I'm choosing to assume this is a bit, in which case it's actually pretty funny.
Yes, it's a satire article from a chud site. You can see the site in the title bar, here's the link with a CW that it's a chud site. It drones on and on in this matter, thinking it's being clever. The comments are the worst.
You finish unloading the food onto the table. A few people trickle in and start eating. You make conversation with a woman to your left.
“Hi, what’s your name?”
“I’m Sara.”
“What do you do?”
“I quit my job at Google a few months ago to work on effective altruism. I’m studying sn-risks.”
“I can’t remember, which ones are sn-risks?”
“Steppe nomads. Horse archers. The Eurasian hordes.”
“I didn’t think they were still a problem.”
“Oh yeah. You look at history, and once every two hundred, three hundred years they get their act together, form a big confederation, and invade either China, the West, or both. It’s like clockwork. 400 AD, you get the Huns. 700, the Magyars. 1000, the first Turks start moving west. 1200, Genghis Khan, killed 10% of the world population. 1400, Tamerlane, killed another 5%. 1650, the Ming-Qing transition in China, also killed 5%. We’re more than 50 years overdue at this point.”
“But I would think with modern technology - ”
“Exactly! With modern technology, the next time could be so much worse! Usually the steppe nomads are limited to a small fringe around the steppe where they can still graze their horses. But with modern logistics, you can get horse food basically anywhere. There’s no limit to how far the next steppe confederation could get. That’s why I think this is a true existential risk, not just another 5 - 10% of the world’s population like usual.”
“I was going to say that with modern technology, it just doesn’t seem like steppe nomads should be such a problem any more.”
“That’s what the Ming Dynasty thought in 1650. You know, they had guns, they had cannons, they figured that horse archers wouldn’t be able to take them on anymore. Turned out they were wrong. The nomads got them too.”
“Are there even any steppe nomads left?”
“Definitely! Lots of people in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, stick to their traditional ways of life. All they need is a charismatic leader to unite them.”
“And the effective altruists gave you a grant to work on this?”
“Not Open Philanthropy or Future Fund or any of those people, but I was able to get independent funding.”
“From who?” you ask, as if you don’t already know the answer.
“Same place every overly confident young person gets money! Peter Thiel!”
You let her drone on about Avars and Hephthalites for a few more minutes, then politely excuse yourself and strike up a conversation with the guy to your right.
Honestly, most of those individual bits were pretty funny but would probably have been funnier if they were on their own, as it is the joke just gets a bit tired after a bit.
It kind of feels like a b or c tier version of Douglas Adam's writing in the second and third Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books
The Onion has this issue too. Their headlines are gold but their articles are just re-phrasing the headline 10 times with filler
this this this this. like 5% or less of the articles are good, and even the ones that are good are still usually a couple paragraphs too long and ruin the good jokes with obvious jokes.
Did you even look at the comments on that article? Flaming dumpster fire doesn't even begin to describe it.
SlateStarCodex is a fascist racist "rationalist". You want to applaud that part of humanity, that's going to reflect on you bro.
Shockingly, I'm not super worried about my reputation on commie reddit. Broken clocks are still funny twice a day, it's okay, you can laugh.
“Same place every overly confident young person gets money! Peter Thiel!”
wait and this is right wing satire?
I’m choosing to be a contrarian and as such I think he has a good point and based on current works trajectory we will soon be back to steppe nomads being a problem, though they’ll use AKs from horseback rather than bows
there wont be any steppes, they'll all burn. we'll all burn.
we do already have step nomads, though we usually call them homeless.
there wont be any steppes, they’ll all burn.
see that's what sets the steppe nomads in motion. they need to go someplace that isn't burning, desertifying, being destroyed by regular flash floods or ransacked by angry mobs of dispossessed people and the less places like that there are, the more likely it is to catch an arrow fired from horseback.
Is this why America is killing its homeless population as quickly as possible? because they know what'll happen if they band up ?
Try to imagine Sisyphus... On the blockchain.
No, literally chained to goddamned blocks of granite.
silicone valley's something different, but you'll have to check the back room behind the curtain if you wanna see
You laugh now, but let's see how funny you'll find it when the Great Khans start roaming the post-nuclear wastelands of the Mojave and subjugate your village
They've actually got crazy nuclear-powered sci-fi cities, laser bows, flying robo-horses. We've just been letting them gear up for world domination without even noticing. Any time you see a picture of Mongolia it's just all "ooh pretty mountain" but behind that mountain, they're only getting stronger. :scared:
I once had the chance to go live in Mongolia for a year with nomadic sheep herders but didn't take it. Can't believe I missed out on laser bows, but I'm afraid of regular horses, let alone flying robotic ones so maybe I dodged a bullet
Nobody expects the Mongolian Calvary to conquer China the Eurasian Steppe Wars of 2049. Socialism defeated again 😔
It's from a satire of Silicon Valley culture, but by someone who's also part of the problem with Silicon Valley culture.
The excerpt continues:
"With modern technology, the next time could be so much worse! Usually the steppe nomads are limited to a small fringe around the steppe where they can still graze their horses. But with modern logistics, you can get horse food basically anywhere. There’s no limit to how far the next steppe confederation could get. That’s why I think this is a true existential risk, not just another 5 - 10% of the world’s population like usual."
I read a terrible Mars Attacks spin-off book years back where the reincarnation of Ghengis Khan (in the 1990s) fights off the invading Martians with a steppe horse army.
