Thread by @AhsanDeliri

Lessons from Afghanistan:
A few years ago I had a great conversation with Mike Driver on #RiskyConversations about the misapplication and misunderstanding of game theory. Since that time, I've come to refine my grasp of the concept.

Mike's initial idea was that game theory is fundamentally flawed because it locks you into a closed-loop engagement while in NO way guaranteeing that your interlocutor will comply with the same restriction.

In the years since I've come to realize that this idea is very accurate IF you apply it in the process of creation. Creation of value, creation of ideas, creation of companies, products, etc. Why is that? It's because creating things, finding solutions is better

if you approach it from a nonclosed system approach. So let's redefine the bounds for game theory. IF you are in the game of reduction/destruction, game theory all of a sudden IS the only game in town. You engage and as a by-product, you invite the prisoner's dilemma.

How can I say this with any level of confidence? Just look at what is happening in Afghanistan. The Americans pull out and that power vacuum is immediately filled by the Taliban who are not engaged in creation. They want pure destruction.

This is why when someone like @EricRWeinstein mentions that for us to survive as a species, we need to escape the prisoner's dilemma. As an Afghan, it obviously saddens me to see what's happening back home. But am I remotely surprised? Not. In. The. Least.

So this brings up an interesting area to have an informative conversation with someone like @EricRWeinstein or Daniel Schmachtenberger. What I think is missing in the context of that conversation with regards to how society collapses is a ground-up understanding

of how a society functions. It obviously operates at multiple layers like a symphony orchestra. The amount of violence, the potential for violence, and the herding of cats in service of some goal. Even a malevolent government needs to financially survive.

I believe it's time for a foundational level conversation with @EricRWeinstein with myself and @ember_sadat to discuss what is an economy? How does one get structured? How does power structure its presence around the variance of financial constraints around an economy?

Every government has to work on scale. They have to get their financial house in order regardless of their political and ideological tendencies because any government's first rule for survival is to not go bankrupt.

Counter to what the Taliban will eventually have to grapple with, one thing is 100% for sure. The current Afghan administration has managed to completely mangle their country because of the amount of initial low-level graft that grew into full-fledged highway robbery

has left the country incapable of managing the incoming hoard of barbarians. When they come through the wall and aren't met with resistance, perhaps the mismanagement of poverty at the state level is squarely to blame.

My western friends are dumbfounded by the lack of resistance in Afghanistan. I can offer just one take on the issue. The Afghan people are proud and tough. The American policy in that region of the world was always about "containment".

That policy failed in 2001. Once the American snapped into action, the 2nd order effects of 30 years of a war-torn country reduced to prisoner's dilemma reared its ugly head. The "leaders" eager to take the mantle on behalf of the Americans came in with a silent understanding.

You guys support us with funds and military power and we'll keep everything in check. The release valve was removed. The money was stolen off the top initially in the low-level graft that @EricRWeinstein mentions of institutions captured by exercising power and prestige.

Eventually, the wealth transfer just accelerated. The people living in the country were subject to greater bouts of uncertainty. Constant injections of violence by the Taliban. You could buy a degree and a job title by means of force or money.

This creates a source of anger that simmers amongst the population. Once the Americans decide to leave the same Taliban that inflicted the violence and destroyed the security fabric of the poorly funded police and military decided to walk in.

What did the people suffering for 20 years of watching the world make Afghanistan a center of attention to improve just watching the money get stolen decide? They are doing their own 2016 electing of Trump.

They are willing to accept the Taliban just to stick it to the thieves and corrupt serpents who have done nothing by loot the country for 20 years. I don't know everything that's happening on the ground. BUT, I can guarantee one thing.

IF Kabul falls and the Taliban capture the current creepy failed car salesman pretending to be a president, the PEOPLE will want him hung in the town square. Not to be pro-Taliban, but to just be anti-democracy as instantiated by the American barrel of a gun.

This is why I'd love nothing more than to start selective episodes of #RiskyConversations with @ember_sadat to first and foremost discuss how badly a state fails in real-time borne out by failed economies with Daniel Schmachtenberger and @EricRWeinstein.

If we can't solve it at the small scale of Afghanistan, what hope do we have for solving it globally? This is a perfect test case to prove solutions meant to escape the prisoner's dilemma and Game B's promise of a post-communist/capitalist society marred in violence and death.