Then, slowly expand. Optimize for lasting longer than empires at the expense of power. Maybe you incrementally gain illegible power and eventually get to win on the global scale. I think this would work fine if you don’t have important time-sensitive goals on the global scale.
I have a stub post about this in drafts, but the sources are directly relevant to this section and talk about underlying mechanisms, so I’ll produce it here:
Accumulation of power, and longevity in power, are largely a matter of keeping options open
In order to keep options as open as possible, commit to as few explicit goals as possible
This conflicts with our goal-orientation
Sacrifice longevity in exchange for explicit goal achievement: be expendable
Longevity is therefore only a condition of accumulation—survive long enough to be able to strike, and then strike
Explicit goal achievement does not inherently conflict with robust action or multivocality, but probably does put even more onus on calculating the goal well beforehand
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Robust action and multivocality are sociological terms. In a nutshell, the former means ‘actions which are very difficult to interfere with’ and the latter means ‘communication which can be interpreted different ways by different audiences’. Also, it’s a pretty good paper in its own right.
I have a stub post about this in drafts, but the sources are directly relevant to this section and talk about underlying mechanisms, so I’ll produce it here:
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The blog post is: Francisco Franco, Robust Action, and the Power of Non-Commitment
The paper is: Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici
Accumulation of power, and longevity in power, are largely a matter of keeping options open
In order to keep options as open as possible, commit to as few explicit goals as possible
This conflicts with our goal-orientation
Sacrifice longevity in exchange for explicit goal achievement: be expendable
Longevity is therefore only a condition of accumulation—survive long enough to be able to strike, and then strike
Explicit goal achievement does not inherently conflict with robust action or multivocality, but probably does put even more onus on calculating the goal well beforehand
~~~
Robust action and multivocality are sociological terms. In a nutshell, the former means ‘actions which are very difficult to interfere with’ and the latter means ‘communication which can be interpreted different ways by different audiences’. Also, it’s a pretty good paper in its own right.