Graham Allison posted:

In searching for an explanation, one typically puts himself in the place of the nation, or national government, confronting a problem of foreign affairs, and tries to figure out why he might have chosen the action in question...in offering (or accepting) these explanations, we are assuming governmental behavior can be most satisfactorily understood by analogy with the purposive acts of individuals...But this simplification...obscures the persistently neglected fact of bureaucracy: the "maker" of government policy is not one calculating decisionmaker but is rather a conglomerate of large organizations and political actors.

More rigorously, the argument developed in the body of this study can be summarized in three propositions:

1. Professional analysts of foreign affairs (as well as ordinary laymen) think about problems in foreign and military policy in terms of largely implicit conceptual models that have significant consequences for the content of their thought.)
2. Most analysts explain (and predict) the behavior of national governments in terms of one basic conceptual model, here entitled Rational Actor of "Classical" Model.
3. Two alternative conceptual models, here labeled an Organizational Process Model and a Governmental (Bureaucratic) Politcs Model, provide a base for improved explanations and predictions.

...What Rational Actor analysts characterize as "acts" and "choices" are thought of instead as "outputs" of large organizations functioning according to regular patterns of behavior...An Organizational Process Model analyst frames the puzzle: "From what organizational context and pressures did this decision emerge? He then fixes the unit of analysis: organizational output. Next he focuses attention on certain concepts: the strength, standard operating procedures, and repertoires of organizations. And finally, he invokes certain patterns of inference: if organizations produced an output of this kind today, that behavior resulted from existing organizational features, procedures, and repertoires.

...The Politics Model focuses on the politics of a government. Events in foreign affairs are understood, according to this model, neither as choices nor as outputs. Rather, what happens is characterized as a resultant of various bargaining games along players in the national government... a Politics Model analyst frames the puzzle: Which results of what kinds of bargaining among which players yielded the critical decisions and actions? He then fixes the unit of analysis: political resultant. Next, he focuses attention on certain concepts: the perceptions, motivations, positions, power, and maneuvers of the players. And finally, he invokes certain patterns of inference: if a government performed an action, that action was the result of bargaining among players in games. A Politics Model analyst has "explained" this event when he has discovered who did what to whom that yielded the action in question. Predictions are generated by identifying the game in which an issue will arise, the relevant players, and their relative power and skill.

A central metaphor illuminates the differences among these models. Foreign policy has often been compared to moves and sequences of moves in the game of chess. Imagine a chess game in which the observer could see only a screen upon which moves in the game were projected, with no information about how the pieces came to be moved. Initially most observers would asume - as the Rational Actor model does - that an individual chess player was moving the pieces with reference to plans and tactics toward the goal of winning the game. But a pattern of moves can be imagined that would lead some observrs, after watching several games, to consider an Organizational Process Model assumption: the chess player might not be a single individual but rather a loose alliance of semi-independent organizations, each of which moved its set of pieces according to standard operating procedures...the pattern of play might suggest to an observer a Politics Model assumption: a number of distinct players, with distinct objectives but shared power over the pieces, could be determining the moves as the resultant of collegial bargaining. For example, the black rook's move might contribute to the loss of a black knight with no comparable gains for the black team, but with the black rook becoming the principal guardian of the palace on that side of the board.

quote:

A Kinsley gaffe occurs when a political gaffe reveals some truth that a politician did not intend to admit. The term comes from journalist Michael Kinsley, who said, "A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say."

Woolie Wool posted:

I was actually drawing a parallel between Austrian economics and fascism, with praxeology being the ideological foundation for the Austrian School, said form of economics being favored by libertarians and the far right. I would explain in greater detail but it is hard to bring up references while phone posting.

E: Austrian and Chicago economists have often been friendly with or even participated in para-fascist regimes (e.g. Pinochet's Chile).

Three Olives posted:

Kristallnacht, yes, a bigoted pizza place closing for the night because of some phone calls and mean Yelp comments after they said they wouldn't do business with gays is the same thing as homes businesses being destroyed, hundreds of Jews being murdered and tens of thousands drug to concentration camps.

Bryan Fischer posted:

Woolie Wool posted:

Someone linked to a thread, I think started by PJ about ACE somewhere back in this thread but I can't find it anymore. Does anyone else know where this thread is? Or maybe I'm misremembering and no such thread exists?

fade5 posted:

This reminds me, if any of the thread readers haven't read it already, all of that content is from the "Accelerated Christian Education" school cult Prester John was raised in, and Prester John gave a very thorough and depressing view of the curriculum and everyday life in an ACE school cult, which is better described as "literal hell on earth":
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3659026

As a warning, after reading though that thread you may come out feeling very depressed, very angry, or both. Like seriously, ACE is so loving bad that if I was given the choice of raising a child/being raised as a child in an ACE curriculum or in a minority Christian community in Iraq, I'd probably choose Iraq, even with all the anti-Christian discrimination, car bombs, and threats of ISIL beheadings I'd face. ACE is that loving bad.

quote:

kristallnacht

Woolie Wool posted:

I've heard Bavaria basically is Germany's Deep South, and if Austria were part of Germany it would be the really crazy parts of Texas.

Woolie Wool posted:

Just imagine how awesome you'll feel in that snappy gray overcoat when you have the straight ladies on their knees, forced to accept lesbian supremacy.

E: I bet some authoritarians would take these jokes literally.

Xibanya posted:

I kissed a girl and I liked it.

I'm loving how this bill is being walked back in shame. It's still pretty lovely since it's just walked back to include more protections for customers but none for employees, but the loonies don't understand nuance so they'll be gnashing their teeth at how they were denied glorious victory.

quote:

You know how if you train a dog when they're a puppy they'll still obey you when they're 500% the size they used to be because part of them still thinks they're a puppy? That happens to humans to a certain extent too.

Xibanya posted:

I also recently read an article that pointed out that while autism diagnoses are split roughly 50/50 between the sexes, men are diagnosed with Asperger's (or more correctly, high functioning autism) at a rate four times higher than women. The article went on to explain that those women who are diagnosed are often only diagnosed as adults, usually when they hit a wall in their professional career. The article went on to cite some individual examples and some research, and it appears that many women with asperger's are never diagnosed because our society forces women to manifest signs of empathy. So many women with asperger's, especially those who may have above-average intelligence, "learn empathy" by rote - that is to say, they study a person's face for clues to their mental state due to intentionally making it a habit rather than by instinct (to the point that for some, it becomes so rote that an outside observer would not be able to tell they were "weird" in some way.) I also read a separate article that cited a study that showed that in America, the average woman has more empathy than the average man (a difference presumed to be due to cultural rather than biological difference).

FourLeaf posted:

This is extremely interesting, do you have links? Google results seem to be pretty generic.

Xibanya posted:

Drat I thought it was the daily beast but I can't find it again either. Part of the article involved criticism of Simon Baron-Cohen's theory that autism was caused by overexposure of testosterone in the womb (the idea being that autism is the "extreme male brain") and discussed that autism is poorly understood in women for the same reason that heart attacks are - men are assumed to be the default and women are inferior weirdos so nobody bothers to study them. If you google Baron-Cohen autism criticism you may find something relevant. Sorry I can't be of more help at the moment!

Hodgepodge posted:

Why do you think middle America was so terrified of school shooters after Columbine?

Most kids like that probably just learn to keep their heads down until they can leave. Or act out in culturally prescribed ways- self-cutting, etc. Some vanish into education programs that make ACE look like a hippy preschool, though.

FAUXTON posted:

I see Simon Baron-Cohen and for a split instant, every time, I imagine Ali G laying down some 'ard troof about the 'spergs.

Xibanya posted:

Apparently he and Sacha are cousins.

FAUXTON posted:

Nah, they're not.

Hodgepodge posted:

Why do you think middle America was so terrified of school shooters after Columbine?

Most kids like that probably just learn to keep their heads down until they can leave. Or act out in culturally prescribed ways- self-cutting, etc. Some vanish into education programs that make ACE look like a hippy preschool, though.

FAUXTON posted:

Nah, they're not.

Woolie Wool posted:

Are you referring to the military school torture gulags? I think WWASPS is the most infamous one. Still my confidence (call it faith even ) in the human spirit makes me think that there are a few kids with so much willpower that they'd never submit. I mean, there were people who rebelled openly against regimes that would literally kill you for doing so, with full knowledge of the consequences they would face.

TwoQuestions posted:

One thing I realized while driving home is PJ's theory about Authoritarians somewhat resembles Japan's social structure. One of my old instructor's favourite phrases to describe the difference between the American and Japanese social environment is "vertical society". In the US, we're all (supposedly) equal before the law, and nobody outranks anyone else, and we'd use the same language to speak to President Obama as we would to any other person.

In Japan, everyone understands where they stand among their friends and coworkers, as in Jeff is better than Joe because he's been at the Company longer, and Joe is better than Kevin because he's older. This is even enforced down to the linguistic level, as you'd use different language to talk to someone who outranks you vs someone you outrank, and more importantly you'd use very different language to speak to your in-group than you would an out-group.

McAlister posted:

Would you say that the severity of the physical punishment was a key ingredient to breaking you? You seem to alternate between implying that your mental issues were caused by the physical/mental abuse and implying that they were there regardless but were worsened by the abuse.

And having no personal experience with physical abuse on that scale I can't determine whether to consider it a difference of degree or a difference of kind. Does it make the emotional abuse dynamic worse or does it transform it into an entirely new dynamic?

Woolie Wool posted:

Reading the ACE thread. Holy poo poo.

I still want to hear about what happens to kids who are too stubborn and aggressive for the indoctrination to take and continuously resist. They exist, and they're the "stubborn and rebellious sons" the Bible tells you to murder.

Sometimes a dog that is disciplined with physical abuse will realize its own strength when it grows up and maul or even kill its owner. This also happens with humans. I don't care how big you are, an adolescent boy attacking with murderous rage is more than capable of seriously injuring you. Even if they don't become violent, such stubborn people could develop a sense of martyrdom and further abuse will only strengthen it. And in modern societies it's rather hard to get away with killing a child pour encourager les autres like ancient societies did.

quote:

Like I said earlier in the thread, I have been staring into the abyss my entire life.

Xibanya posted:

Wrong

http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2006/11/07/science-gossip-did-you-know-bo/

E:
And just to drive it home,

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/simon-baroncohen-ali-gs-smarter-cousin-and-britains-leading-expert-on-autism-1688427.html

Ocrassus posted:

Which brings me onto my second point. Members of these Authoritarian groups must, in some sense, believe their enemies are similar to them. By that I mean, rather than appreciate liberals for their talks of equality and egalitarianism, what they instead believe they are seeing is the outer narrative that you have described. There is a almost a belief that nobody could wholeheartedly embrace the principles of the enemy after rational thought, and instead there is some other inner narrative there too. This is usually characterised as jealousy, satanism (your anti Christ theory) or, perhaps most intriguingly, power.

I want to bring that last point aside briefly because I think power is interesting. Buried in most any political ideology is a prescriptive ought about how the world should be. That goes for most anyone. But I feel this applies especially to Authoritarians because they want to use the most direct tools of compulsion to enforce their will. What I think Authoritarians fear is that others will use those same means against them. They are genuinely terrified of the homosexual Mafia forcing them to suck dick, or death panels. They fear that any concessions will lead to their complete and utter subjugation.

Oh precious katana posted:

Which brings me to this question: What role does humor play for Authoritarians? Authority figures cannot be laughed at, because this takes them down, so I guess humor must be severely regulated? I started thinking about Eco's "The Name of the Rose", where humor was a threat to the established system, and a text describing how Jesus laughed had to be kept hidden from impressionable minds in the monastery. What's your take on humor, PJ, based on your experiences?

FabioClone posted:

In my experience, the" humor" mostly comes from laughing at the foolishness of those who don't obey authority. I've heard so many pastor jokes that are basically "Can you believe the arrogance of this guy, thinking he knows better than God! This poo poo is crazy!"

And everyone chuckles.

Oh precious katana posted:

Maybe an Authoritarian can only laugh downwards, never upwards or at themselves?

Peztopiary posted:

Rednecks aren't necessarily Authoritarian. It seems like the knowing irony that's part of being able to laugh at yourself would interfere with the Inner Narrative.