Yeah. I disagree with that. I mean, I think there are shades of truth to it. But what I would say is we don't really have many centrists or moderates in the political class anymore.

I am more afraid of being in an echo chamber than I am afraid of having my views challenged. So I avoid the former through having a high tolerance for intellectual disagreement.

Because if I tie politics to my identity, then I need to take it personally if people attack my political beliefs. And I tend to think of political beliefs as ideas that are fair game for attack. I tend to view my politics as something I should be prepared to defend intellectually if challenged. And if I do not what to defend them, or cannot defend them, then I have no business holding them.

But at no point do I feel personally miffed by people holding opposing views or criticizing views I hold. Although, it will probably cause me to tune you out of you launch ad hominem attacks on me. Whereas, if you constrain your attacks to my ideas alone, without a personal dimension, you'll find I don't have a tendency to take such things personally at all.

This is possible, because I don't tightly tie my sense of identity to these ideas.

My friend group is pretty ideologically diverse, too. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Disagree. I think you tend to see a lot less identity-idea connection in a lot more centrist and moderate forms of politics, where there tends to be a greater emphasis on seeking evidence-based policy, compromise and affordance for accepting disagreement and loss.

I think Bostrom's simulation hypothesis is nonsense, for what it's worth.

I think software and firmware are pretty terrible analogies for how to think about one's brain/mind. But that's a whole can of worms for another time.

That's probably a good thing! It's what I personally strive for.

So I read a little about Zeihan's views and watched some of his YouTube videos now. I can see why people might compare my argument to his -- he definitely makes a few of the same arguments.

But Zeihan strikes me as falling into a analytical approach to understanding the world that I simply don't subscribe to. Other examples of this are Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer.

Now, all three of these men have clearly different political views and come to different conclusions on various things. Zeihan certainly doesn't seem to share Chomsky's analysis of Ukraine war. But I think they both make the same mistakes.

They tend to view the world like a chessboard, and their theories of state action are derived from what I believe are cartoonishly simple reducios on how states make decisions. They tend to view everything through the lens of institutionally-entrenched motives of action, that treats the leaders of states and states as the same thing, and that the interests of people (like Putin, George W. Bush, or Xi Jinping) are intrinsically inseparable. In fact, they're treated like hapless puppets against the backdrop of often pernicious intractable interests. Explanations like bravado, miscalculation, ignorance, etc. are not really treated as serious candidates for a theory of state action in any case.

I happen to think these are very good theories for explaining state action in many cases.

My wife is a socialist. And I am very much not. I was a flaming libertarian when I met her. Next question.

The weird thing I notice about some of the people who state they are most opposed to identity politics, is how ironically -- and seemingly unknowingly -- they are enmeshed in extreme forms of it.

If your personal identity is tied to a belief system of any kind, and you consider attacks on that belief system to be a personal attack. And, you tend to constrain your personal relationships to people who share that belief system, you are simply part of identity politics. That is what identity politics is.

It doesn't really matter what the belief system is: if it's progressive or "woke" politics. Or right-wing populist politics. Or even if it's categories like bitcoiner vs nocoiner -- if your personal behavior, and community behaviors fit the definition I laid out in the second paragraph, then you are participating in identity politics.

And yes, identity politics is pretty bad for anything resembling a functioning pluralistic society.

I have not read his book.

Yes. It clicked. You'll note that nothing I said was couched in all-or-nothing terms, and I don't believe I've contradicted myself in any way.

Peter, who?

It’s clearly intentional design. And even though I think it’s bad economic policy, I don’t think it’s “nefarious”. I try to avoid simplistic good and evil categories for such things.

I think we are tribal from a fundamental nature standpoint. It's not a matter of indoctrination. The fact we formed civilization the way we did, was path dependent from our genetics and environment. It wasn't some arbitrary idea cooked up for the benefit of a uniquely corrupt elite.

Hell, Canada has so much excess wheat production capacity, that it uses a ridiculous supply management regime to create artificial scarcity to prevent wheat prices from getting too cheap, as a back-handed farming subsidy. Which has been the butt of a lot of trade disputes between Canada, the US and the EU.

I don't think we're transitioning to anarcho-capitalism any time soon. Or ever.

One major reason I'm pretty cool on the predictions of severe and sudden U.S. decline, is some factors nobody ever talks about.

1. The US is one of the younger countries in the world, with a growing population -- China's population is in rapid decline because of the hangover from the one-child policy. And birthrates have not recovered and continue to decline.

2. The US remains far and away the top destination for immigration in the world.

3. North America is insanely resource rich. It wouldn't be cheap or easy, but the US and Canada in particular have resources in the ground that can substitute out most mineral dependency. Including lithium and rare-earths like neodymium.

4. The US and Canada are food superpowers. Between these two countries, they produce well in excess of domestic demand, and are massive food exporters. Especially to China. China recognizes this, and has been in a rush to replace food exports from the U.S. and Canada with imports from places like Brazil. While they've made material moves here, the dependency remains very high.

5. My worries about AI aside, recent advances in artificial intelligence have demonstrated that US-based companies continue to enjoy serious advantages in terms of R&D.

These are structural advantages that were very important to the rise of the US to begin with. And they're structural advantages that persist today.

These factors matter regardless of inflation or the monetary regime.

For all of these reasons, political and moral arguments aside on whether or not the US *should* persist or decline, these factors should cause one to hedge their certainty that US collapse is certain.

Yeah. Haha. Quite a few people have invoked Frank Herbert’s Dune, in conversations with me about this.