hubris

The moral consequence of treating nature as rewriteable: people become more willing to behave badly because they imagine no limit above their will.

Blindness to one's own violent arrogance, producing repeated strategic mistakes.

The dangerous overreach Achilles awakens in Patroclus by making glory seem divinely available.

The arrogance produced when wealth and power make an empire think it is invincible.

Jiang says alchemists are sinful even when they fail because they make others believe the rules of nature can be changed, which produces hubris and bad behavior.

Jiang says human life and empire operate through unavoidable cycles of rise and fall, and the arrogant belief that one can stop or end history only produces destruction.

Jiang says the conspiracy template is anti-historical and anti-game-theory because it oversimplifies how power works and ignores the tendency of powerful actors to become arrogant, stupid, and vulnerable to collapse.

The rules-based order decays when the hegemon starts ignoring its own rules, as Jiang says America did by bombing Libya and Syria and attacking Iran without international approval.

The bully’s hubris grows from obedience; he raises taxes and pays his own friends less, producing latent dissatisfaction before the new kid appears.

The same imperial advantages become long-term weaknesses: mass creates inequality and debt, organization creates rent-seeking elites and elite overproduction, and expendability creates hubris.

Propaganda undermines strategy by censoring dissent and preventing rigorous debate, which produces hubris and repeated bad decisions.

Jiang claims Achilles' speech gives Patroclus hubris by implying he can win eternal glory and perhaps surpass Achilles, while omitting the real danger of Hector.