Dwarkesh Patel: belief

Transcript context

…I doubt he thought of Japan overextending in China. What expertise does he have? He likes guppies. He likes studying fish in his backyard. He has no expertise. And then, of course, there's the hubris of it all, that we're going to dominate this place. They look at the Chinese as an absolutely feckless backward place. It's had all these warlord things going on and it doesn't dawn on them that by their extreme brutality in China, the Chinese finally get it going. “We're not the problem, the Japanese are the problem.” And it is what the Japanese do that superglues China and is the great impetus to nation building. You can see parallels with Hitler doing the same thing in Russia. And also right now, Putin's busy canonizing Zelensky and creating a real nation out of Ukraine that's never going to forget these ongoing events. Something I learned from your book that I thought was really interesting, and also tragic because of the counterfactual, was one of the strategies you suggested. If Japan thought like a continental power, they could have allied with the Nationalists to beat the Communists in Russia, maybe waged a three-front war with Germany and the Nationalists. And then Japan beat the Communists and prevented the Communists from taking hold in China. Given the consequences of communism in Russia and China and how many lives could have been saved if Hitler was beaten and then the Communists are beaten. That Japanese choice just seems so tragic. Let's say they do it. That means Hitler forever. And that means if you're anything but a nice Aryan, your days are numbered. It certainly would have been the most massive ethnic cleanse ever in Europe.…

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