FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
Formality is how standards are maintained, and I understand the basic nuance just fine. I am not claiming that the post in question was a good post, much less that the argument it made explicitly was a good argument, and even less that the argument it implied was a good argument. I am claiming that it is fair play by the rules of this forum as I understand them, and that the reply I modded was not.
You are not allowed to call someone a Nazi out of the blue here. If they say that they're a huge fan of Hitler, you are allowed to say "I think you're a Nazi, because of the statement you just made." If they say things that imply they're a big fan of Hitler, you're allowed to say "your statements indicate Hitler fandom for these reasons." You can even do this here while being objectively wrong, so long as you appear to be actually trying to make an effortful argument backed with evidence. Yes, this means that pretty much anyone can, with sufficient effort and hedging, call pretty much anyone else here a Nazi. The solution to this is to give consideration to those who argue well, stunt on the ones who argue poorly, and to ban those who don't bother to argue at all.
And sure, this applies to accusing people of wanting Red Army soldiers to gangrape German women too. But you have to actually make an argument, show your work and bring evidence. A bare accusation doesn't cut it.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
People are allowed to draw unpleasant comparisons between arguments made here and arguments made elsewhere. Even if you or I think those comparisons are obviously wrong, we do not mod people for being obviously wrong because being obviously wrong is not against the rules. "paraphrasing uncharitably", "straw-manning", and generally putting extremely repugnant words in other peoples' mouths is very explicitly against the rules.
They've already been warned about deleting top-level posts, their excuses were rejected, and if they continue to do it they will be banned.
No part of this interaction involves anything resembling "affirmative action."
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
No, the post above is not as uncharitable. @upsidedownmotter is drawing a comparison between a post written here and arguments elsewhere, and provided a link to the argument in question. You are free to disagree with that comparison, and you can think their argument is wrong, and you can make an argument in reply, but "the argument above seems similar to this other argument I've seen elsewhere" is comfortably within the rules, and "I suppose you probably think that Red Army soldiers gang raping German woman was a good thing too" is very far outside them when the person being responded to has not mentioned anything about soldiers, rape, or German women.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
That is not an accurate assessment of the content of the post in question. It may be a accurate assessment of the poster's intention, but they did not actually demand that anyone shut up, they did not (directly) call anyone a Nazi. They drew a comparison between positive descriptions of Apartheid South Africa and positive descriptions of Hitler elsewhere, and they offered a link to make it clear what they were talking about. It's not a particularly good post, but it is a fair one.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I suppose you probably think that Red Army soldiers gang raping German woman was a good thing too.
Supposing this is an example of being uncharitable.
Assume the people you're talking to or about have thought through the issues you're discussing, and try to represent their views in a way they would recognize. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly. Beating down strawmen is fun, but it's not productive for you, and it's certainly not productive for anyone attempting to engage you in conversation; it just results in repeated back-and-forths where your debate partner has to say "no, that's not what I think".
If any poster here believes that Red Army soldiers gang raping German women was a good thing, they are more than capable of expressing that thought plainly themselves; your assistance is not required.
You've been getting better at acquiring AAQCs rather than warnings lately, but this sort of post is flatly and egregiously against the rules. I'm giving you a one-day ban. Please do not post this way in the future; ban length will escalate if you do.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I'm no military analyst, so I couldn't tell you the exact details of what aid is appropriate. But I can safely say that "none" is not in the right ballpark even while lacking the expertise to give you those exact details.
The position I really resent is "more", endlessly, with no self-conscious awareness that this is in fact the position being taken. I strictly prefer "none" to an endless "more", for a whole variety of reasons. I strongly resent conducting "limited" wars where we burn endless resources and lives just to keep the fight churning. A decisive end, even if it is not the end we wanted, is better than that. I would be very happy if South Vietnam had survived, but the Vietnam war ending, even with a victory for the North, is still a better outcome than another decade of warfare.
A Holocaust denier could ask the same question.
That's a hell of a thing to say.
Are you familiar with Friedman Units? At every point during our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, we were told "The next six months are crucial" and how we needed one more troop surge or clearing operation to get things stable so we could finally see some durable results. Sunk cost fallacy is a hell of a drug. If what is needed is American troops, say so, and we can discuss whether the juice is worth the squeeze. If what is only needed is arms and money and intel, say that. But either way, I do not think it is too much to ask for those arguing for more support to clearly identify what results we should expect from that support, and where they're willing to draw the line if the results they predict are not, in fact, achieved.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I would continue to provide intelligence sharing, weapons, economic aid. I would not involve our own military. Continue to strike as many deals as possible to economically isolate Russia as well.
Presumably you don't want to involve our own military because of escalation concerns, correct?
What happens if Ukraine starts losing, either because the intel, weapons and economic aid were insufficient, or because Russia starts getting their shit together, or because Ukraine's forces are bled white? Do you accept their loss and call it a day, or do you escalate? If you escalate, what with?
Slowly and annoyingly bleed out Russian resources until they get exhausted and go home.
This strategy seems likely to maximize Ukrainian casualties, and it seems at least possible that Ukraine simply runs out of soldiers before Russia becomes exhausted enough to have to go home. If that happens, the choice becomes whether to accept a Russian victory, or to escalate. From your description, it seems to me that you are inclined to escalate. What with?
Make it crystal clear that there's a rules based order and if you just cross boundaries in a war of conquest we will not make it easy.
In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. We deployed our military to destroy his, forced the survivors back over the border into Iraq, and fomented an uprising against him. The uprising failed. We put in place ruinous sanctions and a no-fly zone, and leaned on him with all the pressure we could bring to bear. He stubbornly clung to power, and continued existing as a thorn in our side. So after 9/11 we invaded, toppled his government, hunted him down and hung him, kicked everyone associated with him and his Ba'ath party out of power, and tried to rebuild the country as a democracy. We tried for eight years, and the results were fairly disastrous. It does not seem to me that the "rules based order" was enhanced by this chain of events. In fact, it seems to me that the Iraq war and its knock-on effects did serious damage to America's internal cohesion and to international order as a whole. Ditto for our interventions in Libya and Syria.
You speak as though we are in control in some meaningful sense, that we have the capacity to impose our will on other nations. When I look at our history over the last few decades, I see little reason to believe that we actually possess such a capacity, and many examples of how a belief in such a capacity lead directly to disaster.
I contend that our willingness to simply surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban because we got bored is likely what contributed to the Ukraine invasion.
We spent twenty years and trillions of dollars occupying Afghanistan. We now know that the people running the occupation were systematically lying to the public about the occupation's prospects and achievements for most and perhaps all of those twenty years, because in fact the occupation was achieving nothing of identifiable value. You describe withdrawing after twenty years of occupation as "growing bored". How long, in your view, should we have stayed? Another twenty years? Another forty? What goal would staying longer have achieved?
I am opposed to supporting Ukraine because I do not want to go to war with Russia, and because I am extremely skeptical that "limited" aid will in fact stay limited. I think what will happen with Ukraine is what happened with Afghanistan and Iraq: the next six months will always be crucial, the next surge will always be the one to win it all, the next escalation will always be the one that's going to turn things around. This does in fact appear to me to be how Ukraine is going already, and I think conducting war in this fashion is obscene.
A world where we didn't defend Ukraine is a lot more volatile.
We didn't defend Armenia from Azerbaijan. We didn't defend Georgia from Russia. We didn't defend Ukraine when all this kicked off a decade ago. Did that make the world more volatile than a steadily-escalating European land war?
If this causes WW3 and we all die in nuclear armageddon I would say it was a bad idea. But to some degree it would be unavoidable if Russia is that suicidal and that expansionist.
You are arguing for a limited war. What I am looking for is some indication that the war you are advocating does, in fact, have meaningful limits. What I suspect is that your support for Ukraine is "limited" in the sense that "just one more step forward" is "limited"; after all, it could be two steps, or five, or a hundred. But in fact no matter how close to the precipice we are, I suspect you will always be in favor of "just one more step forward". Your flippant disdain for ending the Afghanistan occupation certainly lends weight to this impression.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
the Bucha massacre moves me deeply, apparently enough to push me out of my wise mind.
I actually had never heard of the Bucha massacre until it got brought up here, and still don't know the details.
I have heard of a lot of massacres over the years, and have expended some effort to not let them move me deeply any more, because I've had the repeated experience of being "moved deeply" by atrocities to support something that turned out to be a disaster. This is not a claim that your reaction is less valid than mine; only an attempt to illuminate a difference in perspective. I would guess that you see being moved by atrocity as a good thing, because it means that the sword of justice will be drawn against the wicked. I see it as a bad thing, because I've seen the sword of justice be drawn against the wicked, only to be swung blindly and stupidly to terrible ends.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
There's been a fair amount of discussion of America's military aid to Ukraine, and no few condemnations of those of us who have opposed that aid. I am informed, in fact, that this forum is overrun with Russian Propaganda, such that some no longer wish to participate. This is lamentable if true, so I thought it might help to prompt some elaboration of the pro-Ukraine case.
People who support aid to Ukraine, in whatever form, suppose that you personally are given complete control over the US government, and can set policy however you wish. What would your answers be to the following questions?
-
How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?
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What is the end-state your policy is aiming for? A ceasefire? Deter subsequent Russian invasion? Restoration of Ukraine's original borders? The Russian army destroyed? Putin deposed? Russia broken up? Something else?
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Is there an end-state or a potential event in the war that you think would falsify your understanding of the war, and convince you that providing aid was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
...Reading comments from those arguing for Ukraine, I've noted from the start that many of the arguments presented in favor of aid appear to be mutually-exclusive. In this most recent discussion, I've seen some people arguing that we should be sending in US or NATO troops, and other people arguing that of course no US or NATO troops are needed and that sending them would be obviously crazy. This is a natural consequence of many people arguing many points of view in one forum, but it seems helpful for people to lay out their own views when possible; often, these positions are just stated as though they should be obviously true.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
It’s interesting, this is similar to my impression of the 2024 film Civil War. A lot of ink was spilled speculating about the degree to which it was an anti-Trump or anti-right-wing film, and criticizing the implausibility of the different coalitions in the civil war. (“Why are Texas and California allied? Don’t these dummies know that California and Texas are politically opposed to each other?”) When to me the film clearly seemed to want to capture the sense of fish-out-of-water befuddlement that journalists experience covering foreign war zones.
My impression on Civil War was that the director understood, quite wisely, that most people wanted a movie that flattered their partisan identity, where what he wanted to show was what an actual civil war would mean for America on a concrete, day-to-day level. He makes the factions a nonsense hodgepodge because he doesn't want people to frame every single thing he depicts as "their wretched villainy/our righteous triumph." By invalidating everything we know or suspect about America's actual geographical fault-lines, he throws people into a limbo where, while groping around for some sense of what's going on, they might actually view the events he depicts with something approaching objectivity.
If that was the plan, though, it didn't seem to work for most people I've seem commentating, who were mostly upset that they didn't get the partisan propaganda they were looking for.
No, but it seems to me that most descriptions of Transhumanist Heaven suffer from suicidally-naïve faith in progress, and Lena demonstrates succinctly why it is suicidal. It seems to me that a lot of Transhumanists have been dreaming of and actively working toward Lena without comprehending the reality of the scenario, and that this constitutes a disqualifying failure of imagination and reasoning. I readily slot myself into this category; I used to be a transhumanist, and I did not write Lena, for reasons that I have spent some time contemplating. Uploading your mind means boxing yourself. It is not immortality or transcendence, it is a level of imprisonment and vulnerability so utterly profound that no human has ever experienced the like.
Those that dodge this pitfall usually do so by appealing to a God analogue; CelestAI or Coherent Extrapolated Volition-aligned superintelligence, and thus converge on the Christian model.
The Good Place tries to thread the needle, and collapses into number-go-up banality.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means. When they do, it ranges from the boring (eternal rest and praising God) to the pedestrian ("Heaven is a city 15,000 miles square...") to the horrifying (profound joy at being in the glorious presence of God is just religiously flavored wireheading). Transhumanists sometimes write about what heaven on Earth might look like (Star Trek, The Culture, Friendship is Optimal, etc.) and if we fall short, I don't see the Christians doing any better.
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
I would say that the more thoughtful transhumanists either converge quite closely to the above, or else diverge in ways that seem to me strictly inferior (The Good Place, Lena). This is because the above, as your own comments indicate, is the best we can concretely imagine; as you say, "simple solutions to simple problems".
Those Christian writers both capable and willing to engage in speculation are forced to appeal to abstractions (The Great Divorce being my favorite), but I for one find those abstractions intriguing, and clearly preferable to the Transhumanist offers; if I accept the most plausible of the Transhumanist assumptions, they indicate to me that Transhumanism's capacity for creating Hell vastly exceeds their capacity for creating Heaven, much less God.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Ukraine does in fact appear to be a "forever war": a conflict with no clear, obviously-desirable victory condition, where commitments secure no material benefit and an ever-growing sunk-cost fallacy makes disengagement ever-more difficult.
Ukraine does not have a clear, obviously-desirable victory condition, and the people who argue for (further) engagement have been engaging in a type of shady thinking that has repeatedly led to disaster in the past.
I am generally skeptical of our current consensus on what constitutes expertise regarding warfare, for similar reasons to my skepticism of our current consensus on expertise as such: people build elaborate models of reality which become unmoored from reality, leading to disaster. I think Ukraine in particular seems to have a ton of opportunity for disaster, while the pro-Ukraine faction seems to believe that securing victory is something approximating an act of will.
In short, I think I disagree with you, and am trying to lay out in some detail why. Does this summary help?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I have not seen any particular evidence or compelling reason to believe that Ukraine was/is a forever war, given how the Russian sustainment has been by the very much finite depletion of Cold War stockpiles and generally observable quality issues.
To me, one of the most reliable indicators of a Forever War is attempts to engage in "limited" warfare in pursuit of a nebulous goal. Ukraine certainly seems to be an example of "limited" warfare in pursuit of a nebulous goal, so it trips my Forever War sense.
The expected rejoinder is that the Ukraine conflict has concrete goals: defeat Russia, restore Ukraine's pre-war borders, prevent Russia from trying anything like this again.
Restoring Ukraine's pre-war borders is the most concrete of these, but it's dependent for it's meaning on defeating Russia and preventing Russia from trying anything like this again. As people frequently point out, rolling the borders back does no good if Russia just re-invades next year.
Preventing Russia from trying anything like this again is pretty nebulous. Russia has a lot more leverage on its immediate neighbors than we do, simply due to distance. A functional Russia is a Russia that can do stuff like this again. Maybe if Russia is defeated, though, it might lose sufficient capability to prevent further extraterritorial ambitions?
So that brings us to defeating Russia. What does that look like, concretely? Can you give some recent examples of what "defeating" an enemy looks like? We "defeated" the Taliban, drove them from power, had them hiding in caves and living like hunted men for two decades, we directly killed a large percentage of their leadership and many, many of their rank-and-file. And yet, twenty years later, the Taliban rule Afghanistan. Okay, maybe we didn't use enough firepower. How about Ghaddafi? Ghaddafi was overthrown and sodomized to death with a bayonet on live TV; I think it's fair to say that we "defeated" him. What was gained by that victory? How did the world improve? How about Saddam? We smashed his army, occupied his nation, dragged him out of a rat-hole and hung him. We purged his party from the Iraqi government, hunted those who resisted relentlessly, and took absolute control of their territory. We pretty clearly defeated Saddam. What was gained by that victory? How did the world improve?
If we kill off the whole Russian army, what happens next? If we successfully sneak a missile into one of Putin's cabinet meetings and wipe out his entire inner circle, what happens next? If we humiliate him badly enough that the Russians rise up and overthrow him, what happens next? How do things shake out? How is the world improved? My guess is that the likely outcome is something like Libya, only significantly worse: all the ambitious bastards whose names we've never heard of because Putin has been sitting on them get to make their play, and we get large-scale chaos, quite possibly with a fun stir-in of loose nukes.
Suppose, for a moment, that Russia collapsing into significant chaos might actually have some bad consequences for the rest of the world. Now you don't just want to defeat Russia, you want to sort of defeat Russia, but without actually compromising its stability too badly. How does that work? I have no idea, but maybe you or someone else can lay it out in a straightforward manner.
In one of our recent conversations, you linked this document as an example of the consensus thinking on our recent wars. One of the first lines:
Ultimate success in COIN is gained by protecting the populace, not the COIN force.
...Why should I believe that this is true? I mean, I don't particularly disagree, the theory seems sound, but why are we entering this conversation with the assumption that "Ultimate success in COIN" is a thing that we have any understanding of at all? Where would that understanding come from? Which COIN successes are providing the grounds for anyone to speak with any authority at all? And this question seemed directly relevant to every sentence of the entire document. It's pure B-type thinking, outside-looking-in, illusion-of-control.
And so it is here. I do not believe that killing Russian soldiers makes the world a better place in any sort of linear fashion. Certainly the amount we have assisted in killing to date does not seem to have improved things, and I am deeply skeptical that killing more will suddenly begin making a difference. I do not think "defeating" Russia in some weak sense will make the world a better place. I do not think defeating Russia in a strong sense will make the world a better place either. I used to believe that stomping on villains was a straightforward way to improve the world. Then I watched that belief be implemented in a succession of examples, and I watched the results, and I updated my beliefs based on the new evidence.
If we are worried about an aggressive Russia, the proper way to handle that is to pick a line and declare that whatever Russia crosses it with, we will destroy with the full power of our entire empire. Crucially, this line should probably not be on Russia's immediate border, nor should it steadily move closer to Russia's border year after year. Then if Russia wants to cross the line, we drive them straight back, and if they are crazy enough to escalate to tactical nukes, we tactical-nuke them back, and if they decide to initiate doomsday, well, you can't win 'em all. But the key here is predictability and stability: we want things to settle into a static position, and then stay there.
This is not the strategy we've been pursuing; in fact, we have been doing the exact opposite for some decades now. I think this is very foolish, and to the extent that you disagree, I'm curious as to why.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
We often disagree, but this is a thesis I will absolutely endorse. We are, at this moment, standing under a vast overhang of technological potential in warfighting. The Civil War and World War I are examples of the collapse of this sort of overhang. That is not the sort of situation we would be well-advised to enter in anything approaching a cavalier fashion.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Doctors are humans too, I don't blame them if they thought that lockdowns were justified and vaccine mandates good.
Humans are responsible for their actions. Doctors cooperated with the silencing of those who tried to oppose lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and they helped those directly responsible for the pandemic cover their tracks. As a class, they directly cooperated with and enthusiastically supported the violations of human rights. We needed them to stand up and speak the truth. They categorically failed to do so, and that failure lasted years.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Or, to cut the crap, the US goal is a quick Ukrainian surrender and Russian victory.
...In the same way that at the end, the US goal in Afghanistan changed to being a quick Afghan government surrender and Taliban victory, yes?
I am willing to endorse an end to the war under any description you impose. I understand that people like yourself will frame my desire as cowardice, sedition, treason, evidence that I am a Russian/Chinese/Islamist/Nazi shill, that I want people to die. I understand that you believe that these next six months are critical, and that if we only stay the course victory is just around the corner, as the evil people who are Hitler Reborn will finally crumble and be routed in a glorious liberation, and then peace and justice will reign forever. I have been participating in this particular game live and in person for twenty five years, and have read a fair amount of the history of the preceding century. The moves are pretty well established at this point. People like yourself are always in favor of other people's money and lives being spent in unlimited quantities, while taking zero responsibility for the results. My vote is for no more.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Some are a bit shaky, but pretty sure I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
no, you're getting hit by the "new user filter". We have to go in and manually approve the posts, but they aren't marked very well so it's easy to miss them in the new comment feed. It's a leftover artifact from the Drama codebase, and the code guys haven't found a way to disable it yet, so it hits people until they get over some threshold of cumulative upvotes. I used to have to fish self-made-human out of it all day. I've just approved all your recent posts and those of two or three other people as well.
@ABigGuy4U, see above.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I see no reason to believe that this is, in fact, the future. That being said, it's a better future by far than some of the alternatives.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
If you find no constructive avenue for conversation with your opposites here, leaving is indeed the correct choice. May you fair well wherever your travels take you.
Those allies have offered you a mostly free global market.
Whether this was a good deal or not is the debate, and the status quo has been losing that debate, worse and worse, for quite some time now in my estimation. Americans do not generally seem to believe that our economic system is working, and the mounting frustration is spilling over into extremism on both the right and the left. You seem aware of this as well with your reference to the fall of Trumpism coming from capitalism.
On that point, my disagreement would be that Trumpism is itself a response to the model of "Capitalism" that we've all been living under for the last several decades. Maybe it will succeed, and maybe it won't; if it fails, further escalation seems inevitable.
When Scott Alexander explained this concept, it was meant as something to fight against, not as a political compass.
Indeed. And in my estimation, Scott Alexander and his supporters, of which I used to be one, lost that fight decisively. Zunger and Ozy were correct, Scott was wrong, as he himself seems to have recognized over time. Tribalism won because humans require values-coherence for cooperation to function, because the range of possible values allows for values-incoherence, and because liberal norms foster unlimited values drift until the norms themselves become unsustainable. Tolerance is not a moral precept, and will never be a moral precept. It is only ever a peace treaty, and under conditions of sufficient values-diversity the treaty stops making sense.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Until Trump arrived on the scene, my plan in 2016 was either to vote for Hillary or to stay home. In no circumstance would I ever have voted for a Bush, nor any Republican running on the Bush consensus.
What is your position on HBD in general, and the genetic basis of IQ in particular?
I take it as evident that IQ is pretty clearly heritable. I strongly disagree with what I understand of the rest of the HBD complex, starting with the idea that human value clearly scales with intelligence.
I'm always surprised at the number of people who take a staunchly "realist" position on the biological reality of sex and race differences, but who stubbornly refuse to believe that homosexuality is anything but a matter of political propaganda and personal choice.
Let's leave homosexuality aside, and look at something else. Let's try alcoholism.
It's pretty clear to me that alcoholism is at least partially genetic: there seem to be people who are predisposed to addictive behavior in general, and to alcoholism in particular. I'm given to understand that the body's reaction to alcohol consumption likewise varies widely, and it seems logical that on a purely physiological level, alcohol would hit some people harder than others, and that this variance in the experience would lead to variance in the formation of addiction.
Do people choose to be alcoholic? In some sense, yes; if you don't ever drink you'll never get addicted, and in most cases some other person is not tying them down and pouring vodka down their neck against their will. The one alcoholic I've known personally told me straight-up when they started drinking that they were looking for a new addiction. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that many, probably most, maybe all, understand on some level that the alcohol is bad for them and wish they could escape it, and likewise it seems probable that if they really understood the visceral reality of where it would lead, they would not have started drinking.
Can people choose not to be alcoholic? Again, in some sense, yes: each subsequent drink is chosen, and they can choose not to. Can we "treat" them such that they are cured of alcoholism? Yet again, in some sense yes: we can strap them down until they detox, and then keep them strapped down until the low levels of habit are broken. We could even keep them confined away from alcohol forever. We can give them drugs that make them violently ill if they imbibe, and so on, and so on. But the deeper reality is that no, we can't cure alcoholism the way we cure bacterial infections, because the defect is in the person's own will. "Choosing" not to be alcoholic appears to be very, very hard, and "cures" for alcoholism appear to be limited in efficacy, and stand or fall on the subsequent choices and circumstances of the alcoholic themselves.
It would probably not be good for alcoholics if we created and enforced a broad social meme-plex that alcoholism was a valid identity, generated large amounts of propaganda about how drunk driving was cool and totally safe, and about how being drunk all the time was a totally valid lifestyle, and anyone who disagreed was just a bigot, and any harmful behaviors by the drunks were really the fault of the people who refused to love and accept and support their true drunken nature, or of society for not accommodating them sufficiently.
I don't like alcohol. I've personally watched it destroy someone I loved very deeply. I don't drink. I don't encourage others to drink, and while I tolerate others drinking around me in moderation, I would not participate in serious alcohol culture in any form. I don't campaign for prohibition because we've tried it and there seem to have been significant downsides, and despite some skepticism over the nature and accuracy of the assessment of those downsides, I generally come down on "it isn't worth it." And yet if prohibition were on the ballot tomorrow, I would probably vote for it, because I think our current system is far too tolerant of a serious danger.
Does this seem to be an unreasonable position to take toward alcohol? If prohibition were on the ballot, would you say that I am "hoping to eradicate drunkenness", as though an act of congress could undo the laws of chemistry governing fermentation and the features of human nature that cause us to be naturally drawn to getting fucked up on giggle-water? I don't know how to fix drunkenness. I do know that it is, in and of itself, a problem, and that its problematic nature is part of reality, not simply a perspective that can be mediated away by sufficient social engineering.
This is true, but also we have had government for some time. As a calibration measure, can you give some examples of what are, in your opinion, the top five or ten worst mistakes in US government since, say, the year 2000?
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