strike" doctrine gets dragged down to a bunker and given the "Letters of Last Resort," which are specifically to be used in the event of a nuclear strike on the UK or a decapitation strike that kills the PM and other senior leadership in an expected attempt to disrupt C&C before a nuclear strike.

Generally, countries don't explicitly rule out first strikes because a rival might think they can destroy another country's arsenal or command and control apparatus in a first strike and thus avoid or severely limit any reprisal. Only China and India have official no first use policies. However, the Letters are specifically for situations where the UK has already been attacked.

On a side note, I find the concept fairly interesting. There are supposedly five letters with the options:

-retaliate with a nuclear strike;
-do not retaliate with nuclear weapons;
-the crew should use their own judgement;
-place the submarine under an allies control, often the US in a NATO context
-if all hope is lost, find Harry Potter

Depends on what you consider "a lot." It's about 30,000 of 1.3 million. It was a relevant source of recruitment when the all volunteer force was under a lot of stress in the mid-late 2000s though.

Minorities in general (if we define that as non-Hispanic White) are actually underrepresented in the military in comparison to the population of service age in the US. If you look at just females, minorities have a much higher representation, but women are a minority in the military. This isn't that surprising historically. African Americans are over represented, as are non-Hispanic Whites. Asians and Hispanics are underrepresented, which tracks with lower levels of military service among immigrants that declines over generations. But again, this is quite different with female members.

Interestingly, this is a pattern that is common with trades too. Minority women are much more likely to go to trade school, get licenses, and join trade unions. When I was working on boosting the number of minority employees working on construction projects we were funding the advice we got from a PhD team was to work on recruiting more women, as this would be key to reaching your other targets.


Right. Best case, Russia is able to keep their gains and becomes a pariah state likely facing near embargo trade restrictions, and possibly even harsh sanctions from China. I can't see a path where using nuclear weapons to conquer new areas doesn't provoke a military response, because at the point what is to stop Putin from doing this anywhere he pleases?

And this will leave Ukraine intact and will likely get the US to go along with deploying Aegis and THAAD there, while Ukraine will have a very high incentive to build their own nuclear arsenal. So now you've created a hostile neighbor who has significantly better missile defense than you and an arsenal that isn't 40+ years old, while your ability to find and get materials for your military as dropped off a cliff. Wasn't the goal to make Russia safe?

Yeah, 99.2% approval in some areas. Truly an unbelievable victory...


In general, the most dangerous part of a radiological attack is the actual explosion. I generally worked on the C and B in CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear but people who had spent their careers in the field were pretty underwhelmed by the threat of the R component. Something like VX or anthrax is much easier to disperse and more deadly, particularly if used in a terrorist attack in an indoor soft target.

Its also unclear how many tactical nuclear weapons Russia can really deploy. The arsenals that exist on paper don't exist in reality. We know the Russian defense budget has been plundered for years, and weapons no one expects to use are a good target for plundering.

We also know the US arsenal was in shambles during the Obama era despite much less theft and a much higher funding level. Even after a modernization surge in spending, Russian funding for its arsenal is just 1.8% of US spending, despite that being spread over 33% more warheads supposedly held in readiness. Delivery vehicles also need constant upkeep and all of Russia's are near or past their retirement date. It's telling that their only functional delivery vehicle since the fall of the USSR is a liquid fueled system (older technology that is much easier to attack before it can be used since you have to fuel it before launch). This is of course aside from ridiculous wunderwaffen like their nuclear torpedo or nuclear powered hypersonic cruise missiles that circle the globe at all times, which are every bit as much science fiction as the idea of satalites firing lasers for ICBM interception.

So, the risks for Putin of ordering a strike aren't just the risks of the responses from the rest of the world, but also the risk that the military will refuse to execute such a command, and that they will fail to implement it, further hitting Russian credibility.

You can't just throw ICBMs and nuclear warheads in a warehouse and expect them to work. Anything using tritium from the Soviet era is very unlikely to detonate. He also has to worry about plans for a strike leaking and Aegis intercepting the strike if it comes from an IRBM (the vehicles they have that are most likely to be reliable for these purposes), as this will cause second thoughts among his military leadership about following him into further escalation. Aegis' ability to hit ICBM targets is new, without a lot of public data, but the ability of the launchers in Poland to shoot down shorter range missiles is a better understood, and larger threat.

Meanwhile, the "partial mobilization" is going well. It was initiated blyatzkrieg-style, much like the war on Ukraine, only this time the target was the Russian people.

Lol, yes. It seems that mobilization has succeeded in making people fear the Russian military again, it's just that those people are Russians themselves.

After reports and videos of escalating clashes and riots in Dagestan, officials have stopped mobilization there, at least for now. I can see this having serious follow on effects if other minority populations, who have made up a massively disproportionate amount of front line combat forces, realize they can refuse to fight and their federal leaders refuse to assist with mobilization. After all, what can Putin do if they refuse like Luka in Belarus, send his military to cow them? They increasingly are the military. Quite a predicament.




I mean, it's a dumb question. What is the answer supposed to be: "well, after we've come under nuclear attack, I might start having second thoughts about the doctrine of retaliation?"Or maybe "hmmm, I suppose I be paralyzed by fear and unable to act?" All you can really say about strategic deterrence is "yes, no doubt should exist, we will retaliate." Hell, you'd say that even if you're arsenal didn't actually work.


Western responses proposed range from detonating a nuclear weapon in the Arctic, to a conventional strike on the base that sent the attack, to a no-fly zone over Ukraine and the destruction of what remains of the Russian air force, probably paired with US missile defenses moved in as well so they can't effectively use more weapons as easily, to a nuclear strike on an unpopulated area of Siberia.

Or simply increasing sanctions to a full embargo. China has a treaty saying it will defend Ukraine in the event of a nuclear attack, so it may feel it has to join such an embargo to keep its credibility, which would totally isolate Russia.

I suppose the West could also have already prepared tactical nuclear warheads that can be mounted on Soviet era systems or Ukrainian designs such as a modified version of the Neptune missile. This would allow the West to avoid directly attacking Russia, but let Ukraine deter Russia by answering strikes on military targets with their own low yield nuclear strikes on Russian bases. Obviously the big risk here is that a loose cannon gets control of the weapons and uses them in a first strike.

However this war ends, Ukraine will end up with a large incentive to develop nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching strategic targets in Russia in order to avoid future attacks. They also likely have the resources left over from the Soviet era to accomplish this, and the risks associated with them being armed now might carry less weight if you expect them to be armed later.

The parallel in history here is Russian nuclear escalation during the Yom Kippur War. Part of the reason this didn't work as well as it might have was that Israel itself was capable of hitting Moscow and St. Petersburg with its own nuclear weapons, which made Moscow's ability to escalate much more fraught, since it wasn't only the US it has to worry about.

Putin seems intent on doing a speed run of Tsar Nicholas II's career:

Foreign war declared for nebulous reasons that is popular with a small, influential nationalist clique, but not with the general public: check.

Major strain placed on the economy by economic isolation: check

Getting himself directly involved in the war so that he will be seen as personally responsible for faliures: check (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine.html)

Slowly losing support from the right for losing the war while also getting growing ire from the left: check

Sending mature men to fight who have wives and children to get back to and support and who have much higher opportunity costs for serving in the military: check. Historically, drafting older soldiers is not a good move. It's more disruptive to the economy. The guys have experience living on their own and having a high degree of personal autonomy. They don't look up to their officers just by virtue of them being older. To be sure, older fighters are sometimes preferable, particularly for COIN missions where they are less likely to be hot headed and many have law enforcement experience, but they're also more likely to mutiny under poor command. It's a baffling choice.

Sending protestors and opposition leaders to the front: check. This was pivotal during the Russian revolution, as motivated organizers against the ruling elite got sent into groups of armed men functioning in a leadership vacuum.

Send prisoners who are much more likely to mutiny to the front in large numbers: check.

Sending men in after almost no training and with poor equipment: check. Leaked videos show men being told they will receive 15 days of refresher training. Men are being issued the same bolt action rifles used in WWI as service weapons.

Chronic supply issues due to endemic corruption and an inability to rationally organize production: check. The number of Russian fire missions has fallen by an order of magnitude, which suggests a shortage of tubes (likely due to burning through existing ones with high usage) or shells, or both. Allocation of resources seems to be a chronic issue too. MBTs lack ERA, while ERA has been thrown directly on light vehicles with no separation, meaning that if it does activate it'll end up immolating the vehicle, no saving it.

Putin's decision to personally stop a retreat from Kherson could prove particularly damaging if Ukraine is able to move into new firing positions that allow its interdiction campaign to completely limit resupply or escape. The forces there probably represent about 10-15% of Russia's combat forces, and likely a higher share of its total combat power.

Yeah, I was just referring to the fact that the major breakthrough started hours ago. It appears they are no longer trying for a break through, but have accomplished it and the encirclement of a lone BTG on the other side of the river.

The larger efforts at taking Bakhmut have been ongoing since July, and a significant advance up from the south in that direction hasn't occured since early May. That's why it seems like a poor use of resources given other priorities.

So, except for strategic locations where we are sure Russians are committed to defending (such as Kherson, Crimea, Donbas) it's extremely difficult to tell the difference between a tactical retreat and just being straight-up defeated. To evaluate these non-critical changes in the front we'd need to know the statistics of losses. Anecdotes don't tell us very much as we'd need to know the whole circumstances and result of the battle to evaluate things.

You don't abandon 10+ command vehicles, warehouses full of ammunition, extremely scarce counter battery radars and EW vehicles, and multiple years worth of your prior annual tank production for defense in depth...

Unfortunately for Russia, the front has not remained still. There was a large break through across the Oskil, and the flow of liberation announcements and geolocated abandoned vehicles is reminiscent of the recent breakthrough on the other side of the river.

Time will tell how serious it is. Another serious breakthrough and encirclement would suggest the poor morale that lead to the prior rout remains a serious issue, and newly mobilized forces are unlikely to change that (particularly those BTGs made from criminals or those arrested for protesting mobilization). You might see something akin to the disintegration of the Third Corps, who were worse than useless, essentially just handing over hardware to the enemy.



This area needs to hold at some point because further south you run into a series if rail hubs that serve as the main ground lines of communications for the Russian front. If these are severed the war is effectively over.

It is sort of mind boggling that they continue to use their limited resources on an offensive effort that has stalled for months now instead of reallocating combat forces north to avoid disaster. My guess is that this is a consequence of the split command and infighting that has been ruinous for Russian decision-making from the begining.

And things don't seem to be going well in the south either. The increasing volume of Ukrainian air strikes suggests Ukrainian SEAD efforts have been successful in degrading Russian AA capacities. CAS is probably the thing Ukraine would most benefit from given the nature of the fighting there, and they now seem able to provide it. I would have called the prospect of Ukrainian air strikes to support an advance very doubtful just a month ago, but the AGM-88s somehow jerry-rigged to work on MiGs actually seem to be working. I think this just goes to show that in a modern context AA without effective missile defense is not going to cut it.

The combat there is less about some major breakthrough, and more about if Russia can deny Ukraine key firing positions that will totally cripple their already flagging ability to supply forces there. Either the forces around Kherson will hold the critical ground, or I expect it will fall apart all at once. Potentially a Dunkirk type situation since there are not many ways to pull back either.

I'd say poor leadership, poor coordination, and morale is their biggest issue. If I was them I'd be focusing on unifying the command and boosting morale through rotations. Better leadership alone would help morale. If you have bad leadership and this (https://nitter.it/visegrad24/status/1573303078685753344#m) is what your meetings for mobilized men look like, you'll just have larger routs. Also, two weeks training is wholly inadequate.

What a different 12 hours makes. 12 hours ago we had video made for TV of reinforcements airlifting into the pocket. We had video of reinforcements streaming down south. Suspiciously, the tracks on the helicopter footage seemed to show two helicopters parked in an empty field right next to each other, with men moving from one into another when the footage was compared, and the long column of reinforcements appeared to be the same five trucks, shot from multiple angles.

But times have changed!





We have now learned that the faliure was the fault of rapacious boyars once again. The incompetent scourge of Russia. The true leaders have stepped in. Unfortunately, the word going out to the Russian milbloggers is that the boyars really blew it this time and all that can be done is to abandon the entire front and retrench. Strangely, no mention of how the thousands of men cut off from a retreat will manage this retrenchment or how they will be replaced if they represent a significant proportion of all combat forces.

To be honest though, this probably is the smarter move. When I initially saw that they were going to try to airlift VDV through an area covered by SAMs and crawling with MANPADS, just to put even more men who need supplies into a cut off pocket, I thought I was going to see something as stupid as the continuous unsupported air assaults with no SEAD at the start of the war. The propaganda videos made more sense then the real thing would have.



Would not surprise me. I don't take any "leaks" of Russian casualties that seriously. I doubt anyone knows. There is a tendency to not report bad news up the chain of command and we now know from public trials that many BTGs were extremely understrength in vehicles and men going into the invasion, so extrapolating from the starting components is going to over count loses as well. Seems like a ghost soldier phenomenon similar to what was common in the ANA. Some commanders are being tried for that anyhow, I suppose they could just be scape goats, but lots of evidence suggests understrength BTGs.

Maybe they wanted to push the "Ukrainians are Nazis" line by exactly re-creating the time they got another huge chunk of their combat forces encircled and destroyed in the same spot.

Eerily similar. Guess that's because geography doesn't change much and the same points still make natural boundaries.

People like to share good news, but I can see how the geolocated photos and videos compromise opsec. However, I think they are also adding to the full on rout on the Russian side as every hour seems to show new progress. Yesterday they're outside Kupyansk and the occupation government has fled the city. They might cut off the supply lines to Izyum. Next thing you know they're in Izyum, the Russians appear encircled. Then suddenly they're pushing up in the south and already in Lyman. It's like the entire front evaporated.

I sort of believe it too. More photos and videos of captured undamaged vehicles and supplies than at any time before. Looks like the Russians were totally unprepared for an attack up north.

Hopefully they don't outrun in their indirect fire support and supplies. I am curious if the aim was always to attack in force up north after trapping so much of Russia's best prepared units down south by blowing the bridges, or if it was just opportunity and the ability to move resources north quickly. Guess we won't know until things settle down.

Russian milbloggers doom posting makes it seem like half the Ukrainian army was somehow secretly teleported to Kharkiv.

Not quite. The monkeys can type strings of infinite length. The idea here is that the number of distinguishable universes is finite. So it's more like rolling a die with an incredibly high number of sides, say 10^10^124 sides. It's incredibly unlikely you roll the same result twice on the scales we're used to. It's incredibly likely you roll it twice if you roll it 10^100^1000 times, and it's assured if you roll it an infinite number of times.

Whereas the monkeys could generate an infinite string of letters that don't contain Shakespeare's works, as you can have an infinite string of just the letters L, J, K, and X, for example, you invariably have duplicates it you have infinite variations of a set of outcomes that is finite.

It's tricky. At the level of atoms and molecules, the components of the clay are quite indiscernible. In theory then, two identical statues made from different clay should indiscernible.

However, in practice, there will be variations between the two lumps of clay, slightly different compositions, masses, etc. The history of the lumps of clay might be different as well. One might have been pulled from the ground weeks ago, and been in the formed into several other statues, while maybe one was plucked from the same cave today.

The ability to have this sort of unique history then seems to be emergent. It doesn't hold for the very small components of things, which do not have discrete locations over time, but can hold for larger objects.



Sorry, missed this earlier. The argument is basically that:

1. If inflation continues forever you end up with an infinite number of volumes the size of our observable universe.

2. While space and time may be continuous, observable differences in measurement are finite. This means that there is a finite number of discernable ways to arrange all the energy and matter in a volume the size of our visible universe. If you have an infinite number of universes in continuous space that are the size of our observable universe, that means that inflation will inevitably end up creating indiscernible copies of our exact universe, as well as many more that are almost just like our universe, with slight differences.

It's worth noting that while universes outside ours are unobservable (in this case those within our space that are so far away that we cannot observe them because their light cannot reach us), other evidence for inflation is observable. Inflation is the leading theory for how our universe was created because it explains many different observations. However, one prediction of inflation that we cannot observe is that it generates infinite space, and regions of space we cannot see. This is because space between our region and those that are unobservable are inflating at a speed faster than light.

These extra dimensions are quite helpful for our theories though. As far as current physics are concerned, there are many arbitrary constants that control how our "laws of physics," work.

The equations of our physics suggest these constants can have different values, and perhaps in other regions of space they do. However, even relatively tiny shifts in any of the constants would make life impossible. But here we are.

So, if you don't have infinite universes, you have to assume a sort of one in a million fluke set things just so, so as to make stars, galaxies, and life possible. But if you accept what inflation entails, infinite space, then the anthropic principle holds. We see an area of space that can support life because we wouldn't be here to see it in any other sort of region of space. However, this isn't a highly unlikely fluke. All possibilities are realized, and so of course our possible region of space exists.

That is, the narrative science develops is one that will account for what any observer sees. This is simply Einstein's Principle of Relativity.

This is a good way of phrasing it, and I'm in agreement with you. I think the issue is when you move from this to positing what observations look like sans any observer.

What does a star look like when suspended in pure void? How does it behave? I'd say it doesn't look like anything because there is no one there to see it, nothing to interact with it. Likewise, there is no such thing as a pure void, at least not that we've observed. It's an unrealistic approach, that attempts to claim it is the "realist" approach.

It's a platitude sometimes, because it is missing that the thing in question is definetly observed, often by many things. It's not a platitude always.

If you posit magical viewpoints that aren't physical you have no reason why a Maxwell's Demon can't work and thus no reason not to believe you can reverse the second Law of Thermodynamics (and thus time) for an arbitrary area, or build a perpetual motion machine.

If you posit magical view points then entanglement produces faster than light information travel and people in one place can learn about something before it happens, provided they have this magical view from anywhere that isn't constricted by our physics.

Likewise, if your metaphysics implies you can observer traits in cut off distinct universes, you also get what seems like nonesense.

There is a distinction between uses of the objection, no?

Anyhow, science attempts to create predictive, simplified models of how the world works, when viewed from anywhere. It doesn't attempt ontological claims, at least not when done right. Scientific papers aren't going to claim infinite unobservable differences in things. The models are useful abstractions, they aren't real properties. They can't be because they don't accurately describe what happens. Even our well worn laws of classical physics for orbits fall apart as soon as one begins introducing multiple bodies into a system, because they're a useful predictive model, not a complete description.

That's interesting but it doesn't seem to me to be a problem. Let it be that there can be two objects that occupy the same area of space at the same time. Since they are both composed of the same stuff it's not surprising they are in the same place and at the same time.

I think your intuition is correct. The problem with classical formations of identity is that you have to presume that multiple identities can stack, but also when you do this, for example claiming the clay remains the same between two statues, you end up with violations of Liebnitz' Law.

The clay is the same clay over time. If we heated it up enough to destroy the molecules that make it up, or dissolve it, we would say the clay has ceased to be. So from my point of view, it seems to me like the "identity" of the clay comes from two spots:

1. This history of the clay, which helps you identify it from identical other balls of clay.

2. Morphisms at the microscopic level that make it the sort of clay it is.

Things are always changing. LL can't actually be satisfied because even solid objects are only about one quadrillionth massive particles, and the rest is empty space. Plus the particles are still moving around and so the configurations at time T1 are not completely identical at time T2. That said, I think there is enough similarity there from moment to moment, to use some sort of practical identity definition.

The statues differ from the clay because they require a different set of morphisms, roughly equivalent to the idea of form.

But maybe a better question is: "why did we develop to intuite a concept of identity so strongly when it is not to be found in nature?"

I think this might have to be with out ability to deal with abstract objects and theorize. This requires pulling out the morphisms that make something a thing of interest and freeze them in time.

By your example of the two spheres above, I don’t think so. How could either know that there isn’t just one person in the room?

You have observers in this scenerio and they can each realize the other is not themselves, since they experience their own body and the other's body. They can also move and change shape relative to each other, which the spheres cannot do. Unless you're going to argue that their actions and thoughts will perfectly mimic each other indefinitely, I think the indiscerniblity breaks down, which I think we agree it would.

But I think this gets at the crux of the problem with the original paper on the universe of two symmetrical spheres (or maybe it's one sphere if you accept the rebuttal), which is: where are you observing from to get your description?

The entire reason you can get these counter intuitive issues of three orbs actually being one orb until a scratch appears on one of them is that you're envisioning observing/having knowledge of these things, but through some sort of magical means.

Add the astronaut and it becomes clear you can distinguish between the scenerios, because now you have a realistic observation point.

Yes, I'm taking an empirical argument, but experience informs ontology all the time. If things are eternally indiscernible, but someone still claims that they can be ontologically different, then it seems to me like their ontologically commited to the possibility of infinities of indiscernible differences throughout their ontology.

But these unobservable differences, aside from not being parsimonious, are also explaining absolutely nothing about the world, which is a notable difference from unobservable parallel dimensions.

The universes of symmetrical orbs have different properties when you throw the astronaut in because new potential relationships exist, but without the astronaut in there those relationships can't exist, and so it seems like an argument for there somehow being differences that aren't different. D =/= D, except from some God's eye perspective that assets difference as brute fact. However, if this sort of difference can be brute fact, I don't see why it wouldn't be the case that all differences aren't just brute facts, making for a very unsatisfactory ontology.

My question to. Do you mean propositions?

You might be interested in Quine's critique of the analytical/synthetic distinction.

It's unclear if there are analytical truths. Or rather, even if there are, there is no clear way to distinguish then from arbitrary dogmatic beliefs.

Kant would have had it that facts about triangles could be established a priori. That a triangles angles add up to 180 degrees was an analytical truth. Except that non-euclidean geometries were later developed where triangles' angles don't add up to 180 degrees (e.g. in curved space they can be greater or lesser than 180 degrees depending on if the space is curved inward like a saddle or rounded like a ball.)

A=A statements may still work, but it's unclear if these do any analytical work at all.

For further reference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/#QuiMeaLin

Much more worrisome is a challenge raised by Quine (CLT, §II): even if certain logical truths seemed undeniable, how does claiming them to be analytic differ from claiming them to be simply “obvious”?[8]

Consider…the logical truth “Everything is self-identical”, “(x)(x = x)”. We can say that it depends for its truth on traits of the language (specifically on the usage of “=”), and not on traits of its subject matter; but we can also say, alternatively, that it depends on an obvious trait, viz., self-identity, of its subject matter, viz., everything. The tendency of [my] present reflections is that there is no difference. (CLT, p. 113)

Pressing the point more deeply:

I have been using the vaguely psychological word “obvious” non-technically, assigning it no explanatory value. My suggestion is merely that the linguistic doctrine of elementary logical truth likewise leaves explanation unbegun. I do not suggest that the linguistic doctrine is false and some doctrine of ultimate and inexplicable insight into the obvious trait of reality is true, but only that there is no real difference between these two pseudo-doctrines. (CLT, p. 113)

Sure. :rofl:

But a lot of the hate is just that I don't like haggling and I don't like having to run dozens of different models for various proposed pay scales. I feel like they offer up so many just to wear the finance team down.

What do they say about good negotiations though? Everybody leaves unhappy.

Is it a good empirical standard? 1/5th of Americans have major errors on their credit reports, and this normally stems from Social Security numbers being recorded wrong (bad handwriting, etc.). People without numbers also often use other people's numbers to get by EVerify, but obviously the person whose number it is isn't working in two places at once.

I had my own funny problems with this. My parents lost my Social Security card and so as an adult I had to go get one for work. They asked me my name and I said "Tim." So my card said "Tim," on it. This never caused problems in several states I lived in and got a driver's license in, but the great state of North Carolina could not make the logical leap between "Tim," on the SS card and "Timothy" on my multiple valid licenses and passport. I had to have my credit union issue a notarized affidavit that I was indeed the same person, and even then I needed to wait for a supervisor, and then their supervisor to come to approve it. Which is funny now, but incredibly frustrating at the time. I felt like I was in a Kafka novel.

Also made me realize how driver's license requirements really can take away your ability to vote.

I love unions in theory and wish my country (the US) had a significantly stronger labor movement. Particularly, I'd like to see labor represented on boards, and workers having decision making authority on risky practices like stock buybacks and debt funded dividends.

In practice, I hate unions at work because they make discipline and changing practices to take advantage of new technology a nightmare and I dislike having to do negotiations.

Specifically, I don't think police should be allowed to have unions at all, full stop. You can't have an effective paramilitary organization with two chains of command, where the putative commander in chief says to do one thing and the union leader says not to do it. All my worst HR cases have been with police unions too, so that doesn't help. Having to give gigantic raises to put GPS in vehicles or get bodywork cameras is incredibly frustrating, especially when you are managing a poor urban community that has had many high profile police brutality cases and whose police force is under censure by the DOJ, and still can't get reforms.

BTW, Tegmark also has a redefinition of entropy in his book that encircles subject and object, that is sort of related to the issues with the 'view from nowhere.' It's an information theoretic approach where entropy is defined about the information you lack about a system. However, rather than stop there, he goes on to build a definition that includes the observer such that the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be restarted as:

For unobserved systems, entropy always tends to increase (standard information approach); and

For any continually observed system, entropy will always tend to decrease.

Sort of neat. I'm a big fan of attempts to model the world in this sort of way, instead of from some absolute standpoint because it seems like either the absolute standpoint doesn't exist, or, even if it does, we will never have access to it and so positing it is misleading.

Yes, my apologies for the length. Thanks for the response. I didn't even mean to post the topic; I was copying it into a note pad app and ended up submitting it by accident, but meant to go back later and edit it.

Parfit’s paper on the unimportance of identity

Thanks, I will have to check that out.

Now you’re putting an observer in there as well, and that adds more relations. The two are suddenly quite distinct. Your beacon serves the same purpose, adding more relations.

Yup, this is the point I wanted to get at. Probably should have deleted everything to this point to be concise. My basic argument would be this:

1. The prior papers on the universes only containing multiple copies of completely similar objects call into question if positing such a thing is coherent. The two spheres can be described entirely as one sphere. There would never be a way to discern between them.

2. Add in more relations, and suddenly you have a difference. Discernibility seems to spring forth from the creation of relationships.

3. However, many views posit that, depending on the outcome of the astronaut placing the beacon, we can determine the properties the example universe had before any relationships generated discernibility. If the astronaut sees a beacon over every sphere, this implies only one sphere ever existed. If he sees it every other sphere, this implies two spheres. But the common viewpoint is that the multiple/singular sphere(s) must have existed prior to the relationship that discerns between them.

4. The problem here is that if you accept the perspective of point 3, it follows that there are potentially infinitely many differences that don't make a difference lurking behind apparent reality. You end up with a rapidly inflated ontology of unobservable differences.

I don't have a full model worked out. I merely have a hunch that this problem can be resolved formally by defining things in terms of their relationship to other things. This avoids the problem of substratum that universals/tropes have to attach to, the problem of infinite indiscernible differences, and Della Rocca's infinite number of identical objects on top of each other, in that the actual relationships that exist between things are finite.

The problem I have is that it seems like defining discrete systems or objects this way is going to have to be arbitrary, based on pragmatism. But maybe this isn't such a big deal if objects are already defined in arbitrary ways, which seems to be the case given all the problems with the concept of identity.

So here:

I’m wondering about your focus on indiscerniblity. If I create another ‘me’ in a room, facing me, they’re in theory indiscernible. No model is going to pick out a preferred one.

You can't discern which of you holds your "identity," but you can discern between there being one of you and there being two, because the relationships between your two selves are going to be different from the relationship of just your one self to your self.

To sum up: drop identity outside some pragmatic legal uses, and define discernability by relationships, rather than properties things have of themselves. Maybe this gets you a bit closer to a definition that gets at what identity tries to get at, without as much baggage. I figured someone has already made an argument like this with much more time to flesh it out, but I haven't had luck finding it.

For instance, most people presume that sort of pragmatic/memory identity you use above in all your examples, but there are quantum interpretations that destroy that sort of identity, leaving only event-identity: A thing is only identical to itself at one moment in time (and not even that since a moment in time is not unambiguously definable).

So under MWI, ‘world’ split off and in another world I have a broken leg and in this one I don’t. Both of us have an identical history of a day ago: We share the exact same person-state a day ago. So if that prior state is X, and Y is me now and Z is me with the leg issue, then if Y=X and Z=X, then Y=Z and I have and don’t have a broken leg, a contradiction. Therefore X and Y are different identities to satisfy Liebnitz’ Law. There is no persistent idenity of anything by this very non-pragmatic definition. This goes against most people’s personal intuition of having such a persistent identity, and hence considerable resistance to something like MWI, especially if you’re religious and the god needs an identity to judge in the afterlife.

Assuming MWI is wrong and this sort of splitting is fiction, how about your alien and the switched loved-one? Suppose the other person committed some crime before the abduction, and the law can prove it. Now the memories are switched. Which one do you throw in jail? The legal system isn’t set up to handle this case.

Interesting points; that's sort of how I've thought of the issues with identity vis-a-vis MWI as well. You might not need MWI to get to this sort of issue. Max Tegmark's book "Our Mathematical Universe," discusses how there is considerable support for cosmic inflation as the origin of our universe. But there is no reason to think cosmic inflation ever ends, which means we have an infinite space. However, quantum mechanics implies that there is a limit to how many ways an observable universe with our physics can exist in discernible states. There are an absolutely gigantic number of these possible states (10^10^123 is an estimate if I recall correctly), but with eternal inflation, there are guaranteed to be other identical versions of you, and some with only slight differences. These aren't in another part of the wave function, but rather just extremely far away.

But it seems that this definition you’re using is only a pragmatic one: It is useful to assign a sort of legal identity to the various states of dog, so that the various non-identical states combine into one pragmatic identity. This can be attacked, but not so easily with a complex mammal.
So for instance, suppose I ‘borrow’ a friend’s pet starfish. I cut the thing in half and both halves grow back the missing parts and now there’s two of them. I give one back to the friend, who has his pet returned. Or did I? Perhaps I returned the copy and kept the original.
This can be done with humans as well. Given a pair of identical twins., which is the original one that was first conceived, and which is the other one produced by the splitting and separation of the zygote? The pragmatic definition totally fails here, but the legal definition doesn’t much care. It might care which comes out first, but that has nothing to do with the above question.

Good examples. I wasn't trying to argue for a specific definition at this point, just trying to summarize some of the common paradoxes proposed. Is it generally taken that diachronic identity, through time, is pragmatic? The impression I've got from my reading is that people have attempted to develop absolute solutions for identity over time.

That’s just the nature of dog. Do it with the starfish and the tail is a starfish (at least if it’s big enough). You question should not be if the tail is a dog, but if it is the same dog.

I've seen the question posed that way in various solutions. I just don't buy it. Intuitively, a tail isn't a dog, it's an incomplete part. The emergent whole is what matters. But the tipping point between a thing missing some of its parts and ceasing to exist seems like it has to be necessarily arbitrary.



Is there an easy answer here I'm missing? I took philosophy 101, but it was unfortunately just a chronological slog through "the great minds" with no topical organization.

I'm assuming a binary because the way the US runs most state elections and all federal ones produces a binary. Different systems have different contexts.

With ranked choice voting, pulling the leadership towards your preferences results in policies you prefer more. It doesn't mean you're going to be happy, you'll just be less unhappy.

Preferences exist before elections, votes do not. Elections are decided by votes and the structure of the election system, not by preferences. If preferences = outcomes than the Republican party would be extinct at the national level because it fares worse with median preferences continually.

It is viable in part because of election mechanics (e.g., the electoral college, partisan districting, capping the House of Reps early in the 20th century, the arbitrary representation of the Senate), but it's also viable in statewide elections where it has a disadvantage on preferences because turn out determines elections, not preferences. Having less support, but supporters who are much more likely to vote is the thing that keeps the GOP competitive, none of the other stuff would save them without that edge. For all the talk of voter suppression or theoretically illegal expansion of mail in ballots, the fact is that the parties have always fought over these issues and the variances have always been marginal numerically, although they can be enough to decide the election.

As for radicals getting elected, it does happen. It's just that in the US system they run as members of a major party most of the time. It just happens rarely because radicals are, pretty much by definition, far from median preferences, and so are unlikely to win in any electoral system. But even if you're a radical you probably have competitive candidates that are closer to your ideal than others.

For a sports analogy, complaining about losing an election despite getting more votes, when the system isn't based on absolute vote totals, is like saying the Mets should have won the 2015 World Series because they led for 92% of the innings. It misses that having a flaming dumpster fire for a bullpen can still make you lose games because games are decided by runs, not who is winning the longest. Same for Tom Brady's perfect season run that ended with a close loss to a mediocre Giants team in the Superbowl.

On the other hand, preferences <> votes is like saying "why play the games, the Nets have all the megastars they will win," and then they crash when you play the actual games. You could have written off the Mets as a clown show because they were pinch hitting their pitchers, because their lineup was such trash last year, but the games still get played, and this year it turns out they're amazing.

It is a strategy that is highly unlikely to work. Yes, if you hate all possible candidates equally, perhaps it makes sense not to vote (or really if you like them all equally). However, if you hate all the candidates, you generally have other options such as as submitting a write in or a spoiled ballot. This registers disapproval or disaffection in a way not voting at all does not.

Research on low turn out has generally concluded that it is the result of people not caring that much about election outcomes, rather than them disliking their options. The slump in US turnout in the 20th century has receded, and turn out is way up, even as people's unhappiness with the government has spiked. You see this is fledgling democracies too. People were very unhappy with their governments in Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. but turn out was huge despite serious safety risks for voters. Not voting is generally more a sign of comfort than disapproval.

Low turn out could sap the legitimacy of the government, but historically this is not the case. You would probably need absolutely abysmal turn out to really challenge the legitimacy of the process if access to the polls was relatively open. The collective action problem of getting 80-90% of eligible voters not to vote is going to almost always be harder than just running a candidate people actually like, making it a bad strategy.

Plus, people are generally not actually indifferent between candidates. They are either not informed enough to know which candidate best represents their preferences, uninterested in voting because of the low likelihood that their preferred candidate will win, or trying to make some sort of morale statement about not picking any of the candidates, despite actually liking one more than the other. In general, this isn't a good strategy. You're better off at least voting for the candidate you dislike less, unless voting takes a long time and your opportunity cost is high.

Some partisans don't vote because they want their least preferred candidate to win. The idea is that "things will get bad enough that we'll get real change." This view is sort of common in the US with the far left. "Let Trump overturn an election and have the Court strip more freedoms, this will finally provoke a true reaction and move us forward." Historically, this is a bad strategy. The group with institutional power tends to do better, and even if your preferred group wins, if a struggle turns violent, the outcome can still be worse than having the group you dislike keep power. Violent struggle can also transform your preferred group into one you hate (e.g., communists who ended up hating what the Russian Communist Party became under Stalin).




The weightlessness of someone's vote is going to vary by voting system. In an instant run off or ranked choice voting system, your vote is almost always going to have some weight. Even if your preferences are far from the median voters', your vote will still move the needle towards your preferences and away from the ones you most dislike.

Voting strategies become more fraught when you have things like closed primaries, a strong two party system, and first past the post, winner take all voting. There, your vote can appear meaningless if your candidate didn't win. But voting for the candidate you least dislike is still an option.

Your vote isn't weightless though, that's not how the mathematics works out. Votes aren't weightless in this system, but instead what you have is a tipping point. If you are balancing weights on a fulcrum, and you have more weight on one side than the other, and so you get a tip to one side, it isn't that the mass on the other side is reduced to zero, it just isn't enough to stop the tipping.

And as one sided as the US system can get, you still get surprises. Massachusetts has had two long term Republican governors recently who were quite popular. Kentucky currently has a Democratic governor. Parties with dominating leads in average voter preference can still manage to muck things up for themselves.

Winning on slim margins may also signal to election winners that they may need to moderate their views if they want to win re-election. This isn't always how it works, but it sometimes does. Charlie Baker was the most popular politician out of all Congressmen and governors despite being a Republican in a deeply Democratic state because he knew he had to moderate his positions. This doesn't always happen. Donald Trump didn't moderate his positions after an extremely narrow win, but then again he also went on to lose almost all the year's swing states and garner 7.5 million fewer votes, so it's not like that was a smart strategy.

Space isn't empty, it's filled with fields associated with the fundemental forces. When you look closely at seemingly empty space you see all sorts of virtual particles popping into existence. Quantum fluctuations mean the fields are constantly creating particles, but these come in pairs that annihilate each other. Non-virtual particles that stick around are greater excitements of the fields.

It is immaterial. Materialism is an old (and dead) doctrine as far as science is concerned. Matter is not always conserved. It is created and destroyed. Energy is (mostly) conserved and can create matter or be released from it. Some experimental findings threaten this conservation, and it appears that the conservation of energy can be violated at the Planck scale at very high energy levels where the weak force is concerned.

Quarks, the main building blocks of "matter," the things with mass we experience, spontaneously pop out of nothing if you clear space to make it more empty. This is done by shooting gold nuclei at each other at near the speed of light. The "heat" this produces is a billion times hotter than the surface of our sun. This clears space making it more empty. Empty space is actually more unstable than filled space, and so from this void quark condensate materializes. There are actually a number of condensates that act like this.

These very small things do not behave like objects we are familiar with. It would be ridiculous to think you could smash a Toyota and a Ford together at high speeds and form a Chevy, but this sort of thing happens all the time in particle physics.

There are varying takes on what this says about reality. Perhaps reality really is composed of some amorphous, poorly defined thing called physical entities. Others suggest that reality is primarily composed as mathematical objects, in part because quarks and other elementary building blocks can only be described this way. Others say that information is the primary ontological primitive and observers generate the universe through observation, which forces quantum scale qbits that preserve a modal excluded middle to spawn classical bits that we experience in the world.

I don't think this line of reasoning is going to solve the Hard Problem. If we show physical things are somehow "immaterial" we still have the problem of how we can predict so much of what goes on in our shared external space, but can't figure out where first person experience emerges from.

I like information theoretic models a lot, and I'm reading Max Tegmark's mathematical model right now, but even with these the Hard Problem remains, if in an altered form. If what we call the physical creates first person experience, then it does so in a wild way. Brains are like magicians. You can study then using all sorts of imaging techniques, try to follow their every movement, and through some sleight of hand they always seem to produce something we can't explain.

I think that's about all that can be said for now. This might open the door for dualism, idealism, or panpsychism, or it could also be that we're just several levels away from understanding what the "objective external world" is actually like, and this is why the problem is insoluble. Or, maybe the optimists are right and it really is just the complexity of neutral networks that give rise to experience and we just need more computational power. I highly doubt this last one. For one, interstellar scale networks rival the brain in complexity. Does that mean chains of galaxies form a mind, a mind that take millions of years to finish a thought?

Solidity is a phase of matter. It's observably distinct from the other phases. Think of an ice cube melting and then boiling off into vapor. So yes, it exists. Subatomic particles can not be solids, liquids, or gasses. They can only be parts of the phase.

Example: no one water molecule is a liquid or a solid, etc. Phases of matter are emergent phenomena. The phases describe relationships between molecules. Ice is less dense than water because of a crystalline structure that only obtains when the energy of the molecules is low enough that they aren't moving past one another. Lots of physical properties are like this, for example, resonance.

I think the mistake here is assuming that the properties of the large scale collections of microscopic things we see as the objects of everyday experience exist for microscopic objects just the same, but on a smaller scale. Protons as "bbs" is a good example of a bad analogy. BBs generally don't exhibit wave-like behavior for example; the analogy fails. It might be better to think of all such particles as local excitations of a field, but other analogies exist because none of our analogies work perfectly.

Very large and very small things behave differently than the medium sized objects we evolved to interact with. Phases are an example of where the analogy breaks down because phases are the macroscopic appearance of large numbers of relationships between microscopic things.

Arguably, only these relationships exist and "objects" are just a cognitive shorthand evolution led us to, a way of compressing huge amounts of information into actionable intel for survival.