EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
19hr ago
That's fair, but usage of subs is a substantially higher bar both operationally as well as in the decision-making of things. Notably, an SLBM launch tends to generate substantially fewer false positives (as an absolute number, more relevant here for nuclear risk) than INF-type intermediate-range missiles (which already proliferate not just in presence but usage as well) simply because it generates dramatically fewer positives to begin with. Not that e.g. China ever participated in said INF treaty, though, but the logic still applies to actually being willing to mount, or actually mounting, these types with nuclear warheads. I hope. Unfortunately AFAIK their IRBMs and the like are capable of quick swap, and recent trends towards a launch-on-warn, hair-trigger profile bodes poorly. So the hope comes in the form of: China being smart enough to never ever get caught mounting them (or ideally even thinking about doing so). Thankfully due to physical realities, mainland US is far enough away from Russia that this kind of thing is, well not quite a non-issue, but less worrisome, so maybe it's half-moot.
So yeah, in theory those short windows still exist, but risk-wise the two things are orders of magnitude apart.
The SK-Japan-China axis is especially hard to gauge, because to be honest none of them have really managed to set aside historical grievances or fears. China is big and scary, Japan did some horrific stuff in WW2, SK doesn't want to be the little kid on the block anymore, and then there's ancient history too, lol. I lowkey think that dynamic is way harder to predict in the next 50 years than NK is. Still my feeling is the same: fewer actors -> less risk.
Bringing up Japan is a good point. If Japan as seems likely were to help the US defend Taiwan, that would fundamentally change the Chinese-Japanese relationship far beyond the current trends. However, I'm skeptical that even a more warlike Japan would get their own nukes. Nuclear sharing is the most on the table and that's not that weird - it's still a US-Chinese dynamic. I will grant that what I've ignored here is the substantially closer physical proximity to these allies and time zone issues means that nuclear dynamics on this local axis (with presumed remote US decision making) is a major challenge that can't really be mitigated easily.
Along the lines of spreading nukes around to allies, if the US actually were to follow through and let Saudi Arabia get nukes, that would be absolutely disastrous. That's in my mind the most likely path to countries like Vietnam wanting to sign up too.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
19hr ago
The other issue is more generalized: it's easier to bear discrimination if there's some kind of minimum, critical mass of "people like you" alongside. Thus exceptionally asymmetric professions tend to stay that way without some effort simply due to self-selection after an attempt to break into the career, even if you don't have heavy pre-selection pressure.
The liberals aren't wrong about how this load is real. Not insurmountable, but like in aggregate real, and also personally noticeable. My soon-to-be-aunt, for example, works as one of just something like 4 women in an office of 50 male engineers in a very specific niche industry (she is office staff and part HR, yes). But she's got frustration. For example, pointing out some serious design (and also UX) issues with their terrible looking, outdated website. Ignored and belittled, sadly, despite putting some effort into a strong proposal. These weren't like, 'matter of taste/branding' changes they were 'universal design principle' type things, too. And yeah, over time that's the kind of thing that makes people quit even if it's not like, a dealbreaker by itself. However, having one or two other women in the room for a decision too does seem to be a big tipping-point difference anecdotally in terms of limiting discrimination.
Interestingly enough if you run the math, it's quite helpful to avoid auto-self-segregation if you insist on even basic diversity quotas. And I think segregation is bad for society. It's probably bad for business too, but I think there's a few quite large caveats involved.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
19hr ago
Weirdly, my younger (in college, lesbian) sister, when pressed, will outright claim that "women are better than men in every way" yet decline to call this sexism. I'm still a bit flummoxed on how to address this - I think her classic argument is along the lines of how you must view anything like racism or sexism in context of the direction of traditional oppression, but we usually don't get that far before feelings are hurt so that's the one topic we try to avoid recently when family gathers. I guess I'm inclined to simply call this a lack of emotional maturity rather than a genuine intellectual failing for now, we'll see if she feels the same in 5 years, much as that feels stereotypical or possibly-paternalistic/hubristic to type.
More generally, I think the issue here comes down to "money". Money is powerful. Money distorts emotions. Money buys lots of things, notably including many nontangible items too (indirectly). Money ends up being a power system in and of itself. I think unless we manage to agree on the moral nature of money and what it does to people and society, we're going to have trouble coming to grips with the intersection of gender and careers. I don't think that's a super hippie-commie thing to say, nor a super-religious thing to say, just plain truth. My mini-thesis, at least.
I'd be very interested to see some of these thread responses paired with "what do you think about money, its role in society, and its personal influence?" (Bonus points: paired with how financially comfortable are you/secure in your future)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
20hr ago
I can easily buy that decreased risk appetite and increased internal focus makes jobs more appealing to women, causatively, in fact I think even liberal sociologists would quickly agree, but I'm not quite sure it follows that the profession drops in stature. But not for the two candidate reasons listed.
It's a little bit of an awkward self-reinforcing question, or poorly defined, because in my view what we typically call "status" or "stature" is mostly set by men for men (invoking a sense of ranking, not just goodness or desirability) while women operate their own parallel system of "status": perhaps "respectability" that mostly dovetails but diverges in some key ways, as a system by women for men; and something like "social capital" which more often operates by women for women. The systems often dovetail but are not in fact interchangeable because they prioritize differently (but correlate well because the primary drivers such as exclusivity, intellectual rigor, social function, or most commonly, wealth generation are super similar). You might notice that, for example, how prestigious high-risk jobs are highlight this.
I don't think the difference is huge so that's a valid objection, but I do think it's a very real piece of nuance that pops up particularly in certain fields. I'm not denying/ignoring that surveys seem to find predictive power in feminization of professors and prestige, just that we have to be pretty careful about the words and might be doing that thing where two people think they are talking about the same thing but really aren't. A man and a woman, in different contexts, might both call all of my 3 proposed paradigms above "status"!
I haven't gone digging too deeply, but I'm pretty sure the classic "prestige surveys" do not attempt to disambiguate, like at all. It's a collapsed index. There's a small handful of studies exploring power dynamics and prestige as distinct IIRC, but very little else. I think this is mostly because the money-prestige link is so dominant! Which to my eyes signals that you simply cannot consider them in isolation, and statistically creates a lot of traps all over the place. At any rate, when I skimmed a few studies related to this, quite a few of them seem to admit straight up that prestige alone is very likely a flawed construct with iffy methodological rigor.
But as you say to the broader point, it's still quite open whether broadly speaking, jobs change -> therefore women enter or women enter -> therefore the jobs change. As to whether women enter -> men flee is the right factual framing (are we talking absolute numbers, proportions, changes in training pipelines?) to be honest I don't know what the data suggests there.
Personally I'm against expansion in the number of nuclear-armed states, full stop, no matter how virtuous. Because the nukes don't easily go away, if at all, and I do worry about tail risks. Mostly of the variety: some idiot breaks the strong taboo and drops a "tactical" nuclear bomb, and then the taboo is way weaker and more shit can happen (direct response or down the road), though you can't entirely discount accidents/misunderstandings/etc as a potential source of disaster. The way it seems to work is risk scale much more strongly with the number of independent actors involved, not number of nukes, so while a mutual US-Chinese nuclear arms race would be bad, I think it's bracketed for me within the 'normal' level of badness. Way less risky in relative terms than allowing someone like, say, Japan (lol) to get nukes even if they seem trustworthy in the near and medium term. There's something to be said for the (sadly now defunct) Cold War arms treaties limiting stuff like intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles simply for the human fact that a 5-minute snap decision is quantitatively and qualitatively much worse than a 15-minute snap decision, though I'm hopeful this logic is clear enough most actors don't meaningfully arm missiles with nukes at those ranges even if the treaty is dead.
As to whether the relative risk of an emboldened China contributing to generalized nuclear tension is greater than the risk of a conventional fight over Taiwan escalating to nuclear exchange(s), that I'm not quite sure. I think a purely nuclear POV probably says that direct global powers at war is the higher risk. As to whether China believes that Taiwan is so 1000% "China proper" that they'd be willing to risk using nukes? On paper they do, but I think it's mostly clear that in practice they don't.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23hr ago
Put simply, it increases China's power, especially locally, to a dramatic degree. China gains the ability to meaningfully project power further in the region without real restraint, including ruling the seas there completely. Historically, this kind of naval+regional dominance always leads to the power getting used or abused. It's naive and wrong to think that wars only start of territorial greed, and therefore no territorial ambitions means no risk of war, though I'm not sure if that's what you were implying or not.
At any rate, I think there's a pretty reasonable case to make that China getting more powerful and influential is bad for the world. I don't think it's awful for the world, but definitely bad in relative terms, and bad for America as well. Global power isn't really zero-sum, but I think American power would diminish at least proportionally in a lot of areas simply because we've nearly 100% occupied a few particular global niches for a while, which leads to some similar dynamics.
Diplomatically, and this is probably the big one, there's no way this wouldn't result in a hit to American reliability, already somewhat in question. This kind of soft diplomatic capital is really hard to replace, and really valuable. Speaking frankly, there's always this element of reputation+raw power that serves as a background to even seemingly unrelated negotiations. The US has leveraged this to our advantage over the years; it can work in reverse, too. It's like a meta-multiplier.
While it's clear that ideological dominos isn't really a thing, I would argue that it's possible to kick off a cascade of weakened alliances. Like it or not the US has essentially provided some degree of security guarantee for decades and decades to Taiwan. On top of NATO doubts, this means that functionally all of our 'guarantees' are increasingly seen as pure convenience. Mechanistically, this is bad because alliances have synergistic effects based on mutual trust that dissipate when trust decreases. As an illustration, think of a vendor relationship. A little wiggle room based on trust can be mutually beneficial to adapt to changing circumstances, or even provide material improvement like how banks give better lending terms to certain outfits; once the trust is gone, though, lawyers start to enter the room, threats start to happen, and transactions shrink in size and scope.
Economically, I think you're underrating the knock-on effects. Sure, we've reduced our reliance on China a bit, but where has that reliance gone? Its neighbors, mostly. If China suddenly gets a stronger grip on Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. this greatly reduces trade leverage, even if our relationship with South Korean and Japan were to remain identical.
More subjectively, it would also be morally quite sad. Taiwan is a functioning, independent democracy with strong claims to self-determination.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Yes. And AI makes this only more stark. The reality is, working memory can only work with what's already in the brain as background. Knowing facts as well as frameworks for understanding, especially in science, literally enable higher thinking. There's limits of course, and we can debate what a sensible "baseline" is, but science instruction in basic chemistry, physics, biology, and to some extent math (that's a whole other conversation) is absolutely essential. And similar arguments apply to basic reading, history, geography, and bits and pieces of the humanities. If anything, recent research has actually underscored that especially US education has shied a little too far away from memorizing and internalizing facts, because you do need that baseline as I said to do anything more complex.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Or just bad cost weighting of the hot-crazy matrix!
So as one of the resident Taiwan pessimists, I have surprising news. Contrary to all my expectations, Trump might have actually pushed back a Taiwan invasion. I'm always a little suspicious of the variable quality of Time magazine stories, but this laid out a pretty cogent case. First, my prior base case:
With the U.S. military depleted and distracted by a conflict on the other side of the globe, observers worried that Chinese strongman Xi Jinping may never have a better opportunity to move on the democratic island of 23 million, whose “reunification” he has called “the great trend of history.” The fear is that Trump’s transactional bearing and embrace of a “might is right” doctrine—both in his own actions and his ambivalence regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—could be interpreted as a green light by Xi.
“Will Xi be tempted to take advantage of U.S. potentially exhausting smart munitions and attack Taiwan even if the PLA is not fully ready?” asks Prof. Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London. “Possible.”
You can definitely still make this case. I'm almost tempted to. On a very substantial fact-based level, the US in the next 1-2 years especially will be possibly at the lowest level or readiness in a great while: large portions of the fleet will need refits, interceptor stocks will take years to recover even under optimistic scenarios, other precision munitions are also low, every conflict lowers US domestic appetite for more, and contrarily war would improve domestic approval within China that's otherwise a little grumpy with recent so-so growth. Additionally, there's some mild but decent evidence that US defenses are indeed still vulnerable to the new classes of hypersonic missiles. US capacity and abilities are sure to spike again in the 3-5 year time frame as the US not only implements highly relevant fixes to problems that have been exposed recently, but also continues to re-orient its efforts to prioritize things that threaten China more both directly and indirectly, so the window is real but closing.
However, on a more how-the-real-world-works level, war is less likely. Trump demonstrated quite clearly that the US military is far more capable and combat-ready than observers had assumed. It has the capacity to plan carefully thousands of targets, kidnap or assassinate world leaders (though with nuclear-armed China I disagree that this is very relevant), completely overwhelm air defenses without losses (including at least some amount of Chinese-made equipment in both Venezuela and Iran), sustain and project power across the globe, process an enormous amount of intelligence and surveillance with decent accuracy, and more. And clearly the President can unilaterally do whatever they want, with Trump in particular shedding a previous (avowed) aversion to conflict. DPP is not weak exactly, but definitely having some down moments compared to the more pro-China KMT within Taiwan, mildly raising hopes of a political reunification. And Taiwanese self-defense efforts as far as I can tell remain pretty lackluster despite continuing to shell out for some high end systems. Furthermore this is a tiny little dry run of how badly the global oil supply can get screwed with even a regional war, doubtless actual action would be worse, and I'm guessing China feels a bit of that pain.
And sure enough this seems to be the initial reaction. Here for example, we have a typical bellwether academic at a flagship university saying stuff like this:
Li Yihu, dean of the Taiwan Research Institute at Peking University, said the reunification process would enter an “accelerated phase” in the next five years and the mainland needed to do more to communicate an understanding of what he said was the inevitability of the process.
“Currently, we are doing very well in terms of building the capacity and the resolve to use [military deterrence], but we still need to work on ensuring that … both overt and potential adversaries fully understand the consequences of deterrence and the gains and losses,” he said.
He was referencing the deterrence theory of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who argued that deterrence was a product of the physical military capacity to inflict damage, the resolve and willingness of leadership to act and the potential rivals’ perception and understanding of the deterrer’s power and resolve.
Reading between the lines, the obvious message is: wow, actually, the US is doing really well at deterrence recently in all of these three areas, especially demonstrated capacity and resolve, and China has, well, very little to show for its own efforts. No big operations besides military exercises. No real allies willing to pitch in. Unclear transmission of internal resolve to America, too. So in our how-the-world-actually-works framework, China is missing the essential psychological ingredients to actually pull off deterrence even if I still believe that in terms of the nuts and bolts, China could win pretty handily even if the US intervenes (in terms of a conflict itself) and has more cards to play in terms of the "how". They know it, too, but that's likely not going to be enough.
As such I'll take a predictive L in advance. My predictions about 4-5 years ago that a Taiwanese invasion would happen in approximately this timeframe was wrong. Difficult to foresee political factors significantly distorted the general strategic picture, which I assert remains accurate. My primary failing was underweighting the political side of things and the significant variance there, along with its impact on the strategic calculations necessary to pull the trigger on a big move.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
The ideal of a "stress-free woman" is not how human relationships work, including marriage as a logical subset. I mean I didn't think it needed to be said, and maybe this wasn't your intent, but women are people too, and ALL (meaningful) relationships take some kind of work or investment. And no, simply paying the bills doesn't count (although it IS a large input). With that said, yes I agree that a decent share of (especially current modern) men would take that tradeoff. Truly, money and status doth corrupt and lead to nearsighted, misguided happiness pursuits. Including many 'liberal' efforts that are counterproductive (from claims that 'all happiness is relative' ignoring basic needs to overly self-indulgent prioritization to rejecting some fundamental human patterns).
I also think "excommunicating for certain lines of work" is an unacceptable values tradeoff, even if it's practical in the sense that it's been done before and 'worked'. As a culture we certainly are too individualistic, the extremes need to be dialed back, and yeah it's possible that as a society we need to figure out if there are better ways of wealth sharing for mutual baseline prosperity than some of the lackluster or downright harmful solutions some have proposed or tried (e.g. communism). As a sort of system-first moderate, I honestly think the Bernie liberals might be on to something with the idea that we can get something decent with smart and targeted tax and governmental policy, but there's probably still at least some kind of gap beyond that. Ideally, I think the uber-rich should do a better job of self-cultivating values of giving back on a more direct level (beyond just creating vanity projects, larger yachts, and giving indirectly via somewhat useless nonprofits), though as a society we can't really force that to happen very easily if at all.
Regardless, I feel like cultural technology can solve this problem even if we haven't quite yet. Along those lines, I don't view stuff like 10% quotas bad at all - some decent research suggests that many fields have "tipping points" where being too homogenous hurts (perhaps in output, but definitely in terms of allowing the minority class to feel welcome or stable). That is not to say that 50% in every field is an ideal. Just that some reasonable minimum allows the society to fulfill the value of "allow people to do and work how and where they want without making it a major pain" while still permitting some 'natural' gender differentiation. In that sense, of course lots of modern liberal efforts are misguided alongside their disproportionate effort, but it doesn't mean all modern liberal efforts at better parity are worthless!
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
26d ago
That's fair - but also definitely the trend in the last few years to make the show more TV-friendly than stadium-friendly. I speculate some of that is actually Apple TV's influence, but honestly the half-time show really IS for the TV audience, not the people in the stadium.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to start listening to Bad Bunny, but to me the point is more just something fun to look at and talk about in between the ads
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
26d ago
Because for a few decades now there's intense pressure NOT to innovate in any way shape or form... and music fundamentally does have some inherent limitations in terms of how differentiated it can be within rigid paradigms. In math terms, there aren't enough "degrees of freedom" within the "country music" narrow genre to allow meaningful variety, much less appeal outside the borders.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
26d ago
You know what? The halftime show was a lot of fun. Bad Bunny did a great job and as far as I can tell the message was definitely much more one of unity than one of criticism, contrary to the Trumpist worries. His only lines in English? God Bless America (although with the slightly subversive implication that America = 'the Americas' more broadly). The dancing was great (Indian - Hispanic unity there, white America really doesn't get/value dancing atm), the visuals were very varied and fun to look at, although I personally can understand a decent amount of Spanish I think there was probably enough going on that non-speakers would probably still enjoy?
EverythingIsFine
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1mo ago
It's my understanding that absent actually aiding a specific crime, it's perfectly legal albeit obnoxious to whistle and make people aware of police/ICE presence (lookout for a robbery no but generally warning people about ICE or a speed trap is fine) and is not sabotaging an arrest. Although you may get arrested anyways despite it being plainly unlawful for ICE to do so (personally I think the incentive structure regarding illegal arrests is pretty damn flawed but that's an issue for another day). Blocking a street on the other hand, against a specific patrol, is obstruction, yes. Blocking a street more generically is nominally a traffic crime and therefore not ICE jurisdiction, though obviously the line between those two is pretty weak. Blocking a street as part of a larger group is a different kind of discussion that has to do with "authorized" vs "unauthorized" protests and generally you can't march on a street that normally has traffic unless you have a permit.
It is historically true that the American rationale for when revolution is justified vs unjustified is a little muddled, although the Declaration of Independence attempts a standard. I mean, we did have a civil war over more or less that same issue. However speaking on the Constitution more broadly, despite some flaws I find it hard to argue too hard against it seeing as it's still the oldest democracy in the world. Norway is the second oldest and only dates to 1814 and even then it and many others typically went through far more extreme changes over the years to the core structure than ours did. The American Constitution notably stands virtually unchanged in its core formulation (the most significant change, in the long view, being merely senators being popularly elected). The rest were details, or adding in new rights, and not a fundamental reshaping of the balance of power or the structure of the checks and balances! This is quite rare. IIRC Belgium has a better claim and even that is almost 50 years later (amusingly they did somewhat the opposite than we did about 15 years ago, changing their senate from direct election to an assortment of regional parliaments).
I suppose it's fair to think that the loose interpretation helped its longevity, but to me rather it's that the checks and balances were generally done well, that the amendment process usually worked all right, and thus it's still a success I attribute to strength of structure, not looseness of structure. And although history is not a great experimental proving ground, that longevity is pretty decent evidence that at least something has worked. A lot of Americans at least are often surprised at how many democracies have had to toss out or totally rejigger their constitutions much more recently than you'd naively expect.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
I quite like the constitutional convention idea. I think I've even endorsed it here before. And it's notable that the Constitution even allows it, because it feels like this is precisely the sort of situation where conventions are the reasonable thing, since partisan negotiations aren't working and problems are obvious.
Lowering numbers seems good, but I'm reluctant to part with the whole 6-year staggered approach which usually balances presidential elections with off-cycle ones and acts as a further brake on spur of the moment changes. Making them come from the state legislature again seems at first glance to be somewhat reasonable. I think one thing that's under-optimized in the system as it currently is, is personal integrity/judgement. Too much selection on issues alone, and not enough on someone we trust to think about the issues deeply and make a good decision.
EverythingIsFine
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1mo ago
A pet theory of mine is actually that the last 50-70 (?) or so of history is qualitatively different than previous eras because leaders are too easy to kill or remove. It used to be that movements would generate Washingtons and Jeffersons and Lafayettes and such who built up their reputation and fame and could lead after winning, or at least strike a deal. But in the modern era, assassinations and executions are relatively more common, and emigrating relatively easier, such that countries suffer "leadership drain" during civil conflict and make civil wars worse than in previous eras. Also, compromise is more difficult because leaders have less political capital at their command. At least, so the thinking goes.
EverythingIsFine
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1mo ago
Hmm, that's an interesting take. For the IGs, I'm not sure if I want to go digging, but I was definitely getting the impression that there was still some substantial weakness going on including vacancies. "Acting" IGs are much less empowered and vacancies matter (reached 75% in October). Also, a few of the IGs were removed while investigating something politically sensitive. And courts literally did find that Trump broke the law in removing many, since giving a reason is required (the fact that the judge didn't reinstate them notwithstanding). In addition, all the offices have received significant budget cuts - doubly worrisome because allegedly the government was trying to eliminate waste and fraud, which sort of exposes the priorities.
More broadly Trump has also elevated people with notable pasts of lawbreaking and unethical behavior to higher posts. One that comes immediately to mind was now-Judge Bove, who multiple very, very reliable witnesses with impeccable credentials alleged had planned to deliberately lie to a judge and illegally evade their orders. You have Homan with the allegations of bribery, you have Noem even caught with 80k unreported donations as governor in a personal cut to herself, etc.
Something I didn't spend enough time on was Hatch act violations. They have become practically the norm. Originally the rules were pretty strict about splitting campaigning activity from official duties, but many Trump cabinet members have practically ignored them quite often, even during Trump I. And they continue, for example blaming Democrats for a government shutdown via multiple official channels.
A lot of liberals get up in arms about the special counsel position stuff. I'm a little torn. On the one hand, I thought the system was reasonable and so were the actions taken. Up to and including packing things up when Trump won re-election, to be clear, and also including the Clinton email stuff. On the other hand, they already changed the law on that once in 1999 because the prior system also had issues.
The overall effect however is a substantial chilling effect on doing stuff about unethical behavior, and removing safeguards to replace them with... nothing, really. That's why I called it naive. Congress is not stepping up to the plate, especially under Republican leadership. But we need fairness and clarity desperately. We only need it more, not less, when people distrust the system!
If he already had his gun out, that would be an unnecessary escalation unjustified by law enforcement policy. If he pulled out his gun on approach, ditto. Is there any reason to conclude otherwise? There's a reason cops during traffic stops do not pull their gun out on everyone, every time. I do not claim that he wanted to kill her anywhere. It's possible though. It's also not the point I was making in the OP. At any rate, there is, yes, clearly a point with sufficient evidence where pulling out a gun on someone driving at you is justified. Why would I think any different? Don't play slippery slope games unless you're actually alleging something.
hopefully-quick edit: I'm also not, and nowhere did, claim that we have indisputable proof that she was murdered. We had some evidence that cuts both ways. We have enough evidence in favor of "murder" that we should at least be discussing punishment. And more relevant to the original point, we have enough evidence that Ross did at least something wrong to be, again, at least discussing punishment.
I should add that my mental model of police is basically very, very rarely would they ever deliberately kill people. Somewhat common is killing people due to bad priors, however, partially due to the nature of the job but also partially due to flaws in ICE/law enforcement. I should reiterate that the standard is not "murder or not murder". It's "did he/they do something wrong" or "they were 100% innocent". The former is grounds for reasonable disagreement. The latter is what the OP discusses as being ridiculous and worrisome.
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1mo ago
"On some level" means exactly what it says on the tin, dude. Again I'm begging you to re-read before replying and apply some critical thinking skills.
"On some level" means to some degree, to a certain extent, or from a particular perspective, acknowledging something is partially true or valid without being entirely so, often used to qualify agreement or understanding
I do my best to substantively reply to every major aspect of a comment when I choose to comment, even when it weakens the argument, because I feel that it's more transparent and honest; and yes it does annoy me when people don't do the same. Which is more than I can say for a lot of people who edit their comments to be maximally persuasive instead. I'm attempting to optimize for light, or failing that, honesty. You're out here slinging accusations of "transparent manipulative bullshit". I transparently said that the original transcript called it a murder, but nowhere did I myself say that, and I acknowledged that it was a little confusing. Then, I attempted to clarify. What more do you want from me? Isn't that exactly what we are supposed to do? Jesus Christ.
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1mo ago
Probably does us a disservice to get into it, but I begrudgingly accepted them for the first half a year or so as an emergency measure, and then opposed them after (emergencies can't be indefinite, nor did the facts suggest it should have been). I was the only one in my liberal family (I'm more of a moderate) to oppose the (massed, non-distanced) BLM protests on grounds of hypocrisy, so no issues there.
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1mo ago
What? No. It's strictly a one-directional formulation. If super controversial -> then charge someone seems like a perfectly reasonable take to me. Nothing there violates due process. The whole issue about prosecutorial discretion (which to be fair isn't quite "due process") is a tricky one, and honestly probably the weakest part of our system (though possibly the "least bad" attempt at a solution), but that kind of "patch" seems super reasonable, yeah?
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1mo ago
Yeah, and in fact I hate that. I would never in a million years consider moving to Minnesota. It's definitely a violation of due process. My feelings are quite strong on the lack of sufficient public defenders and judges too, don't even get me started about speedy trials, though that's more universal (albeit no less serious!)
However if you had to choose between selective empathy and zero empathy the choice seems pretty... obvious?
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1mo ago
Facial expressions are not super strong indicators of panic, and the video is way too blurred to draw conclusions, I just rewatched it. She also could have simply misjudged the distance to the hood. At least personally I can attest I'm quite bad at knowing when my bumper will hit something, despite being a zero-accident driver for 15 years. But at any rate, the statement "You can see her on camera, extremely plainly, not panicking" is untrue, I don't know how else to say it.
Blocking strongly implies - to me - a complete block. She's in the way, but cars are passing. Therefore calling it blocking alone lacks significant context. I would never say "I-5 is blocked by a truck" unless I meant the whole road was closed. I would say "the truck is blocking a few lanes" because blocking is typically an all-or-nothing thing. So I think this one might be chalked up to differing personal connotations.
The point about cars being only directionally threatening to people was clear and I guess I can't help you if you claim not to understand it.
Okay, minutiae aside, let's talk about the meta-conversation and point.
People are free to sympathize with the cop. People are free to think the shoot was justified. My whole point is that thinking that "ICE did nothing wrong and does not even need investigation" is a higher bar than that. Please reread my intro/conclusion. On a meta level, the point is that the way the Trump administration portrayed the event is deceitful, and reactions along those same lines as their portrayal are callous and polarizing.
I was going to say that you avoided answering my question, but I can now see how you thought I might have misworded it. To be clear, this is a follow-up question, and no, it's not about Good, it's about what biases you may or may not have about leftie protestors, and I think it's highly relevant, because we're talking about the meta-reaction of people. So I'll ask again: do you truly believe that the portrayal I described ("if he were to die, that'd be great, and totally justified") is what a large chunk of lefties think? But sure, if you want, I'll ask it about Good too. How confident are you that that portrayal is accurate of Good? Where are you epistemically there?
I think you'd do yourself some favors re-reading my comments and waiting a few minutes before replying because you're mischaracterizing me. I'm attempting to engage in a way you don't seem to be, so I can't understand why you'd think I wasn't serious?
Let me repeat that. I'm talking about the Trump administration's official response, and not just that it's inaccurate, but that people echoing it is callous and polarizing in the extreme
This was my point, maybe I should have put it at the end and not the beginning. The official position is that Good, after "stalking, harassing, and impeding" then committed a coordinated pre-trained "domestic act of terrorism" and "violently, willfully, and viciously" ran over an officer with who "followed his training and did exactly what he was taught to do." Nearly every load-bearing part of that entire position is false. And it's batshit insane that people read that, do not seem to care that it's so clearly incorrect (falling back to an unintentionally bailey of their own interpretation).
Instead their conclusion is, to tweak your phrase, "it should have been immediately clear to the ICE officer and to viewers that that suddenly-accelerating SUV did pose a threat of death or grievous injury" and that there is zero doubt about that conclusion whatsoever. It's an affirmative claim that is plainly wrong. Perhaps coupled with a claim: "None of the ICE officers did a single thing wrong in the leadup to the shooting". And it's coupled with an emotional "she deserved it" reaction. That final point about emotional response makes it worse, but is not indispensable to the argument.
Another more central statement of the thesis (of the original video, perhaps more accurately, since my own was the first quote up top):
The idea that there's just no accountability, you can't they can wear plain clothes or have a mask and they can kill people and then the vice president will say they have absolute immunity is not a reasonable path for for America. I don't care what politics are on. You have to agree that that is not that is not the right direction to go.
Do you think the administration's reaction to the shooting is a "reasonable path for America"?
edit: edits to second half
The difference lies in direct exposure and proxies. Ukraine offers a sort of weird middle ground, semi-proxy war of the type we've seen several times throughout the Cold War to varying degrees. Iran, we fundamentally expect to get punched back, directly, not even exclusively through Iran's proxies. Thus a fight over Taiwan, where we expect the punches to land directly face to face is much closer to Iran situationally. Taiwan is currently a latent proxy, but there is really only a few, very implausible scenarios where we'd support Taiwan only by proxy. If China makes a go at it, either we leave them to try to handle it themselves or we get directly in the fight.
In other words: we've seen Ukraine-like situations before a couple times and not much happened most all of those times. We've seen Iran though recently, and to an extent not previously seen (the Soleimani response and then even the 12-day 'war' response were qualitatively different) since Iraq.
There's once big exception to the rule: proxy wars don't usually escalate to direct wars. The Korean War. This actually works in my argument's favor, though, because the US put themselves directly in the fight and it led to direct confrontation.
Picture the following scale:
WW2 was a Type 1 war. These have not happened since WW2 for a reason. The Korean War was a Type 2 war. It's really the only Type 2 war, though Sino-Soviet border clashes might count if you squint, or India-Pakistan if you stretch. A Taiwan-triggered war would probably be closer to a Type 2 war than a type 1 war, but it definitely wouldn't be a Type 3 war. If you count Ukraine as a US proxy, then that was a Type 3 war. To understand what Type 3 wars usually look like, let's look at history, because these are much better understood:
Vietnam: the US thought about flirting with an upgrade (it's worth noting that Type 2 only actually happens if one side strikes and the other side fights back) but decided against it pretty deliberately. Yom Kippur (arguably), the Soviets threatened to put a trigger force into a collapsing Egypt. Both sides went on nuclear alerts but basically both sides pumped the brakes. Soviet-Afghan war, both sides avoided escalation, even though Pakistan was a US ally in the middle of getting their own nukes. The Syrian Civil War was a kind of Type 3.5 war, because air power blurs the lines a bit. No escalation occurred and both parties were pretty careful to avoid an upgrade.
In this context, Ukraine is very much a 'known quantity'. So yeah, even though it seems counterintuitive that a small, direct fight between a power and a small(ish) country is better as a signal than a big, direct fight against a proxy, Ukraine is virtually guaranteed in practical terms to remain a Type 3, while a Taiwan clash jumps from nothing straight to a Type 2 or even Type 1 (if China decided to do a first-strike kind of action, including in space), do not pass go, do not collect $200. This makes Iran a much better signal of how willing the US is to get into a big, direct fight, with direct exposure, because it is a direct conflict, and Iran has a population bigger than the size of Germany, and twice the size of Ukraine! So yes, it's a decent assessment of the risk appetite the US currently has as well as its competence.
The instant jump to a Type 2 war, or more serious, is because Taiwan is an island (and quite close to China), thus after combat begins no pure-proxy assistance is possible. There is no such thing as a protected airlift or sealift out of Taiwan, or meaningful weapon-smuggling into a warzone around it. You either break a blockade with force or you don't. Taiwan is fundamentally incapable of being a Type 3 conflict for this reason.
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