That's exactly what we will have if we reach peace right now. Except this state will have more living Ukrainians in it.
It won't, because it won't exist, because you can't reach peace right now.
Among the reasons you won't have peace right now is because the Russians are uninterested in peace right now that results in a European-Ukraine as opposed to maintaining what they know to be untenable and belligerent-unacceptable capitulation terms that would result in a Russia-dominated Ukraine that they know the Ukrainians will not accept.
Which is unsurprising to anyone with a vague awareness of the geopolitical calendar and the logistics of the conflict, because they would already be aware that Putin's predictable windows for a stronger hand in actual negotiations is late next year, after the results of the US presidential election are known, after a fighting year where the Russians are anticipated to have an artillery ammo supply advantage, where it's not clear if Ukraine will have enough for an offensive rather than grinding defense, and where the Russians will have a general year-long opportunity to making propaganda hay of a nominally one-sided conflict even as they are already spinning up various military-posturing dynamics to otherwise further their inevitable-victory narratives to try and have a stronger hands in relevant negotiations late next year than they do this year.
My initial bias was that Russia would score a quick victory. Then, influenced by my American media diet, I thought that the Russian economy would collapse and that the Ukraine counteroffensive, backed by advanced American weapons, would be effective.
Admitting a susceptibility to propaganda narratives for nearly the entire duration of the conflict isn't the defense of your reading between the lines that you think it is.
By contrast, the sort of people who recognized the logistical limitations of western artillery ammo were also the people predicting a long drawn out conflict (guerilla or west of the Dneiper), had no pretensions that the Russian economy would collapse, and warned against dramatic territorial expectation-metrics for the offensive.
When that didn't pan on I questioned my assumptions.
You adopted new, and in the current case old, propaganda narratives.
Reading the comments here, I believe that I have arrived at a more realistic stance than most people, who think things like reconquering Crimea are on the table still.
Your belief is irrelevant to your lack of realism, assuming that by realism you are alluding to an accurate understanding of reality of the conflict.
I hope there is a cease fire because I don't think the war is winnable by Ukraine without unacceptable costs from the U.S. Confidence level: 80%.
False appeals to probability are common in pseudo-rationalist posturing, but it only betrays a lack of understanding of what other people consider unacceptable, and acceptable, costs.
You are (allegedly) a utilitarian. Trading real costs for theoretical units of value (utils) is the core conceit of utilitarianism as a model.
That's the problem isn't it? How do value these fuzzy future utils that rest on things like predictions of future actions of dictators?
It's not a problem if you are not actually a utilitarian, but are adopting a utilitarian persona for gravitas while disclaiming the central conceit of considering abstract and future value considerations.
In such a case, the feigned confusion is an appeal to authority, in much the same way the classic 'I don't understand how one could disagree' is an appeal to the unstated reasonable-informed observer rather than an admission of personal limitation.
My prejudice is to take a "greedy algorithm" approach. Let's take the utils right in front of our face before hypothetical future utils (which might even be negative utils!). If you know finance, then think of it like a present value calculation with a high discount rate.
Your prejudice is a poor model for international conflicts in general, and Russia and Putin in particular, who neither collectively or individually follow your preferred paradigm.
Models that are not used by, not followed by, and do not predict the decisions or actions of others are useless for understanding others.
People are FAR too confidence about the future.
Clearly.
Also. Please don't be a jerk, especially to people who are making an effort to argue an unpopular opinion.
Still yawning. Repeating the latest iterations of a nearly two-year old propaganda narrative with even shoddier justifications is not a commendable effort to argue an unpopular opinion. It's simply repeating the latest iterations of a nearly two-year propaganda narrative without acknowledging or dealing with why the opinion earned it's unpopularity. In other words, trite.
@The_Nybbler believes that my post was pretextual, in other words that I was falsely claiming to write a post about the US legal system as a way to conceal my hidden purpose of criticizing Trump.
Strangely, @The_Nybbler did not say that you were falsely claiming to write a post about the US legal citizen as a way to conceal your hidden purpose of criticizing Trump.
We can tell this because on reviewing what @The_Nybbler wrote, which you quoted, which was-
Or, for instance, when someone writes a long comment purporting to be about the US legal system, but is really just a vehicle to take a shot at Trump.
...which does not say you were falsely claiming to write a post about the US legal system, or that you were doing so as a way to conceal a hidden purpose, or that your purpose of critizing Trump was hidden. In fact, key framing words such as 'falsely' and 'hidden' do not appear, which the key word 'vehicle' as a metaphor in the context of a criticism of pretext is removed, thus creating substantive change of position from what Nybbler wrote and what you claim he said.
This would politely be called strawmanning, except that strawmanning is a device when engaging in an argument with someone, but you aren't engaging with Nybbler, you are deliberately re-characterizing what Nybbler said in conveyence to external audience.
Which would politely be called 'lying about what someone said to someone else.' Which is a reoccuring feature of yours.
I maintain that my real purpose was always from the beginning to write a post criticizing Trump, but given how long my intro about the US legal system was, I can understand why someone might potentially be mislead. Since I can't add a title to the comment I added a content warning to more explicitly signal what the post was about. What would you alternatively suggest for me to do to address The_Nybbler's concerns?
Delete the post, apologize for poor writing quality, and apologize to @The_Nybbler for poor conduct.
Edit: And I see he has edited back out the troll he had edited in, but no apology in the post. Typical and meeting expectations, I suppose.
It's less about general criticism, and more that this is ymeskhout's specific hobby horse that has been flayed for years at this point, and regularly comes with standards called for against Trump that were not followed or applied (in general or by ymeskhout personally) on the lawfare against Trump. As with other pet topics, it repeats old themes to the point of evaporative cooling, which then leverage's ymeskhout's bad habit of dismissing/forgetting/claiming prior engagements on points either didn't occur or have been dismissed, for lack of an engaged opposition to engage otherwise.
As far as Trump-related lawfare goes, ymeskhout's a partisan and an old one at this point. At this point I only pay attention when he starts being petty towards people calling him out, like how this time he edited-in a callout- against The_Nybbler and then edited it out after being called out for it.
Not particularly, but it's considerably less one-note and lacking. Your posting is unexceptional, but you intend to insult fewer people and ignore fewer prior discussions than when you fixate on Trump unprompted.
If you meant your writing on a technical level, I find it generally poorly structured and lacking in content, conflating a lot of words with good word choice and links for sufficient sourcing. The arguments are often too reliant on insinuation by word connotation in lieu of supporting arguments, and generally lacking in the ability to anticipate or address counter arguments completely or factor in contextually relevant history while relying on narrative momentum for an emotional climax. It's passable verboseness, and I am certainly a sucker for long-winded arguments, but also leads to basic failures like overly long intros that fail the principles of effective written communication, or speaking around past and still standing counter-arguments.
And I say this as someone who is naturally prone to comma splicing and writing essays on my hobbies, and who writes more the groggier she is.
What will be left of Ukraine after Russia and the West are done with their proxy war?
A nation-state centered around Ukrainians, generally democratic and politically European, rather than a subject-state or administrative unit centered around Russians ruled by autocratic collaborators.
It's hard to get good numbers as both Russia and Ukraine lie about everything. But it feels that Ukraine is exhausted and will soon lose this war. My heuristic for this is reading between the lines of the news.
Yawn. You could read that interpretation since the very start of the conflict, given it's been one of the most prevalent propaganda narratives the whole time.
Your confirmation bias will continue to be well fed for the next year, as was predicted nearly half a year ago by the people who recognized the logistical limitations of the western artillery ammo shortage and production-mobilization lagging behind the Russians.
Every optimistic story about Ukraine's war effort in the last year has failed to bear fruit.
Only if you selectively choose the optimistic stories you remember, just as your numbers arguments only bear fruit if you selectively recall your numbers.
I have to ask, at this point, why does the West still support Ukraine?
Because they like its perseverance more than they like Putin's.
There are multiple angles to this, ranging from the domestic political rewards of supporting Ukraine versus costs for wanting rapprochement with Russia, international angles of posturing withing various international organizations and forums, ideological views of various elites, security considerations for military establishments, economic incentives for politically-justifiable retoolings or expansions of military-industrial complexes, and so on.
There's also the point that Putin's kind of a dick, who tried to blackmail and then crash the European economy in the opening year of the war with energy cutoffs that have triggered long-term and painful economic shifts in the European industrial economy. Revenge and retaliation as a form of future-deterrence also play a role.
Yes, it's very convenient that Ukraine is willing to destroy itself to hurt Russia. But, as a utilitarian, I am very skeptical of the benefits of "grand strategy" type decisions like this. The world is complicated. If we let Putin have the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine will he then demand the Polish-speaking parts of Poland? No. It's not like this war has been a resounding success. Furthermore, he could die tomorrow.
The war has been an abject disaster for the Russian state because the Ukrainian nation fought back, with western support, and did so despite obvious and predictable great cost. The deterrence model you appeal to only applies on behalf of the costs already imposed, and threatened to continue to be imposed, which your proposed compromise undercuts by indicating that resistance is neither indefinite or desired by yourself.
Moreover, Putin both started the war with war goals far beyond the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine (hence the attempt at a coup de main centered on Kyiv), and retains war goals far beyond the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine (which, notably, have never voted for association with Russia except when supervised by Russian military forces).
But the deaths suffered by Ukrainian conscripts (and yes Russian conscripts too) are very real. We are trading the deaths of real people for theoretical future benefits.
You are (allegedly) a utilitarian. Trading real costs for theoretical units of value (utils) is the core conceit of utilitarianism as a model.
And we are destroying an entire country in the process.
'We' are not, unless you are speaking in association with the Russians invading Ukraine. The moral, ethical, and legal responsibility for the Ukraine War, the Ukraine War's continuation, and the Ukraine war's future costs are on Putin, who made the destruction of the Ukrainian national identity a core premise of his war from the start.
Why not go to the bargaining table and end this cruel and pointless war?
Because Putin continues to maintain maximalist war goals of in yet another continuation war against Ukraine, with stated and demonstrated objectives of waging a war of national destruction against the Ukrainian nation to subordinate them on revanchist grounds that apply to multiple other partners and allies of the broader Western coalition.
War is always cruel. War doesn't become pointless simply because you don't agree with the point.
Dean
1yr ago
This mistakes my contention. The contention is not that a position doesn't change and this should be banned- the contention is that the position is re-raised regularly without regard or even accurate reflection of previous engagements, and with poor conduct towards other in the process.
Ways to avoid this include not misrepresenting people's current positions, not mis-representing previous engagements, and not making one's hobby-horse a top level post with regular slights towards other posters.
Dean
2mo ago
The desire to remain control of the conversation is a substantial part of why the lawyer guy's broader position continues to lack the consensus he regularly tries to build. By denying previously provided compelling evidence of misconduct warrinting doubt as compelling, and then insisting later that only uncompelling arguments were ever offered, not only does the presenter lose credibility regarding the root argument, but lose credibility as an interlocuter in subsequent repetititions. It's not that a negative needs to be proved, it's that repeat iterations have demonstrated that there's no point in further engaging with positives that will be inevitably denied/diminished/claimed in the future were never provided.
This is without the acknowledgement that the lawlerly systemic approach isn't an approached to uncover truth, but to win a legal argument in a court of law- but coming in the context where only around 1-in-5 people trust lawyers. Unlike more respectable professions, which rely on public trust for deference, lawyers are owed no such deference due to the lack of trust.
It is his form of fun, however, so he'll enjoy his otherwise quiet night none the less.
No, you don't, but the pettiness is not beneath you. Hence why you being called out.
In a contaminated media environment filled not only with not only bad-faith actors, but poor-capability ones? Heavens no.
To pick one recent example of how sub-par framing distorts discussion-
To the extent that I think that the picture ymeskhout is presenting is false, the proper response is to put together a detailed argument, backed by the best supporting evidence I can dig up, on exactly how and why he's unambiguously wrong.
I am no stranger to arguing with bad-faith bullshit. This is not what bad-faith bullshit looks like. This is, near as I can tell, what being wrong looks like. The proper response to that is to admit it and take your lumps like a grownup. The proper response to that is to admit it and take your lumps like a grownup. If you can't do that, if you don't actually value seeing misconceptions corrected, you're acting like a jackass, and ymeskhout is doing this place a tremendous service to make that fact as obvious as possible, with bonus points for style.
Here's what I've seen so far in the recent Jan 6th threads:
The single word in the third section that undermines all the rest is the qualifier 'recent.' Recent does not negate the iterative game-nature of people's engagement of a topic, and basing an argument only on the most recent action is less an isolated demand for rigor, as much as a demand for isolated rigor.
Just as any analysis of the Jan 6th legitimacy is fatally flawed if separated from the nature of election-law changes and documented coordination between partisan activists, government officials, and media groups to support that party before the election (and admitted afterwards- you can find the link yourself, thank you kindly, and if you can't then this goes back to competence rather than faith), a discussion on motte posting dynamics in the present is missing something very significant if it doesn't address that this isn't just a 'recent' exchange, it's someone who brought their pet hobby horse into the themotte.org after an established history, and pattern, of the same. A pattern that- as you say- did increasingly little to change minds, and the number of people who maintained engagement with said individual gradually declined. They did not stop doing so because exhaustive links to specific incidents or contexts of concern were disproven and overturned by the power of logic, they did so because over time they realized there was no point in engaging in such a way. The people whose minds could be shifted were already shifted; the people who could not were not going to be.
This is not what being wrong looks like. This is what evaporative cooling looks like, when the only people remaining to make effort-posts are the most-motivated. You may as well ask why Julius's Motte opposing arguments decreased in quality, when by the end he was probably the source of more warnings and kickings than meaningful counter-arguments.
Which, actually, is a better substitute-person for your argument, since it's clear where your sympathies are on this context but your broader point- if it's to be valid- needs to be valid for not just the people you think are in the right, but also wrong. Just as a justice system isn't for the people we sympathize for, a critique of the quality of engagement on the motte needs to address what engagement expectations realistically are.
One of the issues Julius B-something, or highschool-is-slavery McGee, or whatever his various alts were- wasn't simply that he was a bad faith actor, it was that he was just bad, as in incompetent, in both communication and scholarly skills, but he was only ever open to changing one of those. (The writing part, to be clear- so that he could be a better sophist in selling his point.) The people who were more familiar with the scholarship did not, in fact, respond to every Julius post with yet another immaculate sourced response decisively proving he was wrong... after the first few times. They gradually stopped replying at all, leaving him unchallenged except for the likes of less-scholared (and more prone to banning) people, for the sheer fact that he just kept posting. Once people knew what he was posting, and what he was going to continue posting regardless of what was said, and that saying so would make no difference...
By your framework, the point that after a year or so Julius B-whatever ended up with opponents like BestIrishGirl Ame who got in more trouble for opposing him rudely and who weren't able to really engage on a evidence level was a failure point of the community. With only a modicrum of twsting, Julius was providing a community service even, for exposing the jackasses, and overcoming them with style. (And endurance.)
I must dissent. And not simply because who is the asshole, or who has the style, is a subjectivity that does more to reflect the evaluator's preferences than the subject. Or that low-quality responses still serve a valid role in challenging motte-and-bailey arguments that would otherwise go uncontested for lack of engagement of at all, but be expected to continue indefinitely and shape the expectations of the forum as a whole if completely unchallenged.
I must dissent because recognizing when [insert actor here] has [pet topic x] for which they are sufficiently fixed in their views to negate the value of engagement, not engaging with their argument is the appropriate way to deal with [insert actor here]. Engagement on their preferred passion project really is a waste of time for all involved, it is an invitation for angry rebuttals and accusations of bad faith more likely to draw censor themselves than the actual person of bad-faith-but-is-polite-about-it, and it's not apparently changing the minds of anyone involved. By not engaging [pet topic x] directly, you can instead address other topics of possible mutual engagement (Julius's poor writing skills), or provide general signalling to the broader audience of what, and why, the risk of engaging the person is so that they are aware of the dynamics and risks at play.
I don't think I'm alone in this either- you're doing a similar dynamic, in this particular post, whether you intended to or not. You're speaking broadly, generally, and non-specifically about unnamed posters, and without source citations or evidence to boot. You're not calling out individuals, or confronting them in long exchanges. You're doing a relatively limited, relatively polite, dismissal of their arguments without engaging them directly, and doing so with a broader intent to shape the broader discourse, but no real expectation of affecting the individual(s) in question.
(And how could they? Many may not even realize you're referring to them.)
Per any model where conclusively proving your opponents are wrong every time is the right way, this is the wrong way. But as a model for engaging- or rather, not-engaging- with individuals for whom not-engaging is not only the path chosen, but attempting to marginalize through rhetoric rather than counter-evidence is the way, this is fine. You can call people jackasses or losers without being in violation of the Motte's rules if you're sufficiently vague, and that's fine. (It'd be pretty unenforcable otherwise.) Far be it for me to tell you otherwise.
But to do this, you had to make a decision on whether the person or group of persons was a good-enough actor (faith, competence, whatever) to pursue engagement going forward, or so bad that you instead began a general effort of isolating the sort of individuals in the community, so that they do not remain as unchallenged in their bailey as in an otherwise pleasant motte. Yes, this accelerates the process of evaporative cooling, where eventually only the assholes or the obsessives engage. But evaporative cooling around a poster is not the problem, it is product of the mitigation process, and more importantly the mitigation process is itself the consequence of prior patterns and past history.
Which comes back to not just what is recent, but what previous trends established the pattern of treating people like infohazards, or possibly Julius B-somethings.
I just don't understand how there's any confusion as to who's behind the sabotage.
The argument that Putin blew up his own pipeline that gives him leverage over Europe is silly. The US has both the means and the motive.
This sort of limited imagination is why you won't understand.
A lot of people have both the means and the motive, including the Russians, despite your protests otherwise and past arguments that NATO presence in the Baltic means that all of it is constantly and effectively monitored and thus couldn't possibly happen without American sanction or agency. This sort of prescription of American omniscience and incapability of anyone else is a rather blunt indication you're not actually familiar with the capabilities that would be required, as is self-centered style of dismissing other actors as candidates because you deem the cost-benefit silly or unreasonable... as if this weren't happening in the context of a Ukraine conflict that was only a surprise to so many Very Serious People because it seemed silly and unreasonable Russia would ever try such an obvious strategic mis-stake and mis-read as invading Ukraine.
And shooting down an airliner. And expecting pro-Russian candidates to win elections and deliver pro-Russian negotiations after taking the most pro-Russian regions out of the Ukrainian electorate. And invading Ukraine again, but bigger, and expecting a lot of things that were really, really silly in both prospect and retrospect. And this is without the other silly things, like using radioactive poisoning assassinations in countries with capabilities to detect it, or drilling holes in walls to steal piss to dope your people for the Olympics, or sacking your own military reformer for political expedience in the midst of a major military modernization campaign.
'There's no way that someone would do something really, really stupid' is not the defense you seem to think it is, especially it's not even the second, third, or fifth time said person would have done something really really stupid. And especially not when, from other perspectives or considerations you reject, may not even be as stupid as that.
Other actors make decisions based on their perception of the context and conflict and relative cost-benefit, not yours. That people do not share your cost-benefits-contexts does not mean the premise that they did it is any sillier than the idea that the US used an overt exercise months ago to lay mines to sabotage German infrastructure in response to for a checks notes Russian partial mobilization, as opposed to any actual sign that the Germans were actually going to restart a pipeline the Americans had already pressured them to stop. Or only laying mines, covertly, after such a resumption, thus mitigating the risk that other actors/collectors, including the Russians might discover the mines in routine maintenance/monitoring over the course of several months.
This is, whether you feel it is or not, very silly. Which is fine, in and of itself, but if silly can be applied in one direction, it's not an objection in another.
Dean
9d ago
...you, uh, are aware that Iranian-aligned and supplied groups have been shooting rockets into northern Israel for months now, right? Like, well into the hundreds of rockets. To a degree that 60,000 Israelis were mandatorily evacuated from parts of northern Israel due to the ongoing campaign.
And you are aware that one of the main groups doing so, Hezbollah, is regionally seen and understood as an Iranian proxy-ally, with significant degrees of coordination / support / direct armaments?
And you are aware that the primary agency of Iran that conducts this coordination/arming is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose commander was the one targeted in the strike?
This is really not a mystery. Iran has been participating in the Gaza conflict for several months. It has been directly instrumental in its efforts to expand the conflict to a second front in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which it has been arming and coordinating with via its positions Syria. It's not even the first effort to cause a multi-front war, which date to the start of the conflict.
The metaphor of kicking a hornet's nest relies on the implicit pre-state that the hornets are not already out and trying to sting you.
What else could they do? Israel bombs their consulate and kills their people.
They could credibly signal they intend to no longer actively engage in proxy warfare and distance themselves from their proxies. They won't, but they could.
Israel bombed the Iranian consulate because the Iranian asymetric warfare commander who has been organizing a multi-month bombardment campaign of Northern Israel was at the consulate, where he was quite likely in the business of facilitating further bombardments because that literally was part of his job. Everyone with an understanding of the region understood that context as soon as the Iranians publicized and admitted it was the IRGC Commander, and that as such this was not a tit-for-tat provocation stand-alone incident where Iran was responding to an Israeli kinetic instigation, but a tat-for-tit-for-tat cycle where Iran would be responding to an Israeli response.
The difference is significant- and telling in how the Arab states responded- as the difference between responding to a response versus responding to an instigating response is that any game cyclic equilibrium will look at the response of the response for indications on whether the cycle will continue. People who believe that an Iranian non-response would be perceived as cowardliness and Israel believing it can act with impunity aren't familiar with the region. The accusations could come regardless- how Iran chose to respond is indicative of how it intends to continue with the policies that provoked the Israeli retaliation.
Isn't this just a general purpose argument for extending the war forever?
No. It's a specific-person argument relevant to the key decision maker based on past actions and demonstrated intentions.
Algorithm for perpetual war
Opponent is losing: Don't stop now, he's toast. March on to victory. Opponent is winning: Don't negotiate from a state of weakness.
Your algorithm lacks basic considerations such as not reflecting the considerations of what objectives are being pursued, the considerations of Putin that Resolute Raven was referring to, not factoring in the game theory of the nuclear weapons.
It also lacks the characteristic of having been made by the person you are responding to, rendering it a straw man that does not address their actual position.
Honestly, I don't know. Maybe Putin wouldn't accept peace even at the current borders. Maybe he would. Maybe he'd give it all back in exchange for international recognition of Crimea. Why are we afraid to try offering an olive branch?
I don't know- why are you afraid?
May other people aren't afraid, they just deem it an irrational and even harmful olive branch based on the multiple other olive branches Putin was offered that Putin discarded, ignored, or used as weapons in the course of his path to the present.
Which returns to your propensity to ignoring the history of involved actors and repeated iterations of conflicts and compromises as a factor in other people's considerations of how to deal with said actors.
To pick just one related to territorial claims, the history that Putin himself recognized Ukranian territorial integrity before he decided not to, before he said he had no further territorial claims on Ukraine, before he sponsored an uprising he claimed he had nothing to do with, before he launched an armed intervention to secure separatist republics he claimed he had no territorial ambitions on, before he annexed them but claimed he had no territorial goals on the rest of Ukraine, before he declared the annexation of not only territories held but territories never captured, to current highly costly efforts to continue conquering territory not held and never held previously.
Dean
1yr ago
His own litigative tactic here is more Julius-like, if anything. Actual failings of ymeskhout that are brought forth as evidence of the Julius pattern range from trivial (editing in and out some catty remarks), to highly contestable, to apparently disingenuous (everything about failures to engage with criticism in previous rounds).
To clarify the last for you, I made a judgement call around 2020 that direct topic exchanges with ymeskhout were unwarranted due to his habit of misrepresenting other people's positions and ignoring previously provided arguments. The topics at the time were cases involving the 2020 election, but the behavioral trend was more general. In a thread where multiple examples were pointed to of past examples of this (including by other posters), I wrote a long-form post explaining why I found further engagement with him (providing more engaged arguments and sources) pointless due to the faith demonstrated, and would no longer provide that level of engagement going forward. This followed up with another effort post elaborating the point on the more abstract level, and have referred to it since as to why I don't engage with ymeskhout on his post subjects anymore, but limit myself to discussion of his conduct.
The disingenuous charge against me comes from ymeskhout accuses me of not explaining my refusal to engage with him. The disingenuous charge by me is that I refer ymeskhout back to the effort post thread where I explained what I found lacking and why I found him to be acting in bad faith... which then comes to the next cycle, when ymekshout will claim for the audience that I've never provided him the reasons why.
Given that the 2020 posting was a (multi-post) effort explanation why, with both concerete and abstract reasons, and ymeskhout has repeatedly linked back to the post since (but in a way that hides the object-level objection trend from the later follow-on), I find the the accusation of not providing prior explanations why disengenuous, and demonstrative of the dishonesty (of both mis-representing positions and and the existence/nature of prior engagements) I maintain my stance of. At this point I know he knows where to find the previous position, he knows I know he knows where the previous position... and every iteration of this, he will complain that I still have not provided him my position, and I will counter that he is demonstrating the reason why I will not engage.
Me being the disingenuous one is certainly a credible enough charge to those unaware, and why I consider his objections performative at this point as part of the charge of misrepresenting other people's previous positions for current arguments, but this is also why I openly accuse him of lying, and have not recanted it despite mod warnings to not do so lightly.
Take viewpoint bias for what it is, of course, but from my position I've always been frank to the point of risking mod censure on why I will not engage ynekshout in a counter-argument form anymore- because I find him habitually dishonest when representing other people's arguments, present and past, ranging from their stance to their existence (and effort-spent) in previous engagements.
Dean
1yr ago
I'm trying to read and understand what you're writing to the best of my abilities. I'm just asking "what am I missing?" and it's not helpful for you to play a game of riddles.
What you are missing is the character qualities to acknowledge previous arguments provided to you without misrepresenting them or outright pretending they do not exist at a later argument.
This is not a riddle- this is a description of why I deem you to operate in bad faith.
It doesn't make sense why you'd waste so much time and energy evading questions with purportedly trivially obvious answers.
Because I deem you to operates in bad faith and as the sort of person who pretends previous engagements did not happen. You used to link to the long-form, which itself followed a thread in which characteristic examples were identified.
Dean
1yr ago
I asked before but I'll try again and hopefully get a more helpful answer: what information, context, link, source, claim, assertion, citation, whatever, etc. do you believe is missing from my post above?
This would be an example of you not accurately reflecting previous engagements, as the previous engagements precede your post above, and so obviously and temporally did not address it, and insinuating they did is the sort of mis-representation you stand accused of conducting on a regular basis.
Dean
1yr ago
I know this isn't the first time you respond with this line, but nevertheless it continues to be an amazing and revealing response. You keep claiming that I'm ignoring/denying feedback, but man oh man it would be so much easier for both of us if you just actually respond with this fictitious feedback I'm apparently ignoring instead of wasting your time thinking up increasingly creative ways of dodging the question.
I reject the request because you continue to act in bad faith and lie about other people's positions and past engagements for the sake of your current arguments.
You and I both know that you saved the very post where I detailed when I first wrote you off on grounds of character, because you have repeatedly linked to it since the migration while bemoaning that you have never been given feedback. You and I also both know that the same post was preceeded in the same post thread by object-level feedback of argument noting specific cases in context that you were doing what you were accused of. We both know you have been previously reminded of this, just as we both know that you will, in the future, claim that you have never been responded to and that claims of previous feedback that you yourself have linked to was fictitious.
See you on the next rotation buddy <3
Try not to conduct any more miscarriages of justice until then.
Dean
1yr ago
Can I? Sure. Will I? A waste of time when you are involved, given your pattern of conduct which has been noted repeatedly over the years even if you have also repeatedly denied the feedback. Improving your character to have fewer petty swipes at your other posters would be a start.
Hello everyone, I continue to have no idea what Dean is talking about, either in the post above or in the many responses to me (ex. most recently here). I know that Dean does not like it when I talk about 2020 election fraud theories, but I have no idea exactly why. This is a saga that has been going on for almost two years now, and I keep linking to this exchange in May 2021 as illustrative.
Indeed it is, and as said before I maintain it is more condemning of you than defending. To quote from the May 21 you link to-
It was a reflection of your reoccuring flaw on this topic, which is to conflate far too diverse circumstances and contexts into a nominal narrative that ignores or dismisses people's actual positions/concerns while presenting a viewpoint they don't hold as the undisputed reality.
I maintain this is the case, because you are continuing to do this in your attempt to defend against it.
For example, Dean accused me of being selective with what theories I cover. When I asked which ones I should pay attention to, his responses were: "I'm not particularly interested in trying to feed you sources to be judged by you on your standards on credibility to consistency standards you impose that helpfully weed out things other people might care about and could even be true." and "I am uninterested in providing you sources on other people's positions given your conduct on this topic."
I don't know if I'm off-base here, but this reads to me as "It's not my job to educate you" which does not strike me as helpful or productive. Does anyone disagree with my interpretation?
Yes, and claims of ignorance like this is why I doubt your good faith.
I have, by your own link that you keep referring to, stated that I am uninterested in providing you sources on other people's positions given your conduct on the topic. What is my allegation of your conduct on the topic? My characterization of your conduct is- per the May 21 link- your reoccuring flaw to conflate far too diverse circumstances and contexts into a nominal narrative that ignores or dismisses people's actual positions/concerns while presenting a viewpoint they don't hold as the undisputed reality.
Your very response is to conflate different circumstances (quotations, in this case) to ignore a stated position, and assign a position I do not hold.
In this very citation paragraph you engage in this. The very reason of why I do not provide you sources is in your link, because of your conduct. Which you conflate with... 'it is not my job to educate you.'
My position is not that it is not my job to educate you. Stop lying about the position not only given to you, but that you cite.
I still continued trying to figure exactly what I should do differently. When I asked if focusing on Trump's theories was valid, Dean claimed accused me of incompetence and bad faith because "you are supposed to know that a lot of what Trump says is nonsense no matter what he talks about"
Oh, hey, conflating past conversations for a unified narrative. I'm sure that the actual context had no meddlesome distinctions from any other discussion, such as the literal versus serious dynamic that was relevant around Trump, or specific Trump messages in the context they were provided.
and then I'm accused of lying about something (no idea what exactly): "In two sentences you have given what could be called lies about other peoples positions already given to you. This faux ignorance of other people's posts made just hours or minutes ago, and significant mis-representation of what has already been given to you, robs an exchange of sources or justifications of any value."
Clearly a sentence that internally references other posts made at the time is has no missing context that is being ommitted for the sake of a narrative here and now.
I've confessed that I don't know what I'm supposed to do differently. I mean, besides adopting Dean's preferred conclusions of course. Short of that, can ANYBODY provide ANY insight into the specific concerns and what EXACTLY I should do differently? I love feedback! Especially when I can understand it.
Sure. Stop lying.
Stop lying about other people's positions are when they give it to you. Stop lying about people having never given you other arguments in the past. Stop lying that you haven't been provided insight into the specific concerns.
If you can't understand what someone says, confess incapability. If you can't remember what someone said, or find where it was, confess the failures of memory or recordkeeping. If you can't accept what other people say as valid, you won't be able to confess that sort of failing by its nature, but lack of selfawareness is no reason to lie about not being given reasons in the past.
To stop doing the flaw you have been described as having, stop conflating far too diverse circumstances and contexts into a nominal narrative that ignores or dismisses people's actual positions/concerns while presenting a viewpoint they don't hold.
Now, I have no expectation of you doing such, and fully expect you to pull out the May 21 link the next go around to go 'why has she never told me', instead of this, but that's only because this is, what, the fourth exchange on this subject where you ask the same questions about why you've never been given an answer?
Did you even read the content of the article?
Yup. And I even noticed it wasn't by the American State Department, whose own words you were claiming to link to, and then tried to defend not referring to in favor of a detractor's take before taking issue for positions not being accurately reflected.
The article was less interesting than the irony, and not particularly relevant to the post the citation was meant to refute.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that one went right over your head...
A common mistake you make, I'm sure.
Lol. Okay.
Okay indeed.
Now, would you like to drop further points to a more defensible motte, or just try one more time for a last word? There aren't many more positions left for you to abandon in the face of challenge, but I doubt I'll see more than a downvote.
Oh, hey, look who evaded acknowledging the inconvenient factor of Yanukovych granting himself the right to shoot people without legislative consent.
That it was orchestrated by the US? Yeah, that's long since been established. (1, 2)
Oddly, neither of your sources indicate that the pro-European protests were orchestrated by the US as opposed to the US supporting protests that would occur from organic pro-EU support following Yanukovych's backing out of a highly popular agreement with the European Union also suppored by EU advocates well implaced.
Typical hyperagency / hypoagency framework, but American fanatics are American fanatics even if they are haters.
Further, your conspiratorial framing is outdated. Everyone who wants to trace the money and media flows knows that the Ukrainians were primarily reading German-owned media, not American.
If your historical metaphors are on par with the propagandists you find running the narrative, I see no reason to not treat them as roughly equivalent.
Fortunately they are not, and I tend to avoid them unless there's an amusing parallel, such as who in the current day might be analogous to a warmongering expansionist imperialist power with dreams of establishing itself as a global power pole against western decadence.
Personally I don't think Ukraine meets that model, but such is life.
If there's a solid historical argument in there that doesn't evade the facts of what happened, I haven't seen it. Only an egotist's internal monologue.
Again, the self-reflection.
And yet, far less so than ignoring nuclear weapons as a deterrent for invasion.
The argument that Russia was not under threat from the US axis is not made on the basis that the US wouldn't if it could beat Russia in a conventional war- not least because nothing about the Ukraine war changed the underlying reality of Russia's conventional deficit vis-a-vis the US and has only made it worse- but rather that beating Russia in a nuclear war wouldn't be worthwhile when the cost is measured not in divisions, but cities.
The Russian national security argument for invading Ukraine has always fallen to the point that it does not change the actual nuclear balance of power against the US in any conflict, and that it has been nuclear deterrence that Russia had, and all those others have not.
Dean
1yr ago
I can respond with nuh-uh and then you can respond with yeah-uh and I can respond with nuh-uh again or....you can just answer the question.
The question has been answered for years. You used to post the link quite regularly to where I did, until it was pointed out you were skipping the parts that pointed out examples that drove the conclusion.
The amount of effort you continue to put into evading this very very very simple question makes me conclude you're being deliberately obtuse to obfuscate the fact that you lack evidence for your assertions.
The effort is entirely commensurate with my assessment of your good faith and character, which you have only lived up to in the years since.
It's absence. Not liking Trump is fine. Regularly and consistently making top-level comments about it with poor conduct towards the posters you are a moderator for is not. The dead horse doesn't become less dead if there's more of it to beat, especially when the complaint is about the stench.
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