Combination/Permutations And Geopolitics

A Masterclass By Sarah Paine

This one is a bit weird, so bear with me. I’ll try to keep it real short with two reference links that you gotta click….one five minutes and one over two hours.

Part One:

Do you remember that factorial stuff about combinations and permutations? It is all about you having, let’s say, 10 things and you have to choose 2 or 3 or whatever from the 10? Here is a brilliant five minute explanation by Shri Chaitanya who teaches millions.

Part Two:

Now imagine that the three pens are America, Russia, and China. Imagine the two markers are India and Pakistan. The first three all hate and distrust each other and the later two REALLY hate and distrust each other.

Sarah Paine of the US Naval College gave a brilliant lecture on this followed by an interview by Dwarkesh Patel. Here is the link.

You will learn horrific but fascinating tidbits of Cold War shenanigans. Basically she says that the musical chair land grab game played played was a “no effin’ good”, zero sum war that was anything but cold as millions in the third world died from proxy wars.