Hm, you got me thinking about reversible computing and how it could be applied to configuration.
Debugging a configuration becomes tedious once computation is involved. You think some value should be "foo" but it is "bar". Why is it "bar"? If someone wrote it there, the fix is simply to change. If "bar" is the result of some computation, you have to understand the algorithm and its inputs, which is significantly harder.
Interesting idea! Although, maybe you just want to be able to run the configuration language in a reversible debugger?
This issue becomes even harder when you have some kind of solver involved, like a constraint solver or unification. As a user the solver is supposed to make your life easier but if it rejects something without a good enough error message you are stuck; having to examine the solver code to work out why is a much worse experience than not having a solver. (This is the same issue with clever type systems that need a solver)
There's two parts that I was talking about. Things that are not quite that and the fact that configuration can have that capability in a fairly useless context.
When I'm dealing with personal things or stuff that few people use I will often make the configuration just something I eval/source.
So it in theory has the same functionality as the underlying programming language, but in practice you're just supposed to use it like an INI.
Here's a fairly large personal project where I use that
It actually allowed me to change the behavior on whether I'm running my program from my office or home. So invoking the full fidelity of the underlying language actually has its benefits at times.
Level 4 / total programming languages are not turing complete. Because you can't simulate every turing machine in them, only some subset that provably halts. (And because the halting problem is undecidable, there will always be some turing machines that actually do halt but still can't be simulated because the compiler can't prove it)
Trade war is a set of trade related policies, winning a trade war is have a set of such policies which benefits your country. It doesn't even have to benefit your trade.
If you can cause more economic damage to your adversary than it can cause to you, then you can prevent the elevation of your adversary into a more significant threat.
So winning is certainly possible, especially because it can end in an actual war where one side will win.
I understand how you can win a trade war against a geopolitical adversary, sure. What I don't understand is how you can win one against a neutral or friendly country. Even if you can cause 10 or 100 times more economic damage than the other guys can cause to you, isn't the small bit of damage you receive strictly worse than not receiving it by not having a trade war?
The win condition in that case would be that the leverage that being able to cause more damage than you take allows you to negotiate a better deal. It's like winning any other war. Both sides take damage during the war, but the winner is able to achieve its objective at the end.
This is true in the abstract. But finding an example would require calling Russia sanctions a "trade war." More correctly, it is an embargo, sanctions, etc.
"The most prominent trade war of the 20th century was ignited by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act of 1930, which imposed steep tariffs on roughly 20,000 imported goods. Led by Canada, America’s trading partners retaliated with tariffs on United States exports, which plunged 61 percent from 1929 to 1933. The tariffs were repealed in 1934.
...
Professor Palen cited the late-19th-century trade wars between Canada and the United States, which caused a precipitous drop in Canadian exports to America and led Canada to seek export markets in Britain. 'The British Empire was the winner,' he said.
Another 'big winner' from a trade war it was not involved in, Professor Palen said, was Soviet Russia, which was largely shunned by Western trading partners after the 1917 revolution and the rise of communism, and was desperate for hard currency. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs, Professor Palen said, caused countries like Italy to abandon American imports and resume trading with the Soviets, forging trade links that persist today."
That is similar with stocks. I'd say the difference is that PolyMarket has an end date where everything gets resolved one way or another. Stocks can go on forever.
Oh you're right, it is basically the same, the undervalued stock is the one to buy. I guess I was thinking about another difference which is that the value of stocks seems more vibes-based and a really stupid product (from the investor's perspective) can sometimes become popular. In prediction markets the outcome is more concrete.
Putin created a system of carefully balanced violent psychopaths around himself. Showing any weakness (like losing against little Ukraine) can quickly lead to a coup there. I can very well imagine Putin think "if I'm going to die, I want the whole world to die with me".
Fortunately, unlike the US, Russia does not give a single person the authority to launch nuclear weapons. Putin would need one of those other psychopaths to go along with him.
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