God loves the Marine Corps because we kill everything we see.

Semper Gumby

Ace--

I agree 100% with everything you wrote. . . except one thing.

I don't think the argument over the necessity of war *is* over.

Sure, in America it may have gone underground since 9/11, but if anything, it's increasingly prevalent in Europe.

Perhaps incidents such as the murder of Theo Van Gough will help nudge the Euroculture back towards one willing to fight for its survival, now that the "calls are coming from inside the house!!"

Alas, I fear it may be too late. Better to die in a coward's sleep than in a fighter's fury, I guess.

Cheers,
Dave

Sorry to change the subject briefly, but Ace, did you see this one over at your favorite "excitable" boy's site?

"From the Times of London, which has just, long after intense lobbying from yours truly, put all its content online for free."

Doesn't it appear that Sullivan is claiming that he, almost single-handedly, caused the Times of London to change it's policy?

Ace of Spades says what I have been thinking for a long time. A true soldier has one dextrous hand, and one of iron. The pen and the sword in accord. No velvet hand.
The prostitute and pimp have velvet hands...

Ace,

SDB is reflecting the classic Prisoner's Dilemma of Gaming Theory... The biggest problem with Gaming Theory is that it assumes a rational opponent AND that that both people have similar values. Since this is not the case, we can always assume that terrorists will ALWAYS play the sinner and we should act accordingly.

Nothing to add to this .Just a great post.
Thanks,Ace.

What is tat and how do I exchange it for that other?

--David Spade

DAMN

FUCKING

STRAIGHT

!!!!!

Well said to both that Marine and to Ace.

* "Occasionally dealing roughly or even savagely with these bastards does not, in fact, make us 'no better than they are.'"

Losing makes us worse than they are; winning makes us better than they were.

* "If a man says he wants a fair fight, but his opponent immediately gouges him in the eye as a response, that man is not required to actually fight fair. Honor is satisfied by his declaration of his desire to fight honorably."

Honor is satisfied by his not getting his eye gouged out.

* "He challenged them to see who could come up with the one which did the best in a long series of matches against various opponents. ...On the first round, it plays fair. On each successive round, it does to the other guy what he did the last time."

If you must strike, it is best to strike in such a way that your enemy cannot even think of taking revenge.

* "The Tit-for-tat tactic is to be prepared to do anything, but not to do so spontaneously."

The Tit-for-Tat tactic is to be prepared to do only what has already been done to you. The winning tactic is to be prepared to do whatever best secures a win, and to do so according to one's best judgment as to what will secure a win.

* "A war is a sequence game and not a single transaction because each day is a new exchange."

Assassination is a single transaction. Yet assassination is a sometimes crippling tool of war. Therefore war is not necessarily a sequence game. And again, blitzkrieg does not allow for turn-taking. Yet blitzkrieg is a sometimes crippling tool of war. Therefore war is not necessarily a sequence game.

* "If you gassed my guys yesterday, I can gas yours today."

If he gassed your guys yesterday, you may have none who can gas his today.

Grow a pair, Ace. :-P

Good post ACE.

JFH,
Game theory does not demand both players act rationally. At worst that makes the calculations more complex because an error term must be added to the calculations. And frankly, that's not the most difficult task to accomplish from a theoretical standpoint.

Beside that, you would have to define much more precisely what is meant by "rational" for your comments to be given much import, IMO.

Ace,
Spot on.

Ace:

Good post, overall. One point, though: Game theory as expressed in tit-for-tat strategy (originally the meta-experiment was a sequence of simplified Prisoner's Dilemma games done by Rand, I think) does have at least one assumption in sequence playing: It assumes the winner of the previous round does not gain an overwhelming advantage by doing so, that is, that the parties are more or less matched and will remain so in terms of total power regardless of who won the last round of the game.

In the real world, this is not always the case. I'm sure we could all think up a couple of examples.

Ace-- Great post. The tournament Den Beste was referring to was run by a guy named Robert Axelrod. Here's some fair, if rather dry and academic, criticism of reading too much into the success of a tit-for-tat strategy:

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/1/review1.html

Here's an interesting excerpt from that piece, and I apologize for quoting at length in a comment. But the fact is it's a great rational, secular defense of conservatism over utopian niceness, and it makes your point pretty well:
______
Their enthusiasm for TIT-FOR-TAT then really turns out to be based on their experiences of being brought up in a comfortable middle-class household. But the anecdotes about the social dynamics of the middle-classes with which they defend TIT-FOR-TAT are irrelevant to the repeated Prisoners' Dilemma, which models the interaction between two strangers. To understand the social contracts that operate within middle-class insider-groups, one must remember that the sons and daughters of bourgeois families enter a multi-player game that began long ago.

The simplest game that seems to capture something of the intuition that popularisers have mistakenly learned to label with the TIT-FOR-TAT tag is an overlapping generations model in which three players are alive at any time. Occasionally, one of the players dies and is immediately replaced by a new player. In each period, two of the players are matched at random to play the Prisoners' Dilemma, while the third player looks on. Long ago, an equilibrium was somehow established which now requires that each player always co-operates. A player who fails to do so will find that the opponent with whom he is next matched will punish him by defecting - whoever that opponent may be. Yesterday, the players were Adam, Eve and Ichabod. But Ichabod died overnight and has been replaced by Olive. She is now matched with Adam. Why does Adam treat her nicely by co-operating? After all, we know that there are many mean equilibria that might form the basis for a social contract in the mini society consisting only of Adam and Olive. Some of these mean equilibria would allow Adam and Olive to explore the possibility that their new opponent is a sucker who can be exploited. But these equilibria are unavailable because of the presence of Eve. She enforces nice behaviour from the word go by being ready to punish anyone who is nasty. ... Insiders who don't conform soon find them selves treated as outsiders unless they mend their ways. However, this is as far as the analogy with TIT-FOR-TAT goes. Nature has not brought the same sweetness and light that operates within middle-class insider-groups to the world at large. The outsiders who lurk in dark alleys with r&pe and mayhem in their hearts are neither nice nor forgiving. Nor do sharks only cruise in murky waters. They also swim in brightly lit boardrooms and patrol the corridors of power. Such upper-crust sharks show beautiful teeth as they prey upon our bank accounts and raid the pension funds of elderly widows. But we would be the fools they take us for if we returned the smiles with which they try to convince us that they are nice people like ourselves.

Political theorists make a bad mistake when they invent theories that remove nastiness from the world. It just isn't true that nastiness is irrational, or that evolution will eventually sweep it away. As Hume (1985 [1758]) warned, our constitutions therefore need to be armoured against the modern methods that rogues and knaves posing as insiders have developed to subvert our social contract.
___

I agree with the above. Except I would being more aggressive. Here are some crude but effective methods of winning a war.

"No b*stard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb b*stard die for his country". -Gen. Patton

"To conquer, we must destroy our enemies. We must not only die gallantly; we must kill devastatingly. The faster and more effectively you kill, the longer you will live to enjoy the priceless fame of conquerors." -Gen. Patton

See:
http://m.ookee.com/quotes/patton.html

Ace, thanks for the Den Beste link - it's been a while since I went over and read some of his essays.

Great post on the teet for tat, but sometimes less is more.
Two examples:

"faking dead..... dead now!"
-yet to be identified hero

No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy.
- US MARINES

Wow, I'm amazed it took so long to find this site, and ashamed that I didn't find it, but was directed here by someone else. You guys are great, keep the flame lit.

You all are the reason why we have to fight wars like these. Views like yours bring America down to the level of the terrorist. There is no honor in winning a war through disgrace and foul play. Being called an American is no longer something to be proud of but if we had less people who thought like you all it would be.