Rosencrantz2
5d ago
Most people in the UK feel that wars of aggression and invasion are a fundamental red line that shouldn't be rewarded under any circumstances, due to obvious lessons from history. In the mind of the average Brit it's really no more complicated than that.
Rosencrantz2
23d ago
I can't disagree when it comes to much academic writing and yet phrases like 'it is well understood' are just falling foul of what could be another strongly enforced rule against passive phrasing and the smuggling in of contested facts. My hypothetical version of the Motte would discourage such shady thinking just as strongly as it would discourage emoting.
Rosencrantz2
23d ago
On a tangent, has anyone tried a version of The Motte that aspires to remove personal feelings from the debate in a more wholesale way a la scientific journals, where the first-person is discouraged? It would obviously be a somewhat idealistic standard, but it might help further 'optimise for light rather than heat'. As HereAndGone notes, some people here do express their own satisfaction about some outgroup's misfortune pretty frequently and while it's neither sarcasm nor mockery, whether they want (let's say) women to be enslaved is not actually germane whatsoever to any debate, other than as one tiny and discouraging data point about one anonymous poster's emotional stance.
Rosencrantz2
24d ago
The actual consequences of killing a boatload of migrants in cold blood are far broader than just the deterrent factor though, so the utilitarian calculus is not obvious. E.g. It might lead to diplomatic isolation for the country responsible, protests and counterattacks, legal cases against the killers, etc.
Well (1) hypocrisy exists, and (2) those wars, to the extent they were popular (they weren't at all) were not generally thought of as 'let's go and get this territory for ourselves', but more as 'we have to do this to keep our special relationship with America' or 'we have to do this to stop WMD attacks'.
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