Kasparov’s checklist is perfect…skip planning, bully allies, trust Putin, what could go wrong?
As a chess player myself (amateur, my wife destroys me regularly), I recognize brilliant strategic thinking when I see it. The “dredge a new strait across Saudi Arabia and Iran will pay for it” might be my favorite move on the board. There’s a certain schadenfreude watching Trump stumble through geopolitical disasters he created.
The sad part?
Iranians suffering twice—once under theocratic regime they didn’t choose, now under Trumpian stupidity they definitely didn’t choose. Як кажуть в моїй українській родині, це темна комедія.
Looking forward to the Ukraine dispatches, actual strategic thinking from people playing the long game. ;-/)
That was one line among many I really loved, especially the Iran will pay for it. Did it ever dawn on MAGA that Mexico never paid one penny for the wall that donny built??
Garry, I really enjoy your posts. I find them provocative and taking on interesting angles.
Over the last week, I've been trying to dig into one question that's been really nagging at me: if the Straits of Hormuz are such a vulnerable point, why hasn't more infrastructure and defence mechanisms been put in place to defend it? This week, everyone has suddenly become an expert on the Strait of Hormuz, but surely, if this has been a known issue for the last 50 years,
I don't understand why bordering states (i.e., Saudi Arabia and the UAE) haven't made the investment, or whether shipping companies, port operators, insurers, or other invested parties have been providing continuous surveillance, monitoring, and interception capabilities. More than 25 billion has been spent by the US so far due to turmoil driven by such a significant oil price, which must easily overshadow the investment for submarine drones, etcetera
Is it simply that we've all had our eyes gazing into the skies for missiles, or to the ground for troops, and framed it as a military target to recognise and respond to the commercial and civic order threat?
I'd be fascinated by your views, as well as those of anyone else who reads this post, for their perspectives. Thanks in advance, Patrick
>>Want to see other musings and contrarian views? Restack this note and subscribe to me
Gary - I love the sarcasm. It is truly a disaster. It’s hard to believe that a big percentage of Americans support this lunatic simply because they want to see the system burned to the ground. They are getting their wish. I have a wealthy friend who told me he was voting for Trump this last election - just voting against taxes. I said - what good will all your money be when there is no country left?
Ah. Sir Basil Liddell-Hart interviewed senior generals of the Wehrmacht after WWII. They commented on American operational skills in command.
American generals tended to follow US Military doctrine in a fairly uninspired plodding way- then would respond suddenly in a surprise way, off-book, without warning. It would catch the Wehrmacht off-guard. There was absolutely no evidence that superior command ordered a change. Americans would do this.
Of course, the real German generals—not the Nazis—had studied American doctrine for years, so they knew the exact deviation from book.
They were intrigued; then they realized that the Americans didn’t know their doctrine all that well, and just improvised when they didn’t know what else to do.
Befehl durch Idiotie. Command by Dummkopfs. Had they only seen Warmaster Hegseth and Supreme Kommandissimo Trumpf, they would be impressed.
I just came up with a NEW - possibly new chess game variant.
.
It's called HEAT DEATH of the UNIVERSE - ENTROPIC CHESS (game)...
.
.
Hear me out.
.
First imagine the normal chess board where each square is exploded randomly into three dimensional space. BUT each chess square retains it's proper color and set of 2d coordinates - from a8 to h1 <--- thusly being labelled.
.
Think of each square as an individual portal (as such).
.
The disposition in space of each flat square is truly RANDOM - but one can dial up or dial down / adjust the degree of randomness from that of a point-projection outwards from a notional center of an "original" flat and planar (intact) chess board.
.
The whole scope of an 'Exploded" chess board can be defined by probability density functions and increasing density of corresponding error ellipsoids in 3d space. To one sigma or Two sigma if desired.
.
We are not all there yet - but this being a temporary mental model for what's coming next - HOW the game is really played... Hang on just a bit longer...
.
One mo
.
.
The individual squares are in completely (or adjusted randomness - or attenuated ) random positions in 3d space.
.
Therefore a single linear move of one piece could traverse a number of squares that are scattered very far apart - although the final destination square could be conceptually mapped-to in one step - or one single ( concatenated ) spatial transformation.
.
What might be fun - Super Mario Galaxy style - would be to have 3d B-spline curves that connect the randomly disposed squares that when sliding or moving a piece would " zip" about here and there and hither and yon left and right and even through three rotational angles of attitude (pitch Roll and yaw) for the individual piece... The piece itself could be 'Whimsically" distorted when it makes that journey... One would need to be a bit more lax about taking one's virtual finger off the piece so people can learn and explore that particular environment more naturally.
.
Obviously every time the game would be spatially different or one could save a particular "Board smash" that one really likes as a particular challenge to come back to.
.
BUT that's NOT the game...
.
What is the game ?
.
Well it's
.
ENTROPIC CHESS - to the HEAT DEATH of the Universe (game)...
.
.
One mo ...
..
.
So we actually START in a highly ordered original format of what an intact chess - board should (conventionally) BE.
BUT over time as you play the game the spatial position of each of the square becomes increasingly disordered and generally more spaced apart...
.
So in that sense it becomes a bit of memory game - to memorize the pieces on a more internal flat ordered abstract matrix of the chess board in one's mind as the board progressively and entropically degenerates / dissipates.
.
All the time the clock is ticking... Tic tic tic tic ...
.
Different setting for ghosted collision and collision avoidance or intersecting pieces and squares.
.
Different time curves can be applied for non-linear board disordering...
.
As time goes on and the match continues the pieces on their respective squares - the squares moving progressively to MORE distant and disordered / randomized location with respect to their original spatially intact continuous and contiguous chess board.
.
The 'Situation" could become so chronic that in a SPACE like environment that one cannot even see the next square .... - One would have to plot a course more like a space ship to even see the next squares unless - you can enter in the specific coordinates / normal chess notation.
.
^^^ That.
.
To basically take a jump through "Hyper space" the imaginary short cut for traversing ever increasingly larger and counter intuitive distances and positions in space.
.
One mo
.
.
Different variants for entropic corruption of the chess board - could be tested for which degrees of freedom of six degrees of Freedom 6DOF would be locked down into more parametric orientations (like spherical from a centrally projected point or whether one could have upside down squares whose perpendicular vector normals poke and point in all kinds of crazy directions or whether that most of the squares are oriented parallel to a notional ground plane.).
.
.
It think it would a good game for people to improve their spatial memory and also illustrate to civilian and military "Peep" alike - there are no easy solutions for the well prepared ... The WAR won't be over by Christmas - but just to special issues of complexity and increasing difficulty verging on a mathematically intractable problems - some games and some wars will never find a conclusion before THE HEAT DEATH of the UNIVERSE... (effectively).
.
Much like the Towers of Hanoi problem* that can be expanded to mathematically intractable problem in terms of the thousands of years it requires to complete.
.
[I have software and code libraries to write such a VR / immersive / rendered (entropic chess-game and environment ) but - so would a lot of other folks that have an active sandbox in this area.].
.
Just a "Brain fart" there ... / minor - "Thought".
.
Maybe someone already thought of that but didn't build it.
Also it trains people to think faster - as things become increasingly annoying and progressively more difficult to the point of being impossible - UNLESS you have the capability to memorize and plan an entire chessboard in ones head...
.
Of course a cheat/ "Flash" button could be provided to get a monetary sneak peak as to what the game actually looks like on an untransformed / entropically undisturbed (planar) chess board.
You could even have a handicap system where a novice chess player is playing on the "Ordered" conventional board and the more experienced near master could be playing such an opponent using the disordered version / interface.
.
THAT way (maybe) very good chess players could enhance their mental capabilities playing much weaker players / more novice.
.
Ironically that might take each player's game up to the next level / levels .
.
I know people get precious about playing much worse opponents as that can "Degrade" their own game.
.
There's a similar perceived problem in Fencing and fencing competitions.
The idea is that you plan everything backwards in tremendous detail from having won the peace living in absolute harmony like the Smurfs and Gargamel's corpse having been fished out of the well not to further poison everybody and Gargamel's pesky cat (Azrael) now behind bars scheduled for medical experiments ... and everybody had indeed been bought a puppy "status" - and lived happily ever after...
.
^^^ Working backwards - step by step (from that point) by and of actual planning being approved in triplicate by the "International community" that then and ONLY then with approval can the first shot be fired.
.
Failure to submit detailed plans for how the peace will actually BE - and paid for - WILL result in your regime change styled "Intervention" being cancelled by the fuzzy cardigan brigade and international consortium of well-wishers.
Kasparov’s checklist is perfect…skip planning, bully allies, trust Putin, what could go wrong?
As a chess player myself (amateur, my wife destroys me regularly), I recognize brilliant strategic thinking when I see it. The “dredge a new strait across Saudi Arabia and Iran will pay for it” might be my favorite move on the board. There’s a certain schadenfreude watching Trump stumble through geopolitical disasters he created.
The sad part?
Iranians suffering twice—once under theocratic regime they didn’t choose, now under Trumpian stupidity they definitely didn’t choose. Як кажуть в моїй українській родині, це темна комедія.
Looking forward to the Ukraine dispatches, actual strategic thinking from people playing the long game. ;-/)
—Johan
That was one line among many I really loved, especially the Iran will pay for it. Did it ever dawn on MAGA that Mexico never paid one penny for the wall that donny built??
What I’ve always wondered is what stopped them from invading Mexico and taking whatever they wanted by force.
Just you wait.
The way things are going, Mexico probably wants to build a wall to keep the MAGAlomaniacs out.
Thank you for this piece of art ! Worth reading for pleasure 😉
🫤 now the peace prizes will flow 💣
Garry, I really enjoy your posts. I find them provocative and taking on interesting angles.
Over the last week, I've been trying to dig into one question that's been really nagging at me: if the Straits of Hormuz are such a vulnerable point, why hasn't more infrastructure and defence mechanisms been put in place to defend it? This week, everyone has suddenly become an expert on the Strait of Hormuz, but surely, if this has been a known issue for the last 50 years,
I don't understand why bordering states (i.e., Saudi Arabia and the UAE) haven't made the investment, or whether shipping companies, port operators, insurers, or other invested parties have been providing continuous surveillance, monitoring, and interception capabilities. More than 25 billion has been spent by the US so far due to turmoil driven by such a significant oil price, which must easily overshadow the investment for submarine drones, etcetera
Is it simply that we've all had our eyes gazing into the skies for missiles, or to the ground for troops, and framed it as a military target to recognise and respond to the commercial and civic order threat?
I'd be fascinated by your views, as well as those of anyone else who reads this post, for their perspectives. Thanks in advance, Patrick
>>Want to see other musings and contrarian views? Restack this note and subscribe to me
http://preceperi.substack.com or drop me a message. <<
**Mens otiosa mundum fingit**
Step 1) Ram the peg through the hole. Full send, no surrender.
Step 2) Figure out how to make the square peg fit through the circular hole
Step 3) Patiently wait for the circular hole to shape itself into a square hole
Step 4) Ram the peg through the hole
Step 5) Throw a tantrum and bash the hole with the peg until physics capitulates
“until physics capitulates”
Good one.
If there is one true statement about Trump he is his own worst enemy, and if there’s another truth is that he has a proverbial horseshoe up his ass.
🎯
Another genius move being contemplated:
“US considers lifting sanctions on some Iranian oil”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d415g55nno
You, apparently, were not only World Champion, but a 5 dimensional grandmaster as well. For only a 5D chess player could lay out such a genius plan.
Gary - I love the sarcasm. It is truly a disaster. It’s hard to believe that a big percentage of Americans support this lunatic simply because they want to see the system burned to the ground. They are getting their wish. I have a wealthy friend who told me he was voting for Trump this last election - just voting against taxes. I said - what good will all your money be when there is no country left?
" It’s hard to believe that a big percentage of Americans support this lunatic simply because they want to see the system burned to the ground.."
.
Whaaaa ?
.
I thought that was an extreme minority...
.
We had always hoped for the right kind of wrecking ball...
.
.
I'm not sure that "we" (the hopeful of "useful" change - got that ). How would I know I'm in a very "Special" environment.
.
I'm looking at things more at an arc of hundreds to thousands of years.
.
The archeologist in me.
.
.
DARK
Headed to Ukraine? Do not miss the opportunity to meet up with Tim Mak’s team at The Counteroffensive and The Arsenal.
There is a wonderful story about American battlefield doctrine in WWII by lidell-hart I will share later.
Ah. Sir Basil Liddell-Hart interviewed senior generals of the Wehrmacht after WWII. They commented on American operational skills in command.
American generals tended to follow US Military doctrine in a fairly uninspired plodding way- then would respond suddenly in a surprise way, off-book, without warning. It would catch the Wehrmacht off-guard. There was absolutely no evidence that superior command ordered a change. Americans would do this.
Of course, the real German generals—not the Nazis—had studied American doctrine for years, so they knew the exact deviation from book.
They were intrigued; then they realized that the Americans didn’t know their doctrine all that well, and just improvised when they didn’t know what else to do.
Befehl durch Idiotie. Command by Dummkopfs. Had they only seen Warmaster Hegseth and Supreme Kommandissimo Trumpf, they would be impressed.
There are no easy solutions for the well prepared.
I just came up with a NEW - possibly new chess game variant.
.
It's called HEAT DEATH of the UNIVERSE - ENTROPIC CHESS (game)...
.
.
Hear me out.
.
First imagine the normal chess board where each square is exploded randomly into three dimensional space. BUT each chess square retains it's proper color and set of 2d coordinates - from a8 to h1 <--- thusly being labelled.
.
Think of each square as an individual portal (as such).
.
The disposition in space of each flat square is truly RANDOM - but one can dial up or dial down / adjust the degree of randomness from that of a point-projection outwards from a notional center of an "original" flat and planar (intact) chess board.
.
The whole scope of an 'Exploded" chess board can be defined by probability density functions and increasing density of corresponding error ellipsoids in 3d space. To one sigma or Two sigma if desired.
.
We are not all there yet - but this being a temporary mental model for what's coming next - HOW the game is really played... Hang on just a bit longer...
.
One mo
.
.
The individual squares are in completely (or adjusted randomness - or attenuated ) random positions in 3d space.
.
Therefore a single linear move of one piece could traverse a number of squares that are scattered very far apart - although the final destination square could be conceptually mapped-to in one step - or one single ( concatenated ) spatial transformation.
.
What might be fun - Super Mario Galaxy style - would be to have 3d B-spline curves that connect the randomly disposed squares that when sliding or moving a piece would " zip" about here and there and hither and yon left and right and even through three rotational angles of attitude (pitch Roll and yaw) for the individual piece... The piece itself could be 'Whimsically" distorted when it makes that journey... One would need to be a bit more lax about taking one's virtual finger off the piece so people can learn and explore that particular environment more naturally.
.
Obviously every time the game would be spatially different or one could save a particular "Board smash" that one really likes as a particular challenge to come back to.
.
BUT that's NOT the game...
.
What is the game ?
.
Well it's
.
ENTROPIC CHESS - to the HEAT DEATH of the Universe (game)...
.
.
One mo ...
..
.
So we actually START in a highly ordered original format of what an intact chess - board should (conventionally) BE.
BUT over time as you play the game the spatial position of each of the square becomes increasingly disordered and generally more spaced apart...
.
So in that sense it becomes a bit of memory game - to memorize the pieces on a more internal flat ordered abstract matrix of the chess board in one's mind as the board progressively and entropically degenerates / dissipates.
.
All the time the clock is ticking... Tic tic tic tic ...
.
Different setting for ghosted collision and collision avoidance or intersecting pieces and squares.
.
Different time curves can be applied for non-linear board disordering...
.
As time goes on and the match continues the pieces on their respective squares - the squares moving progressively to MORE distant and disordered / randomized location with respect to their original spatially intact continuous and contiguous chess board.
.
The 'Situation" could become so chronic that in a SPACE like environment that one cannot even see the next square .... - One would have to plot a course more like a space ship to even see the next squares unless - you can enter in the specific coordinates / normal chess notation.
.
^^^ That.
.
To basically take a jump through "Hyper space" the imaginary short cut for traversing ever increasingly larger and counter intuitive distances and positions in space.
.
One mo
.
.
Different variants for entropic corruption of the chess board - could be tested for which degrees of freedom of six degrees of Freedom 6DOF would be locked down into more parametric orientations (like spherical from a centrally projected point or whether one could have upside down squares whose perpendicular vector normals poke and point in all kinds of crazy directions or whether that most of the squares are oriented parallel to a notional ground plane.).
.
.
It think it would a good game for people to improve their spatial memory and also illustrate to civilian and military "Peep" alike - there are no easy solutions for the well prepared ... The WAR won't be over by Christmas - but just to special issues of complexity and increasing difficulty verging on a mathematically intractable problems - some games and some wars will never find a conclusion before THE HEAT DEATH of the UNIVERSE... (effectively).
.
Much like the Towers of Hanoi problem* that can be expanded to mathematically intractable problem in terms of the thousands of years it requires to complete.
.
[I have software and code libraries to write such a VR / immersive / rendered (entropic chess-game and environment ) but - so would a lot of other folks that have an active sandbox in this area.].
.
Just a "Brain fart" there ... / minor - "Thought".
.
Maybe someone already thought of that but didn't build it.
.
.
ENTROPIC CHESS™ - to the HEAT DEATH of the Universe (game)... ©
.
.
game...
.
Also it trains people to think faster - as things become increasingly annoying and progressively more difficult to the point of being impossible - UNLESS you have the capability to memorize and plan an entire chessboard in ones head...
.
Of course a cheat/ "Flash" button could be provided to get a monetary sneak peak as to what the game actually looks like on an untransformed / entropically undisturbed (planar) chess board.
.
That also help/aid the memory training.
.'
.
.
_________________________________________________________________________________
.
*.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi
.
^^^ They updated the page on this - awesome - great graphics / graphical explanations they didn't have before.
.
.
.
You could even have a handicap system where a novice chess player is playing on the "Ordered" conventional board and the more experienced near master could be playing such an opponent using the disordered version / interface.
.
THAT way (maybe) very good chess players could enhance their mental capabilities playing much weaker players / more novice.
.
Ironically that might take each player's game up to the next level / levels .
.
I know people get precious about playing much worse opponents as that can "Degrade" their own game.
.
There's a similar perceived problem in Fencing and fencing competitions.
The idea is that you plan everything backwards in tremendous detail from having won the peace living in absolute harmony like the Smurfs and Gargamel's corpse having been fished out of the well not to further poison everybody and Gargamel's pesky cat (Azrael) now behind bars scheduled for medical experiments ... and everybody had indeed been bought a puppy "status" - and lived happily ever after...
.
^^^ Working backwards - step by step (from that point) by and of actual planning being approved in triplicate by the "International community" that then and ONLY then with approval can the first shot be fired.
.
Failure to submit detailed plans for how the peace will actually BE - and paid for - WILL result in your regime change styled "Intervention" being cancelled by the fuzzy cardigan brigade and international consortium of well-wishers.
.
.
3 more weeks to the total victory over Iran. Checkmate.