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Comment by droopyEyelids | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that this isn't a larger part of what people think about when they think about 'winnning' in the context of competition with other people. (I blame sports)

Losing- failing to get your way or being destroyed, is an obvious state.

What we call winning, which amounts to getting your way (often at the expense of others) is actually a shitty compromise.

Conversion of the 'enemy' is the real best outcome. Not only do you get your way, but you have more momentum, cooperation, ideas and resources working for your objective afterwards. This should always be your goal when you're "fighting" with other people, and anything else is a sort of failure.

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I dunno, the whole thing seems straight out of The Art of War, best is to win without fighting ... worst to besiege his cities.

As a supplement to this; if you do besiege his cities, always leave a narrow path of escape. A city without hope will fight to the death.

I'm fairly sure that is also in the Art of War too.

The problem is the enemy often resists these efforts. On the other hand, this tactic worked with colonialism. That's essentially what colonial powers did. They won over the people at first by force (conquered) and then via other means they coopted (won over) them and used them to their ends. Then at some point many colonies resented the remote and distanced governance and rebelled.

>They won over the people at first by force (conquered) and then via other means they and coopted (won over) them and used them to their ends.

If by 'won them over', you mean they threatened anyone who opposed them with terrible consequences, and rewarded those who supported them then you are correct. Of course everyone from ISIL to the USA does varying degrees of the same thing.

I am not sure if you're talking about Alexander, because you make it sound like something everybody does but that's not the case. If anything, nearly everybody does/did the opposite.

Alexander became accustomed and adopted the Persian lifestyle, to the point where his countrymen started resenting him, because they didn't feel enough like conquerers. He married the daughter of Darius. Most conquerors at the time, would probably kill them on the spot, just to make a point.

Take the Egyptians with the Israelis for example, 400 years of slavery and they were totally set apart. Not assimilated at all. Same with Greeks and Turks, 400 years of slavery but no assimilation. There are many examples and although the enslaved want to believe that this is because of them, it's not... It's because the upper hand didn't allow/want any kind of assimilation.

Alexander was a very efficient slaughterer, but he was much more than that. At 300 BC. what more can we ask?

> At 300 BC what more can we ask?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great (note the date)

Good catch. Great legacy too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great#Legacy

It does contrast with the alternative which was pillaging and laying waste to conquered lands and not taking adult male prisoners as was quite common during those times.

Also, when the conquistadors went about they would often find warring parties and play sides. This made it easy to divide and conquer and gain cooperation of some locals and eventually see their culture and values prevail. Kind of the same William the conqueror did (kill the nobility/chieftains and let the cooperating peasants live)

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