How the Holocaust could happen again

The scariest thing about the Holocaust is not that millions of people were killed in it. Which, to be sure, is a scary thing in and of itself - anything that kills millions is scary - but even scarier is the weapon used to kill all these people. And the brutal industrial efficiency with which this weapon was applied.

It should be pointed out that the Holocaust was not a sudden impulse amongst a few maniacs with supercharged ambitions. Such impulses and such ambitions can be found in abundance in more people than they really ought to, but most of these people never get around to act on it. And those who do only kill comparatively few in comparison - although every death is a tragedy, even the most ruthlessly efficient mass shooter can only shoot so many before running out of bullets. No matter how megalomaniac a crazed individual gets, it is physically impossible for them to shoot millions of people.

The Nazis began their holocausting using guns. Line up the Jews and shoot them. Bang. One bullet, one dead Jew. Easy mathematics. After a while, though, they found that this brought along unexpected difficulties - bad publicity and poor working conditions. It's hard to keep a populace sedate when parts of it are visibly marched to a nearby field and shot, and the logistics of dead bodies is not a problem to be underestimated, especially when it comes to optics. Worse is the logistics of those who have to execute these policies - they break psychologically, and have to be replaced with new bodies. Seeing mass death is devastating in the extraordinary circumstances of the front lines, and even worse on the home front. If the final solution were to be sustainable, it had to utilize more efficient means.

They found more efficient means. They used them systematically and with comprehensive documentation. They mobilized enormous resources in order to find even more efficient means of utilizing these means, and then set to work using them, with the implacable pace of a looming Monday morning.

They weaponized the ordinary working day, and the workers who tried to live their ordinary workaday lives.

It's incredibly difficult to give a civilian a weapon and ask them to shoot another unarmed person who's incapable of defending themselves. Most people have an inbuilt instinct that screams that such an act is the most wrong they could possibly do, and even soldiers have to undergo hard training to suppress this instinct - even when it comes to shooting at enemy soldiers who are shooting at them. The instinct not to kill is a fundamental part of the human psyche, and those who want to exterminate a large number of humans have to take this into account. A more rational division of labor was needed to get the job done.

With this in mind, the Nazis separated their victims from the societies they were to be eradicated from. First in the form of ghettos, and then in the form of concentration camps. When the victims were removed from the ordinary lives of ordinary people, they could be processed with brutal efficiency without causing either public relations disasters or workplace hazards. The old expression "out of sight, out of mind" becomes somewhat morbid when what's not seen is the routinized killing of millions.

Routine was the main component of the Holocaust. It takes time to read millions of names (if you begin now, you'll be done in a week or so, depending on if you need to sleep or not), and it takes even longer to put these names out of existence. It cannot be improvised, and has to be carefully planned. It has to be administered. Trains must be kept rolling, employee registers updated, budgets balanced. It requires a whole range of boring activities that in and of themselves are neither interesting nor deadly.

The Nazis mobilized large parts of the civilian workforce to make the Holocaust happen, one small task at a time. Repairing and maintaining trains might seem a morally neutral job in and of itself, but not when these trains have destination Auschwitz. Sitting in a gray office and administering employee paperwork might seem like the least bloodthirsty thing imaginable, but even SS troops had to be paid. Budgets are among the most boring things in existence, yet the notion of being bored to death becomes terrifying when one reads the planned expenditures on concentration camps.

These are but three examples of tasks that needed to be performed to keep the Holocaust going. Most of these tasks didn't demand more than that they were fulfilled with a modicum of enthusiasm and with modest efficiency. They didn't demand any particular ideological conviction, and as long as they were done, the killing could continue. As long as ordinary people kept going to their ordinary jobs under ordinary working conditions, the Holocaust could add another working day to its balance sheets. Production is proceeding on schedule and within budget.

Under these conditions, the mass killings could continue out of sight, all the while the civilians continued to try to eke out their lives in the shadow of the war. Ordinary people could continue to go to work, catch movies at the cinema and live to the best of their abilities, most of the time without even thinking about Jews (except when mentioned in the propaganda). They had other things to do, and when they after the end of the war said they didn't know what was going on, this was more often than not because they actually did not know. It was not a part of their lived experience, and those things that are out of sight are also out of mind.

The scariest thing about the Holocaust is not that millions died in it. The scariest thing is that a whole society was re-focused to mass-producing death on industrial scales, and that the means of producing these deaths was the accumulated efforts of millions of ordinary citizen's daily labor. Its infrastructure was the boring routine 9-5 workday, writ large.

It becomes even scarier when we remember that "an honest day's work" is still regarded as a positive thing. Going to work, performing one's duty and earning one's keep are positively charged phrases. There are many governments in the world with the explicit aims of putting more people to work. Arbeit macht frei.

When it is said that the Holocaust could happen again, this should not be understood in terms of the continued hatred against Jews and other groups. It should be understood in terms of ordinary, honest people being put to work in the infrastructural and administrative sections of another industrial mass killing, and that this can be done without them noticing. Worse, that the inevitable whistleblowers exposing these killings will be lost among the absurd amounts of other terrible things happening in the world. What's one more hard-to-confirm rumor when there's a deadline to meet?

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is ordinary people not doing anything in particular. One workday at a time.

Your alienation begins now.

Originally published January 30, 2016

Rationality for useful people

A thought struck me as I reread the discursive anomaly on Matthew Arnold. (Two, counting the thought of upping the production rates of new ones.) It's that I missed something, and that this something is important enough to turn into a new post. This something is a phrase, and I shall now quote it verbatim:

"the best that is known and thought in the world"

It is seemingly a forgettable phrase, short and stuck in between other more quotable phrases. Yet it conveys what criticism ought to be about. It approaches the object of study armed with the best that is thought and known, and proceeds to educate the readers about these things.

This differs from the notion of writing from the best of one's ability. Anyone can do that, with varying results. Writing from the standpoint of the best known & thought, on the other hand, puts an obligation on the writer to haul arse and go find these best things, and to confront them head on with alacrity. Someone else has already done it better, and it is the duty of a critic to go find where and how this feat has been accomplished.

Arnold writes provocatively that England, not being quite the whole world, is most likely not the place where the best that is known and thought in the world is to be found. Which in the 1800s must have been quite a provocative statement. I can only add that this statement is valid, mutatis mutandis, even today.

The most fruitful application of the notion of what is best known & thought is as an inverse. That is to say, as something to be aware of when some text or communication actively isn't utilizing these things, and instead settles for something else. Something that is, by necessity and in comparison, worse than what it ought to be, and has to be read as such.

You can already see the critical impulse at work here. Sensing that something could be better is the first step towards critiquing it. It is a subtle yet useful thing.

It's even more useful when it comes to discussing people who like to style themselves rational. They of all people would agree that discussions should be held using the best tools at hand, and that to not do so would be - indeed - irrational. Yet when they return for the umpteenth time to present the same rehashed talking point about, say, feminism, this notion strikes with a vengeance. Not knowing something right here and now, in the heat of discussion, is forgivable; still not knowing it a year later after engaging in discussion after discussion on the same topic - is clearly a failure to employ the sources detailing what is best known & thought.

Which, to be sure, is the opposite of rational.

Subtle but useful indeed.

Expensive pains

If you know anything about the US health system, you know that it's expensive. Just expensive in general. It's not readily apparent just how expensive it is, beyond the general notion of expensiveness - it's just expensive in the abstract.

Thing is. For the cost of a US hip replacement, you can:
Go to Spain
Get a hip replacement
Live in Spain for a while
Go to Pamplona and run with the bulls
Get trampled by the bulls
Get a hip replacement replacement
Go home to the US and use what's left to live comfortably unemployed for a year
Invest in some hedge fund that speculates on the repayment rates of poor people

Which is both absurd and insane. And, to boot, it's a perfect example of why poor people have to pay more for things than rich people.

If you are rich, you can just go to Spain and do these things, no ifs or buts. You have the money for it. However, if you're poor, you don't have the money for it. It's not either an expensive US hip replacement or a cheap Spanish one - it's either the expensive option or nothing at all. The only entrance point into the health care system is through the gate of expensiveness, and if you need that health to live, you're forced to take that route. There is no alternative.

The same general principle goes for other things in general, too. Terry Pratchett famously used the example of boots - sturdy boots that last for years and years are expensive, and out of reach for those who cannot afford them. They instead have to contend with cheap boots that fall apart after a short while, and have to be replaced regularly. The net effect being that poor people have to spend more on boots over the years, since they constantly have to act within their means and buy the cheap ones over and over.

One could argue that they could do without boots for a while and get the expensive ones after having saved up. Thing is, that's not how feet work.

You can save a lot of money if you're rich. Not because of any inherent virtue or talent, but because you have the option to not waste money on things that do not work.

How to take over the world

I conquered the world yesterday.

If you didn't quite notice it, it could be due to either of two reasons. The first being that the control of the world we live in is so diffuse and indirect that any shift in its ownership or management structure would go largely unnoticed, allowing ordinary people to continue living their lives as if nothing had changed, since for their practical purposes nothing had.

The other reason being that "the world" was, in fact, not this world, but a fictional representation of our world. Specifically, that found in the alternate dimension computer game Europa Universalis IV.

This is an achievement I've worked to complete for some time. In both senses of the word "achievement", and in many senses of the word "worked". It is an achievement to accomplish it under normal circumstances, and there is an achievement for accomplishing it under some circumstances. This difference is technical, and technicality is the subject of the rest of this post.

To summarize EUIV, it is a game wherein you play as a nation, and compete against other nations. The game takes place between 1444 and 1821, and simulates the complex and complicated political nature of geopolitics during this era. The player can among others things start wars, colonize "empty" lands and monopolize trade. The other nations of the world will try to do the same thing, and conflicts will ensue.

The technical word for all of this is "imperialism". Much can be said about this, but this is not the blog post for that.

One feature of the game is that it does not have explicit win conditions. The goal of the game is whatever the player wants to accomplish. Taking over the world is one such goal, and it is technically possible to achieve it.

I say technically, as it is quite impossible to do it without careful planning and a high degree of technical mastery. The game consists of a large number of complex interacting systems, and a slight change in any one of them can cause unintended consequences in another. Those wanting to take over the world have to understand each system and what makes them tick, and how to exploit them in order to achieve the intended results. A casual player does not happen upon a world conquest - it takes far too much attention to detail, focused micromanagement and grand strategy for that.

Which is to say, the only reason I managed to do it was that I used a very specific exploit in a very specific version of the game, and then did it again, and again, and again. And then I used another exploit and repeated it as needed - and so on. You get the picture. This goes on for a while.

(The technical words being "reduced overseas coring costs", "strategically placed vassal states", "blob-based infinite manpower", "late-game 1.13.2 coalition breaking", "disable common sense" and "kebab". It makes sense in context. Promise.)

I find these kinds of deep but specialized knowledges fascinating. They take a thing - in this case, a computer game - and turn everything about them into a thing worth knowing. Every thing, every aspect. Turns it all into actionable understanding, and crafts elaborate strategies from this understanding. The whole being very much larger than the sum of its parts.

Thing is. These kinds of knowledges are all around you. Mathematics is all about these, for one. But you also encounter them in people who've seen (or soon will see) every episode of the X-Files, and in how they respond to the present reboot. The same goes for adamant fans of rock bands, too many to mention. Or those who know every in and out of the mass transit system of your local area. Or - yes, this too goes on for quite a while.

The key to taking over the world is not to master all aspects of every system in every configuration. (That is the key to taking over a world, to be sure, but the world of EUIV is a limited, represented one.) The world is too big to be known in full, and the attempt to do so will see you end before it. No, the key to taking over the world is to appreciate the vastness of it all.

Then pick a part that seems awesome, and science the shit out of it.

Propagandistic interlude

Sometimes, people try to share propaganda pages at me. Actively, insistently. Often, this act is initiated by the person in question being moved to such an emotional state that they want others to share in this feel -in these particular cases, me.

This puts me in the rather awkward position of having to respond to this piece of propaganda that's just been shared at me. Worse, it's in a social media setting, which means that any engagement will be seen by others. Whether or not I want to, I'm about to become a cosharer.

To compound matters, initiating an argument about it will only serve to inflate the sharing potential of the situation. Emotions will flare (even more), people will drop in to see what the fuss is about, and the temptation to join in will lure both those who agree and disagree to add fuel to the fire. It's a bit of a bind.

My usual approach to these situations is to refuse to participate in any kind of argument whatsoever. It usually won't stop the other from attempting to get such an exchange rolling, but it becomes increasingly obvious to all attending that the argument is rather one-sided, as it were. Especially as the intensity increases.

When the situation is not attempting to escalate itself through the roof, I politely inform the sharer that the recently shared piece is a piece of propaganda, and that sharing it ought to give pause and be cause for reflection. The sharer is, after all, neither stupid nor of ill will, and it doesn't suit their character to share things of such nature, and they might want to take a moment to consider what they've done.

This sometimes leads to the rather awkward situation of trying to convince the other that they are indeed not stupid or in possession of ill intent. You'd think this would be an easy thing to persuade someone of. You'd think.

For the rest of the exchange, I keep pointing out the virtuous nature of the sharer and the contrast of this with regards to the shared. Where it goes from there depends on context and specifics, but my chief aim is to avoid direct confrontation to the fullest extent possible. Both because it's counterproductive to insist on someone's virtue whilst yelling at them, and because it's even more counterproductive to leave behind a public exchange where the propaganda in question is something fought about.

The key to fighting propaganda is not to engage the issues it espouses, but to engage the people it expounds. It is a subtle difference, and a topic to be returned to. -

Scientific trollage

A few days ago, we held a farewell seminar for graduating hopeful newly minted teachers. Being the last academic thing to happen, it was not the most serious or highly ambitious of seminars. The formula was simple: take your impressions from this last semester and compress them into fifteen minutes of presentation.

Seeing as this semester was all about scientifically producing a forty page monstrosity of a term paper, the general mood was one of elated exhaustion. The brunt work was done, and now the future awaited. Tired but happy, we all set out to give it our best thoughts, as our diminished levels of energy and mental acuity allowed.

Seeing that this was the last time to troll my fellow peers, I rose to the occasion and gave a rousing fifteen minutes of counterintuitive scientific method acting. That is to say, ways to (ab)use the scientific method in order to get things done that wouldn't get done otherwise.

For instance: instead of confronting the future bosses head on with demands for change and better conditions, approach them indirectly using the power of survey results. Conduct the survey, get the desired (and methodologically valid) results, and present the findings as a new objective factor that needs to be acted upon. It's not that the new chairs are uncomfortable; it's that they seem to have caused a thirty percent increase in sickdays and a corresponding loss of productivity since being installed. It's not so much a demand for their replacement as a very good scientific argument for replacing them.

Another example is to strategically do proper scientific investigations of things that have heretofore been left unaddressed. The point being not to get any particular result, but to force attention to focus on that very thing through the very act of investigating it. It wouldn't be investigated by these educated people if it wasn't important, after all. Science is never unimportant.

And so on and so forth in the same vein. It went on for a while. Fifteen minutes, to be exact.

This might seem a cruel thing to do to your peers, seeing as they'd just spent fifteen weeks extracting every ounce of science they could from their source material in order to finish their term papers. But it isn't, and it wasn't. My aim was to point out that the new scientific skillsets they'd acquired during these nervewrecking weeks had new and interesting uses, and that they could use them to troll their future peers in any number of interesting counterintuitive ways.

Just as I did them right there and then. Especially through the use of the phrase "if you want to troll [technical term] your future employers..."

I'm gonna miss 'em. Poor graduated buggers. Best course mates I ever had.

At least I got to send 'em off with a laugh.

Noted

Sometimes, big things happen. Things of the nature of big celebrities dying. These thing naturally generate a lot of attention, buzz and discussion - they wouldn't be big otherwise.

This sudden burst of activity tends to generate a secondary burst of activity. That is to say, comments on how there seems to be a lot of attention given to that big thing that's going on. Sometimes with a connotation that this is attention poorly spent, and that there are other things in the world to attend to.

This in turn spawns a tertiary burst of activity, noting that the secondary burst is if anything even worse than the first, as it gives those involved even more excuses to spend even more time and attention on the inciting incident. Which is the opposite of what they want.

As you might have already begun to suspect, this is an inherently iterative process, and has the potential to become a discursive perpetual motion machine.

The only winning move might be not to play.

Take note.