What good is being horrified going to do, on top of everything else that has to be done?
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A world which is horrified by the US, compared to a world which aspired to be them, will make a broad & irreducible difference in actions.
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On a political level, sure, although where one empire falls another soon rises. I'm not sure Chinese hegemony would be improvement. Perhaps.
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The bar is pretty low, and in general, new paradigms are more adaptive than those at the end of their lifecycle.
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Disagree on first point. Theoretically correct, but practically track record of new empires... not too great. Second point - definitely true
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There is an argument that adaptability is value-neutral, and by definition, that which spreads is adaptive (as with biological evolution).
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Poor second postulate. Survival, not virality, implies adaptiveness. You can't survive 10000 years without it. You can spread fast, though.
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True. I thinks it's likely a combination; in a rapidly changing environment, more adaptive paradigm is also more likely to spread?
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Many of the most rapidly-spreading paradigms have proved extremely fragile and maladaptive. Communism, French rev., Fascism...
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Hard to isolate and judge.. Any system with the economic & military superpower of the US against it is likely to fail.
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Ideologies make roots long before fruition, IMO. See time from french rev. to democracy as standard across Europe.
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You could go even further back in terms of how modern nation states "stuck" in culture to today, to the English Civil War.
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