A Philosopher's Blog

Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects

Belmey

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War is coming. Two nations have set aside their differences to fulfil their historical ambition: to reclaim a province lost long ago. As with any war, arms and armor are needed and who better to claim a long-lost armory stocked with Imperial equipment than the bold adventurers? Complicating the situation is the fact that the old armory is located near the ruins of the summer estate of Count Bekus, a necromancer who was killed, beheaded, burned and interred in a special vault so that he would not plague the world again.

Adventure #1 in the Tholm Series

The adventure can be run as part of the Tholm campaign series; run as a standalone adventure or even cannibalized for encounters to use in your own adventures.

For characters level 1-4.

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War with Iran?

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During the Obama administration, it looked like the United States and Iran were making progress towards more normal relations. The culmination of this was the historic nuclear deal. When Trump was elected president, he quickly backed out of the deal—although he presumably neither understood the deal nor cared what was in it. While it would be odd to attribute an actual planned foreign policy doctrine to Trump (other than “make money for Trump”), his administration took an aggressive stance towards Iran—and this became increasingly so as old-school hardliners and hawks, such as John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Recently tensions have flared with accusations that Iran attacked ships with mines and shot down an American drone. As it now stands, the United States claims that Iran attacked the ships and shot down the drone in international waters. Iran claims they did not attack the shops and while acknowledging they shot down the drone they claim it was over their territory.

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Laying aside political and nationalistic biases, both the United States and Iran have credibility issues. While Iran is not known for its honesty, Trump and the Trump administration have no credibility; lying is simply the nature of this administration. As such, the matter cannot be settled by an appeal to credibility—although, sadly, Iran seems to be less inclined to relentless lying than Trump.

The United States also has a history of creating incidents and lying in order to “justify” going to war. The misrepresented Gulf of Tonkin incident was used by Johnson (a Democrat) to justify open warfare against North Vietnam and Bush (a Republican) got the United States to invade Iraq with lies about weapons of mass destruction. While past deceptions do not prove that there must be a present deception, they do provide grounds for suspicion: what has been done before certainly can be done again. From a critical thinking standpoint, it is reasonable to doubt both the United States and Iran in this matter and suspend judgment. There is also the question of whether the United States should attack Iran.

The hawks of the Trump administration apparently persuaded Trump to launch a strike on Iran; then Trump  claims to have changed his mind when he learned of the likely number of casualties. This seems to indicate an odd split in the Trump administration. On the one hand, Trump has advisors who have long favored regime change in Iran and tend to favor a more militaristic foreign policy. On the other hand, Trump, perhaps because of his experience avoiding serving in Vietnam, has presented himself as reluctant to get America involved in another war. Unfortunately, Trump does not seem to have any meaningful doctrine to define a policy of when to use force—he seems to, as with other things, act on impulse or in accord with the last thing he heard. But if Trump does have a general policy of being reluctant to start a war, then that is certainly a laudable policy—especially considering recent wars.

While Iran consistently acts in ways contrary to the interests of the ruling class of the United States, a war seems like a terrible idea. While Iran is not identical to Iraq, the Iraq war provides an excellent cautionary tale. There is no doubt that the United States could defeat Iran and do so with impunity. The problem lies in the aftermath—as Iraq showed. While Iran is seen as a “bad actor”, it is a stable and functional state—something that should not be destroyed lightly. If the United States removes the existing ruling class, it is not clear that we would be able to build a functional government in the new Iran—even if we airdropped billions upon billions of dollars onto the country. While Iran might not end up like Iraq, it might follow the Syrian model and plunge into chaos and war. While it could be argued that a wrecked Iran would be good for the United States, it seems even more likely that this would be worse for the United States—and certainly worse for the region and the Iranian people.

While we should have no illusions about Iran, it is also important to not have delusions about Iran. It is preferable to try to work things out with diplomacy—as the Obama administration tried. This requires, obviously enough, sticking to the deals we make—or at least only breaking them for excellent reasons, rather than from petty impulses.

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Libra: Facebucks

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As was presumably inevitable, Facebook has begun its entry into the realm of cryptocurrency. Rather than going with the obvious “Facebucks”, the company calls the new currency and payment system “Libra.” Given Facebook’s fundamental lack of ethics in favor of profit-pragmatism, this development is raising some concerns. To be fair to Facebook, some good does come out of the company and Libra does have some positive aspects.

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On the positive side, Libra can provide people who do not otherwise have access to traditional banking access to a currency system that can serve some important financial needs. That Facebook will profit from this does not diminish this value; while it is nice for people to do good for free, eventually one must do something that can pay the bills. Libra might also provide users with greater security and safety when it comes to financial transactions, which would also be a plus.

It should be noted that while Libra is classified as a cryptocurrency, it does differ from the more traditional versions, such as Bitcoin. One difference is that Libra is supposed to be an asset based crypto currency (what could be called an ABC or even an ABCC)—there are real-world assets behind it, rather than being a speculative investment it is intended to be money. Unlike Bitcoin, it will be closely controlled—thus causing some to see it more like Venmo than a traditional cryptocurrency. This has positive and negative aspects, depending on what one intends to do with the currency. While all these are worth considering, my main concern is with the main business model of Facebook: monetizing private user data.

Facebook claims that it is but one of many companies involved in Libra and that it has walled off the information that will be spewing from the cryptocurrency operation. It could be argued that Facebook would be content with the revenue generated by Libra and the executives believe that they need to maintain the wall in order to gain the trust of customers. But the data collected from the operation of this cryptocurrency would be incredibly valuable—so valuable that it is hard to imagine that Facebook would forgo drinking deep of this data stream. Facebook has repeatedly shown that it cannot be trusted and any protests to the contrary are analogous to those of a serial cheater telling their partner that they have changed and will be faithful this time. If Facebook persists in the tale that it will respect the wall, it will be just a matter of time before it is revealed that they did not. As noted above, the ethics of the company (if they can be called that) are such that the company cannot be trusted to respect privacy or abide by its public promises.

That said, it can be worth supping with the devil, if you have a long spoon and are aware of what the deals you make entail. The devil must do as the devil does, the same is true of Facebook: to expect otherwise is to fail to understand the nature of the company and capitalism in general. The question is not whether Facebook will use your Libra data, but whether the service is worth providing Facebook with data—just as with Facebook’s other services. So, yes, I will probably use Libra if it is advantageous for me to do so.

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Should Political Candidates Accept Foreign Dirt?

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During an interview, President Trump said that if he were offered damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government he might accept it and not inform the FBI. Since Trump is Trump, he also asserted that he thought that in such a case a person should maybe accept the information and contact the FBI. Laying aside the problem of trying to determine Trump’s definitive position on this matter, there is the general question of whether political candidates in the United States should accept damaging information provided by foreign governments or foreigners.

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From a legal standpoint, there is some debate about whether accepting such information would run afoul of election law. Foreign nationals are forbidden from providing contributions, donations, other expenditures or exchanging any “thing of value.” The problem arises because “thing of value” is vague. On the one hand, damaging information could obviously be politically valuable to a campaign and would thus seem to fall under the law. On the other hand, one could argue that while such information would be useful, it is not a thing of value in the same sense as money or providing advertisements for a candidate.

I think that such information should be considered a thing of value; this is because the law is aimed at preventing foreign interference in our elections and providing such information would be providing something potentially valuable (opposition research is expensive) that is aimed at interfering with an election. One could also make the sophist argument that since political spending has been ruled to be speech, then it would follow that political speech is also money—so providing political information would be the same as providing political money. This argument is, of course, easily countered by distinguishing between the “is” of predication and the “is” of identity.

I am certainly willing to listen to someone arguing against me and contending that if China’s intelligence agency provided Joe Biden with damaging information about Trump, then this would be legally fine. As far as resolving the legal matter, I suspect that there will court cases arising out of the 2020 election addressing it. But what of the moral issue?

One way to offer a moral defense of accepting such information is to argue that if the information is true and relevant to the candidate’s suitability for office, then the source is irrelevant. For example, imagine that a Democrat has rigged a primary so that she wins and the Russians hack into her email and find out about it. If this information is given to the Republican running against her and he uses it, this seems morally acceptable: the information is relevant and true. Obviously, knowingly using false or irrelevant information would be morally wrong. For example, imagine that a Democrat gets an email from Russian intelligence claiming that Trump runs a sex-slave ring out of the basement of a McDonald’s in Tallahassee and decides to use the information. Since it is not true, using the information would be morally wrong. Unless, of course, one could make a utilitarian argument about the ends justifying the means.

It can be countered that even if the information provided is true and relevant, it would still be wrong to accept it from a foreign power or national. Such an argument would be built on the idea that an election should be limited to the influence of citizens of the United States and that accepting foreign help contaminates the process. This could be seen as a matter of fairness analogous to that of sports: a football team would be wrong to accept a stolen playbook provided by fan. It can also be seen as a matter of integrity: the election is our business, not the business of foreigners. There is also the obvious concern of ongoing foreign influence; that a candidate would be indebted to foreigners or that they would have blackmail material to use against them.

Because of these considerations, I disagree with what Trump might have said. That is, I hold that accepting damaging information from a foreign power would be wrong and that such efforts should be reported to the FBI. I hold to this whether the information aids the Democrats or the Republicans.

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Trump Victory in 2020?

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As this is being written, a swarm of Democrats are vying to see who will go up against Trump in 2020. While there have been some calls for a bold Republican to try to primary Trump, this is extremely unlikely. Trump enjoys strong support from Republican voters and Republicans have long ceased to offer even feeble condemnations of his worst deeds. On the one hand, this support might strike some as odd. To use an analogy, imagine if you hired a plumber and they talked about their job like Trump (borderline incoherent) and expressed no interest or skill in doing plumbing? You would not support that plumber or be inclined to hire them again. One might say that this analogy breaks down because Trump is like the owner of a plumbing business—what matters is the people that do the actual work. While this analogy has some merit, it runs into a few problems. First, Trump has put many incompetents and grifters into top positions—so the picked employees of the company are also awful. Second, the majority of the employees have nothing to do with Trump—they are the rank and file federal workers who keep the country going regardless of who is in the Whitehouse. If they are doing a competent job, this has nothing to do with Trump.

 On the other hand, Trump’s level of support makes perfect sense. Trump is eminently adapted to the political ecosystem that the Republicans created—he is a magnificent alligator for their lovingly crafted swamp. For example, the Republicans have been pushing the “liberal media” line for decades and Trump is hatred of the free press made manifest. To add additional illustrations, he has taken the reins of the bandwagon of voter fraud and has set aside the Republican dog whistle for bullhorn.

Trump, by chance or instinct, also fits perfectly into the politics as team sport/tribal conflict model. He “sticks it to” the other side, praises his side, and values only winning. As such, he is the perfect political beast for the Republican party. While there are some meaningful political differences between Americans, there is considerable agreement. There is also the obvious fact that Trump has taken positions that directly oppose professed Republican values: he is running a deficit, increasing spending, opposing free trade and so on. This indicates that political identity is often rather like being a sports fan: the teams stand for nothing, one just happens to have a favorite and supports it with unwarranted fervor because it is one’s team.

While Trump will win the Republican vote in 2020, he still needs independents and perhaps some Democrats to win. While some might entertain the wishful thinking that Trump cannot win, he has an excellent chance in 2020. First, the Democrats are…well…the Democrats. Although Obama’s people did an amazing job using technology and motivating voters, the current Democrats do not include such a charismatic figure and they are not as ruthlessly strategic as the Republicans (see, for example, voter suppression efforts). Second, the economy is very strong, and it seems likely that it will stay that way—incumbent presidents tend to get re-elected when the economy is doing well. This is somewhat like the passengers praising the captain of a cruise ship for the nice weather; silly but that is how people think. Or, to use another analogy, it would be like praising the captain of your intramural softball team because the field is so nice. This is because the president really has little impact on the economy; though they do have some.  

 Third, Trump seems utterly immune to scandals and terrible behavior that would be career-ending for almost any other human. Nancy Pelosi professes that the political calculus precludes impeaching Trump, so he seems safe there. In fact, attempting to impeach Trump would probably increase his chances of being elected. Not trying to do so leaves him able to run and also gives him a point on which to mock the Democrats.  Because of these factors, unless the economy tanks, Trump is likely to be re-elected.

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Finger Biter on DriveThruRPG

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Set in 1920s Scotland, this adventure sends the investigators on a journey to find who or what has been stealing fingers. What is the connection between the missing fingers and an old tale of gold, madness and death?

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https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/279153/Finger-Biter

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