Linkblogging, kiddies: I absolutely adore this crisp and cutting piece by Daniel Davies, one of my top three online intellectual heroes (the other two being Cosma Shalizi (a physicist previously mentioned in these pages) and Paul O'Brien (a Scottish lawyer who reviews X-Men comics)). It's basically a takedown of the argument that we must continue to prosecute the war in Iraq in order to maintain strategic credibility, i.e. a reputation for not being wimps. This line of reasoning, says Davies, has
the kind of combination of “counter-intuitive” thinking and political convenience that always appeals to the armchair Machiavelli, as well as to the kind of person who thinks it’s witty to describe things as “Economics 101”(Airmiles [i.e. Thomas Friedman —KH] has been all over this one for ages, naturally). What’s it like as a piece of game-theoretic reasoning?
Lousy. It is certainly true that one of the benefits of doing something stupid is that it saves you from having to spend money on maintaining your reputation as an idiot. However, is the reputation of an idiot really worth having?
It turns out that it can be proved by theorem that the answer is no…
Just read it. And don't make fun of me for being sincere about things! I see you snickering.
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