Yes, but as a nation, we are stupid to go along with it.

It’s going to be very hard to turn around over 60 years of behavior, particularly the part of interfering and spending money like a drunken sailor on special interests oil and military, the complex is coming to an end and the piggy bank is running out of money. Without useful internal infrastructure building within the country and I don’t mean data-centers, a restructure, a rethink, the decline will just accelerate.

Any worldview that calls destroying your own civilization self-interest deserves to fall

> Never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to self-interest.

Interesting. Sounds like a counter-point to Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

I use Hanlon's quite a bit to explain nonsense I see day to day, but this is a better one in some ways. It shift the conclusion of "but if only they were shown the right way" to "they know what they are doing and are looking out for number 1".

My comment was indeed inspired by Hanlon's razor. And I generally do agree with Hanlon's razor. I just think there's a distinction between malice and selfishness.

- Someone harming you because they expressly desire to harm you? Unlikely

- Someone harming you because they are stupid and don't realize what they are doing? Maybe.

- Someone harming you as a side-effect of pursuing their own selfish interests? Most likely.

The current administration has taken the edge off Hanlon's razor. Now I prefer saying "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."

I enjoy your thinking! Reflecting further...

Hanlons razor is about motive and "size of mental models". Stupidly small, or comprehensively large.

This other thing you note seems to be about scale being low or high. Individually fine-grained, or collectively coarse-grained.

I suspect mistaking either dimension can result in grossly misinterpreting a situation.

The lowest, most fine-grained level of individual self-interest looks a lot collective stupidity and failure to meet the collective's interests.

Democracy supposely recalibrates from these mismatches. But so do more drastic and unruly options, when democracy has failed.

Interesting. I had not considered how scale affects these mental model.

Now I wonder if depending on the scale, one model is better suited. Or maybe they both can be modified based on the scale.

Maybe self-interest is easier to reason about than the interests of a group. Conflicting self-interests can lead to compromises that result in what looks stupid in the end.

> Never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to self-interest.

Sure, but in cases like the new Navy battleships... it's just plain dumb, no two ways about it. Aside from the new ship class name, I see no way that it could be attributed to self-interest.

Wait, it is all about the name and that it's big, isn't it. That is self-interest I suppose, but it's just vanity, which is the stupid form of self-interest.

If an empire is subject to the whim of individuals acting in their own self interest, which causes damage and destruction to the empire, I think this is the definition of dying? It has no recourse against the looters so it gets looted to death.

So we're dying to selfishness?

Much of the stupidity stems from the impulse to coddle Trump’s ego. Both from Trump himself and anyone who interacts with him.

It becomes self-interest only because this man with a terrifically fragile holds so much power, so there is a strong incentive to appease him.

But the root problem is a powerful man beholden to a very fragile ego.

Ultimately the strings are being pulled by someone who stands to gain, but it's not like Trump, Hegseth, Rubio, &co are playing 5D chess here. There are a lot of stupid blundering narcissists running things right now. The actual string-pullers know that, and as long as the stupid blundering narcissism doesn't get in the way of the string-pulling then it doesn't matter to the string-pullers, because stupid blundering narcissists are ultimately the right people for the job (easily manipulated themselves, and effective manipulators of the public). But that doesn't make them or their decisions or their statements less stupid.

Not to mention this all rides on the stupidity and emotional fragility of literally tens or hundreds of millions of voters; anything less and the project would never be possible. That's one reason debilitating the education system at all levels has become a top priority of the current administration (the other being suppression of the free thinking and often liberal or left-wing politics that historically exist at universities).

perhaps their point is 'cui bono'

It's almost as if acting solely in one's own self-interest is stupid.

More like acting without a sense of civic duty is stupid. Or acting without a basis in evidence is stupid.

It’s the lack of coherent leadership at the top, the lawyers, junk bond, equity bankers, oil-men, and the military have had their chance, it’s time for the engineers, science, medical, builders, local bankers and internal infrastructure people to run things. And when I say run things I mean, stop accepting their word as the truth.

You're not going to build a long-term stable system that doesn't limit wealth accumulation, because it doesn't take long until all the power is back with everyone you mentioned.

Does our evolutionary fitness function count as self-interest? Climate change is on a runaway trajectory. We're in line for Darwin's top honour, but no one will be around to receive the award.

Those that acted in their own self-interest thrived, and others died.

Only if it hurts you long-term.