Raw notes while reading Paul's book
Here's some decidedly gray literature: my raw notes about Paul Saint-Amour's new book. Reaching page 6, I was struck by a hypothesis: people's tendency to underestimate the likelihood of unlikely negative events, although irrational, is nevertheless adaptive. Reaching page 9: What about Carthage? What about Vietnam? In the more recent modern era, have people found new strength from being targeted by total war or by a merciless or indiscriminate enemy with massive destructive capability? Namely, the clarity of the choice to fight when flight is no option. Or is there nothing recent about that response, other than new technological means of responding -- the tools of what we call terrorism? Back to page 8, footnote: maybe later I’ll look up "perdure" and "sequelae" (earlier I looked up "frisson", and "index" as a verb) noting his use of scare quotes: "conventional" wars transgenerational injury -- are the long-term e...