[chrismatic]

While I agree with some of his sentiments the entire video reeks of half-baked conspiratorial thinking and shallow engagement with the facts.

A quick tell is that the video's title includes "Game Theory", while only referencing game-theoretical concepts twice in an off-hand comment. In both instances the usage is plainly wrong.

In general, he loves making big assertions without backing them up with evidence or explanations that go beyond hand-wavy examples.

[engineer_22]

Game Theory is the name of his class. He is a high school teacher. I agree his ideas about the conflict are only loosely connected to "Game Theory" in the Academic sense. If you engage with more of his content, he often repeats that he is probably wrong and exhorts you to think for yourself and make your own conclusions. His perspective on past and current events is certainly not mainstream.

[chrismatic]

I think we should hold people to a higher standard especially when they talk with this much confidence and present themselves as a professor. The issue is that "Game Theory" is a technical term so there really only is an "Academic" sense otherwise it's just a marketing term for whatever ideas you want to push.

[engineer_22]

It's YouTube, cuz'

[chrismatic]

And? There's endless high quality content on YouTube.

[aurareturn]

Any thing he said that about the conflict that you disagree with?

[chrismatic]

He makes quite a few quite controversial assertions without evidence or even bothering to explain them. At the top of my head and paraphrasing:

- "The conflict is a game of chicken." Only in the vaguest sense in which any war or confrontation could be called that.

- "The USA is not equipped to handle a war against drones and fanatics". Idk they seem more capable than any other nation save Ukraine given that those two things have been a major feature of their recent wars.

- "Countries that are poor have more energy and are more cohesive". This is just demonstrably false, but he does not bother to explain why he thinks this.

- "The US wants to break Iran into ethno-states that compete for water until they are all dead." He even admits that this is pure conjecture and hand-waves this as the game-theoretic "optimal" strategy which is completely bonkers.

I do share his negative sentiment and outlook about the war, but there are way better critics that don't resort to this type of intellectual laziness.

[aurareturn]

  - "The US wants to break Iran into ethno-states that compete for water until they are all dead." He even admits that this is pure conjecture and hand-waves this as the game-theoretic "optimal" strategy which is completely bonkers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47245067

What do you think of this?

[chrismatic]

I think that there is a huge leap between using the Kurds to do your fighting (like in Syria) and what he claims if you look at the map that he pulls up in that section.