Gonzalo Fernandez-Victorio

Prostitutas con dinero público. Pisos para amantes. Orgías en pandemia. Acosadores en Moncloa. Carrera política con el dinero de la prostitución. Las lecciones de feminismo @sanchezcastejon, te las puedes ahorrar.

Johann Sebastian Bach is the Shakespeare of music. Best there ever was.

Let's go over epistemology and China tea leaf readers. For anybody new here, epistemology is how do we know what we know and for spouting off on Twitter and China make pronouncements about our supposed knowledge. Ask yourself how do we really know what is happening in top level China politics and military? If you actually look at the facts we can say with certainty, pretty much the only thing we know for certain is that everyone seems to agree on is that the top two generals on the Central Military Command have been detained. That is pretty much the only accepted fact. Every piece of "knowledge" downstream from these two facts are dubious. Do we know why they were detained? No. Is there anyone who has better information that would offer insight into even specific aspects? Nope. So really what we are left with is the mere fact that the two generals were detained, everything else is an open question. What about those downstream pieces of knowledge people are putting out? Well the SCMP is state media. Anyone inside either the CCP, PLA, or with claims to knowledge of the situation is clearly pushing a view point and this view point could be just about anything. They could be trying to set themselves up for an asylum claim in the US. They could be trying to cause confusion in US foreign affairs decision makers. They could be trying to burnish revolutionary credentials with Chairman Xi. Are some of them true? Possibly? Are some of them false? Probably most of them. How do you know which ones are true or more true than the others? Incredibly hard to tell that is why they call it the fog of war. Personally I "triangulate". Look for independent pieces of information that match up or people/institutions would typically disagree that appear to agree on facts. There are two additional epistemic points I want you to keep in mind. First, information quality. One of the most common pieces of information is that Xi grew up with this general. That's very low quality information for interpreting events. Why? Take a simple example: you grew up with people and some of them are probably very smart and high quality people. Others are probably real idiots. Just saying you grew up with someone so it is shocking isn't good information because we grow up around idiots and people we don't like. I am not offering an opinion about what happened only that most information being widely cited is very low quality information that really holds no insight into events. Second, distinguish between fact and an assertion or opinion. It is a fact two generals have been detained. It is an assertion or theory what this means for the Chinese military. I could give you a very reasoned and plausible explanation as to why this makes it more dangerous for Taiwan. However, I could also give you a very reasoned and plausible explanation why this weakens the Chinese military and will make China much more cautious doing anything on Taiwan. These are assertions using very distant facts relying on lots of assumptions. Make sure to distinguish between facts and assertions. The reason all this matters is bad analysis can lead in very different directions than what is actually needed. Finally, let me note hold any analysis or beliefs about these events very loosely