[ExI] Legendary Battleship was diamandis commentary

[Keith Henson]

Spike, at this point, the US is not doing well, regardless of how many
ships we sunk. We can't protect our bases in the area or the countries
they are in. By a lot of measures, the US is not doing well in that
war. The world economy is being totally messed up by the closure of
the Strait. There is a good chance tens of millions will starve over
the next year or so.

You might think that the example of the mess Putin got Russia into in
Ukraine might make people in power think twice about attacking. But
there are evolutionary psychology reasons for insane optimism to be
the mode for anyone going into war.

Keith



Best wishes,

Keith

On Fri, Jun 5, 2026 at 8:21 AM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Legendary Battleship was diamandis commentary
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 5, 2026, 11:00 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> I can assure you, congress is not going to fund weapon systems which are ineffective or obsolete.
>
> >…Given how often they have before, even without the influence of Trump (looking at the span of time between when Congress had its first session and when Trump first took office), what do you base that assurance on?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Adrian consider what the US Navy has accomplished in the short span of the conflict with Iran.  From what I can tell, the score so far is 60-0.  Iran is claiming to have damaged or destroyed many US ships.  They threaten to kill any Iranian citizen who claims otherwise.  We have a free press, but they don’t.  None of our ships are missing or damaged.  Our navy is claiming to have destroyed about 60 Iranian navy ships.  We welcome our press to refute the claim.  None have.
>
>
>
> OK then.
>
>
>
> This one-sided result apparently deterred China from invading Taiwan.  But I had another idea on that failure of China to invade, based on evolutionary psychology, which I invite comment in this forum.
>
>
>
> Darwinian evolution has a difficult time explaining altruism, but Dawkins’ theory explains that genes shape our attitudes and actions (of course they do.)  If sacrificing oneself for two siblings or four first cousins or eight second cousins (etc.) makes sense from the POV of the gene.  Consider China, which strongly encouraged a one-child policy in the 1960s.  A generation grew up with no siblings, then a generation with no first cousins, followed by a generation with no second cousins.  This makes the young Chinese soldier most reluctant to sacrifice himself.
>
>
>
> A Chinese government, recognizing this problem, refrains from war.  Being overly aggressive might cause Dear Leader to lose his Dear Head.
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat