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JohannesDahlstrom comments on Open Thread: July 2010 - Less Wrong
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I'm a bit surprised that nobody seems to have brought up The Salvation War yet. [ETA: direct links to first and second part]
It's a Web Original documentary-style techno-thriller, based around the premise that humans find out that a Judeo-Christian Heaven and (Dantean) Hell (and their denizens) actually exist, but it turns out there's nothing supernatural about them, just some previously-unknown/unapplied physics.
The work opens in medias res into a modern-day situation where Yahweh has finally gotten fed up with those hairless monkeys no longer being the blind obedient slaves of yore, making a Public Service Announcement that Heaven's gates are closed and Satan owns everyone's souls from now on.
When commanded to lie down and die, some actually do. The majority of humankind instead does the logical thing and unites to declare war on Heaven and Hell. Hilarity ensues.
The work is rather saturated with WarmFuzzies and AwesomeMoments appealing to the atheist/rationalist crowd, and features some very memorable characters. It's a work in progress, with the second part of the trilogy now nearing its finale.
Okay, I've read through the whole thing so far.
This is not rationalist fiction. This is standard war porn, paperback thriller stuff. Many many technical descriptions of guns, rockets, military vehicles, etc. Throughout the story there's never any real conflict, just the American military (with help from the rest of the world) steamrolling everything, and the denizens of Heaven and Hell admiring the American way of life. It was well-written enough to hold my attention like a can of Pringles would, but I don't feel enriched by reading it.
I've only read about a chapter and a half, and may not read any more of it, but there's one small rationalist aspect worthy of note-- the author has a very solid grasp of the idea that machines need maintenance.
Here's a tiny bit of rationality:
If your enemy is much weaker than you, it may be rational to fight to win. If you are equals, ritualized combat is rational from a game-theoretic perspective; that's why it is so widespread in the animal kingdom, where evolutionary dynamics make populations converge on an equilibrium of behavior, and that's why it was widespread in medieval times (that Hell is modeled from).
So the passage you quoted doesn't work as a general statement about rationality, but it works pretty well as praise of America. Right now, America is the only country on Earth that can "fight to win". Other countries have to fight "honorably" lest America deny them their right of conquest.
The wars America fights, the wars all countries fight are ritualised combat. We send our soldiers and bombers (of either the plane or suicide variety), you send your soldiers and bombers. One side loses more soldiers, the other side loses more money. If America or any its rivals fought to win their respective countries would be levelled.
The ritualised combat model you describe matches modern warfare perfectly and the very survival of the USA depends on it.
America's wars change regimes in other countries. This ain't ritualized combat.
That's exactly the purpose of ritualised combat. Change regimes without total war. Animals (including humans) change their relative standing in the tribe. Coalitions of animals use ritualised combat to change intratribal regimes. Intertribal combat often has some degree of ritual element, although this of course varies based on the ability of tribes to 'cooperate' in combat without total war.
In international battles there have been times where the combat has been completely non-ritualised and brutal. But right now if combat was not ritualised countries would be annihilated by nuclear battles. That's the whole point of ritual combat. Fight with the claws retracted, submit to the stronger party without going for the kill. Because if powerful countries with current technology levels, or powerful animals, fight each other without restriction both will end up crippled. That can either mean infections from relatively minor flesh wounds in a fight to the death or half your continent being reduced to an uninhabited and somewhat radioactive wasteland in a war you 'won'.
The point I argue here is that America is allowed to make such interference only because its rivals choose to cooperate in the 'ritualised combat' prisoners dilemma. They accept America's dominance in conventional warfare because total war would result in mutual destruction. In a world where multiple countries have the ability to destroy each other (or, if particularly desperate, all mammalian life on the planet) combat is necessarily ritualised or the species goes extinct.
You misunderstand the purpose of ritualised combat. In animals this isn't the play fighting that pups do to practice fighting. This is real, regime changing, win-or-don't-get-laid-till-later combat-and-get-fewer-resources.
(ETA: I note that we are arguing here over how to apply an analogy. Since analogies are more useful as an explanatory tool and an intuition pump than a tool for argument it is usually unproductive to delve too deeply into how they 'correctly' apply. It is better to directly discuss the subject. I would be somewhat surprised if cousin_it and I disagree to such an absolute degree on the actual state of the current global military/political situation.)
You seem to be living on an alternate Earth where America fights ritualized wars against countries that have nuclear weapons. In our world America attacks much weaker countries whose leaders have absolutely no reason to fight with claws rectracted, because if they lose they get hanged like Saddam Hussein or die in prison like Milosevic. No other country does that today.
Countries aren't that coherent and certainly aren't their leaders. I don't think the analogy makes sense either way.
It would seem that I need to retract the last sentence in my ETA.
Why did you link to TV Tropes instead of the thing itself?
A good question.
I ended up writing a longer post than I expected; originally I just thought I'd just utilize the TV Tropes summary/review by linking there.
Also, the Tropes page provides links to both of the parts, and to both the original threads (with discussion) and the cleaned-up versions (story only.) I'll edit the post to include direct links.