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Speaking of Tolkien, I recall an interview where he said he was often asked why the eagles couldn't just drop the ringbearer into mordor, and he said his response was "oh... shut up!" (good humoredly). Elegant architecture can get away with logic fails in a way movies can't.
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I wonder what the most full-spectrum complex thing humans do that is driven by a single individual. I think it's a three-way dead heat between bleeding edge space missions, complex movies, and computer hardware (bottom half of stack from silicon to low-level system software)
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Too low-dimensional imo. The presence of a clear win condition under defined rules makes it a finite game vulnerable to Goodhart law impoverishment and no reason to rise to sublime. It closer to “IPO a unicorn company” I’d say. My other examples are infinite games.
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The worst movies, space missions, and political campaigns have a lot in common, but the best of the first two reach heights political campaigns never do. Perhaps political lawmaking might qualify. Like getting ACA passed.
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If that’s the standard, then “decolonization + nation-building” must be in this category, at least potentially. Think Ataturk, Nyerere, Sukarno, Nkrumah, Nehru, etc.
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What distinguishes modern variety from old empire building? Trying to detect a strand of historically increasing complexity. Could you say that complexity increase from Alexander to Ataturk is comparable to Galileo telescope to JWST? Or Aeschylus play to Peter Jackson movie?
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Building an integrated bureaucratic state cum ideological-media apparatus is certainly an exceedingly complex endeavor — and an infinite game. I’m not sure how the analogy to telescopes could be made useful.
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I’d say a bleeding edge telescope can be understood as the most advanced integration of all available technologies and sciences of an era into a single general sensory capability. The politics machine similarly is the most advanced integration of social science and technologies?
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