Shrike
3mo ago
With foreign policy hypotheticals I don't necessarily make realistic assumptions about what the entity whose policy is being considered would do.
Like, I don't think the US is very likely to declare in no uncertain terms that they will not defend Taiwan! But if a cabal of people who thought that we should avoid war with China controlled the US government indefinitely I think that they could also avoid getting drawn into the war you mention. I think that Japan (and likely South Korea) would grab nuclear weapons, India already has them, as hydroacetylene points out Taiwan would probably roll over, and the Philippines (assuming the US did not colonize them again) would get bullied and pushed around by China the same way they already have been. That means that China would be at least somewhat restricted in its ability to use coercive diplomacy to blob acquire additional territory.
(Incidentally why hasn't Trump put the Philippines on the to-grab list next to Greenland?)
I don't model China as being set on global domination through territorial conquest any more than the US is. Perhaps I am wrong. But regardless of whether or not they try to militarily acquire portions of India, Japan, or the Philippines, if the US was controlled by a cabal of people who thought that we should avoid war with China, I do not think China would attack us randomly. As far as I know China does not claim any US possessions, nor do I think they would be likely to go to war with the US over our Pacific possessions. Simply refusing to get involved in a land sea war in Asia is actually a valid option. (As I point out, a valid option with major costs to the United States!)
My point here is not that this is realistic or probable or even good. My point is that if you made me SUPREME DICTATOR OF THE UNITED STATES and my imperative goal was to avoid war with China, I would remove Taiwan as a potential flashpoint.
Shrike
3mo ago
This is correct! But there is a difference between wars where you are attacked and wars where you decide to intervene.
Shrike
3mo ago
I think the US military tries, or perhaps tried, to take a "pessimistic" approach by assuming the best possible scenario about the enemy. Sometimes this means that outside perspectives have a more realistic view (as I think was the case in the Gulf War, when some external commentators correctly predicted a cakewalk).
But I would prefer the US military to assume that the enemy is competent, fierce, and well-equipped.
Shrike
3mo ago
I don't think they did meaningfully. But presumably they could have fortified the ground they did take. Perhaps it would not have been worth it even if they had wanted to take over Vietnam, though.
Shrike
3mo ago
Saying that X counts as a miracle doesn't mean that if you claim X, it automatically counts. It means that you managed to get over one hurdle--you managed to claim something that, if it happened, would be a miracle. Getting past the "if it happened" part is a separate hurdle.
Sure.
Miracles aren't dismissed because scientists dismiss everything, miracles are dismissed because they have particularly bad claims and evidence, just like psychic powers, space aliens, and non-Christian miracles.
It's not scientists and doctors I am worried about dismissing everything. Plenty of scientists and doctors believe in miracles, psychic powers, space aliens, and other woo.
No they don't. Actually, I have no idea what you're talking about, except maybe ether, which you'll notice modern scientists don't believe in.
My layman's understanding is that dark matter was invented to explain the otherwise unusual expansion of the universe, has never been observed, and conveniently (like miracles) is believed by its nature to be difficult to observe because of the way it does (or doesn't) interact with regular matter.
Shrike
3mo ago
It looks two-dimensional to me, man. I would like to see the top-down planform. And the view from the sides. And the rear. And from underneath :p
Shrike
3mo ago
I half agree with you.
The thing is that countries will debut aircraft and not procure them. For instance the J-35 debuted in 2012. To the best of my knowledge, the Chinese military has not procured them. Russian examples are the Su-47 and (so far) Su-75. The F-20 is a good American example. The Chinese have debuted two prototypes; they might procure neither or both and they could have been at any stage of development. It is also of course possible that countries would reveal or conceal their aircraft for foreign or domestic political/psyop reasons. In the case of the recent Chinese stealth fighters, they debuted on Mao's birthday, so the data might have been chosen more for its symbolic purpose and less for relevance to their maturity.
If the jet can't even be shown to the public then it must be in a fairly early stage of development. [...] Public reveals should have more weight than allegations of secret techniques. It shows that a design has been largely worked out and that it's closer to deployment.
The United States has a long history of IOCing and even operationally using aircraft before they are public.
Shrike
3mo ago
Fighting in the Philippines or Japan are wars of choice inasmuch as neither of those are actual US territory (and I doubt that China will actually be eager to invade Japan if they do what I expect them to do).
Even if the PRC took over the rest of the Pacific, there's a pretty easy reason to believe they would never try to invade Guam as long as we weren't interfering with their conquests.
I am not saying this is a good or wise policy. I'm just saying that if we want to avoid war with China we can almost certainly do it simply by refusing to fight them over their core national interest.
(I do find some of the "China is so powerful they could successfully invade a single island within helicopter range even if the US opposed it" framing funny. I don't think there was any point in the Cold War where Russia could have seriously contested an American invasion of Cuba without using nuclear force. The very fact that China's power is framed by its ability of being able to potentially reclaim lost territory that is literally on their own doorstep shows you how incredibly powerful the US remains even though I think the Good Old Decade of US monopolarity is gone.)
Anyway China, in my superficial reading, is not a good or benevolent neighbor, and they will do bad things like "invading you in a punitive expedition because you obliterated their military ally Cambodia after it attacked you repeatedly for no reason" but I don't think they actually want unlimited territorial expansion. They did not attempt to hold portions of Vietnam after their border war, for instance, as I recall.
(Of course the counter argument is that nobody wants unlimited territorial expansion but the logic of empire means that you either keep growing or you stagnate and die, and thus whatever China wants now is immaterial. It's not a bad argument.)
Shrike
3mo ago
Perhaps it is more accurate to my position to say that absence of admitted evidence is not evidence of absence. Because there's "evidence" for practically every insane position in the world. This leads people to want to exclude evidence on the basis of it not being high-quality enough. Now, a certain amount of this is admirable and good, because it keeps you sane!
But some people, even subconsciously, use this to simply exclude all the evidence they like, and then having excluded all the evidence they dislike, declare there to be no evidence to the contrary position.
Shrike
3mo ago
Just imagine that I am screaming like Luke Skywalker being tortured by the Emperor at the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
I am a tiny bit optimistic that some of the fresh blood in the market and a sense of urgency will maybe pare this down a bit, though.
Shrike
3mo ago
In reality, the colonized Buryats and all others eagerly enlist and fight in Ukraine (and get killed disproportionately).
Yes, I've seen the footage of the Chechens, they seem quite happy to be back in the field.
I don't particularly think China will collapse due to ethnic tensions.
Shrike
3mo ago
Do you imply that F-47 is not “NGAD”?
No. Where's the 3D model?
This art from Boeing shows one concept for the Air Force’s future fighter, known as Next Generation Air Dominance
I don't think literal concept art like this should be taken to necessarily mean anything. (At least three NGAD prototypes flew, so maybe it was real, or maybe it was just something an artist thought would look cool in a press release.)
Shrike
3mo ago
It's not conclusive evidence but it should certainly raise our suspicious given that 1) humans frequently and erroneously attribute mundane phenomena to the supernatural (it's an extremely common human logical fault), 2) with so many claims, you'd assume at least a few would have clear evidence of occurring and not having ready explanations.
I mean, my superficial understanding is that there are supposedly such instances (for instance my understanding is that the Catholic church investigates claims of miraculous healing fairly regularly, and I think that they use e.g. relevant medical professionals to investigate these claims as part of the canonization process).
Were you familiar with this? Sadly I know little about the topic specifically, so I feel under-equipped to make very specific arguments based on specific cases. If you are familiar with it, I would be very interested in your analysis. If you aren't, then perhaps we're being a bit presumptive to assume there aren't at least a few with clear evidence of occurring and no handy ready explanations?
It's similar to UFO sightings, which were quite common a few decades ago. If they were real, the proliferation of smartphones with cameras should have led to a surge in evidence of their existence.
I know more about this topic. I find that particular XKCD to be extremely facile (have you tried using a cell phone for aviation photography?), but I suppose it serves a socially useful purpose inasmuch as it prevents people from actually doing any research into the topic, which periodically ruins people's lives. I will just link to my earlier analysis of this position.
Minor or even moderate healing is a bad metric since the human body is extremely complicated, so mundane phenomena could easily be confused for the supernatural.
Yes, and I think healing is one of the easiest to use a scientific test on. (I think the bar the Catholic church uses for canonization is supposed to be higher for this reason).
But if people were e.g. regularly doing crazy things like being able to walk on water or (as Jiro mentioned) regrowing lost limbs, then that would be a better starting point.
Well, and this is part of my point, if people regularly regrew lost limbs (as they might with future technology) then it would not be considered miraculous, would it? I doubt you consider terminal lucidity miraculous, even though there apparently is clear evidence of it occurring and relatively scant evidence of good explanations. (I could be wrong about this, though, it's not my area of expertise).
Claims of miracles aren't uncommon, I'm sure. But that just proves that humans are fallible fools in their explanations.
This is the thing, though, is that the "humans are fallible fools" position extends to scientists and doctors. Which means that it provides a very convenient "out" for disbelieving in anything, no matter how reasonable belief in that thing is. There's no inherent limit on how many times you could say "humans are fallible fools" - if I were to bring you a hundred cases where doctors attested to a miracle, it would remain just as true the first time as the last.
And I don't even fully disagree! Humans are fallible fools! But ultimately I think that a lot of people, if they were being honest, they would refuse to believe in miracles unless they saw them personally, or, if they were particularly hardcore, even if they experienced them personally (this is the case with Michael Shermer, as I recall). The problem, though, is that if held in isolation it essentially lets people comfortably avoid updating their priors and lets them drift along with what is socially acceptable to believe instead of what is true. Anything upsetting can be dismissed as people being stupid.
Look, I apologize if I am coming across as a little testy. My very first comment on here was in response to someone saying "well if other countries had UFO programs, I would take them seriously." I provided some of the specific evidence he was ostensibly interested in, but my perception, based on his response, was that he was more interested in shifting the goalposts so that he didn't have to take UFOs seriously. (No offense to said user, and I hope I am wrong!)
Now, what I mind isn't people who are skeptical of miracles, or UFOs. I think measured skepticism is good and necessary. But I want some sort of framework to that skepticism, not merely a blank check to dismiss anything that is slightly out of step with the dogma of the day. Things that, in limited doses, might be true and helpful - things like "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" or "humans are gullible fools" still have a tremendous potential to become thought-terminating cliches.
Shrike
3mo ago
Or the US could just declare in no uncertain terms that they will not defend Taiwan, which would probably spark a nuclear arms race in the region (and potentially increase the odds of Taiwan hitting the Three Gorges Dam out of spite, killing who-knows-how-many civilians) but I imagine would lower the odds of a Sino-American war.
Shrike
3mo ago
(this won't work any better than in Russia)
Didn't Russia fight a violent internal war against minority separatist groups? I seem to recall that happening.
Broadly I think you are attributing a lot of views to me without any evidence that I hold them. Which is fine, I guess. I think that probably the truth on China is between "OMNICOMPETENT HYPERSTATE OF THE FUTURE" and "weak, lame, dying, about to crack."
This isn't how things should look when you have a strong position and they're on the verge of collapsing.
As I said, I don't think China is "on the verge" of collapsing over any sort of near-term timescale.
Shrike
3mo ago
I have never seen pictures of those prototypes, not have I seen any 3D models of NGAD.
I've seen promotional or imaginary images, none of which, except probably the two 2D teaser posters that came out after Boeing was announced as the NGAD winner, did not necessarily (to my knowledge) had any visual similarity with "real" aircraft. I still don't think we know much about how NGAD will look.
If you have images of the prototypes or 3D models of NGAD I would be extremely interested to see them, provided I can do so without violating US espionage laws ;)
Shrike
3mo ago
The question is about what the workforce will be doing.
An inverted population pyramid is the grand strategic equivalent of "shooting to wound" to incapacitate three hostiles instead of one.
I don't have very strong opinions as to what will happen In Real Life but historically from what I understand civilizations that lost their TFR edge crumbled regardless of their total population numbers.
There's reportedly been 9.5 million babies born in China last year.
How many of those were ethnic minorities in places like Tibet that will be passively or even actively hostile to the Chinese project? It looks like the regions with the five regions with the highest per capita childbirths were:
- Tibet (problematic minority)
- Guizhou (notable minority population)
- Ningxia (majority Han, but a minority autonomous region for the Islamic Hui people)
- Qinghai (about 50% recognized ethnic minority groups)
- Hainan (majority Han, although there is a noticeable minority of the native islanders)
Google's AI suggests that around 800,000 of those births in China were minority due to relatively straightforward calculus of "national birthrate x 9% of the Chinese population that is minority.) But my priors are that minority groups in China (particularly the Tibetans and Islamic people groups) are going to have disproportionately higher birth rates (Tibet's birth rate appears to be twice the national average!)
Now, if you actually go and look at China's population pyramid, I think it's fairly clear the demographics for them are more of a long-term issue than anything, in the short term they can plausibly kick the can down the road and hope AI or robots or something will save them. It's very unlikely that demographics alone will e.g. decide Taiwan's fate.
Shrike
3mo ago
I think one of the underappreciated costs of the War on Terror was that the US dropped the ball on R&D/replacement programs. As a result we're still using a lot of old Cold War Vintage kit.
Even though I would like to see the US military slimmed somewhat, I am in a vacuum a fan of more short-term military spending just to
- catch up to where we need to be in tech, and
- build out giant munitions stockpiles
Shrike
3mo ago
Even more so for cheap crap, the tariff burden is even less important. For <$20 crap sold on Scamazon, the wholesale price may be only $1-3, which is possibly less than the cost of the sea freight to ship it to the Scamazon FC. Then Scamazon will take $5-10 on FBA fees. So in the end even a 50 or 100% tariff may only account for $1-2 out of a $20 item.
Well that kinda sucks. Whatever you think about tariffs I tend to dislike the cheap-Chinese-goods-Amazon-industrial complex.
Shrike
3mo ago
Bingo. Which will tend to replace "free trade" with a more tightly bound "trade network." Interesting.
Shrike
3mo ago
I actually suspect there's a diversity of thought on this among religious believers.
But again, my understanding is that Catholics do apply something like the scientific method to miracles, so they would probably say that you are correct, and that scientists can in fact find evidence of them.
Shrike
3mo ago
I'm not sure what you're asking. We know that some things just don't happen. If someone regrows a limb after prayer, and there hasn't been some massive discovery about biology, then that's a miracle.
See, this is a catch-22. If things "don't just happen" then we know they aren't real. If things that shouldn't happen happen (such as dementia patients recovering their cognizance) than it's just a random mystery of the universe, but not a miracle. If someone regrew a limb after prayer, which a minute of Googling shows has in fact allegedly happened! people would be like "wow, there must be a good scientific explanation for this!" or "oh, clearly an elaborate fraud!"
Which I don't even think is necessarily a bad attitude - in my opinion there needs to be a nonzero amount of healthy skepticism in the world. I can think of plausible materialistic mechanisms for terminal lucidity. I'm sure with ten minutes of research I could do the same for the regrowth of limbs. Shoot, I can also think of plausible scientific mechanisms for pretty much any miracle you can think of, including regrown limbs, if you posit Sufficiently Advanced Science (which was Clark points out is indistinguishable from magic). If you posit a world where entities indistinguishable from angels were scientifically verified to exist, a nonzero number of people would just be like "woah its The Entities up to their advanced science again" instead of becoming religious converts (and in fact this describes a lot of the UFO community, particularly the more "out there" parts).
I'm sorry, I guess I am rambling. My point is that I don't think there's a single standard from skeptics at large here, as a general rule, just some very mobile goalposts. If you disagree, and want to post the specific evidence you'd need to believe in something miraculous, as well as what you would define "miraculous" as, maybe we could investigate whether your criteria have been fulfilled.
If you are asking "how does that 100% absolutely prove a miracle, the answer is that pretty much everything science "proves" is just shown to be very very likely, and the miracle can meet that standard, even if it can't meet a standard of absolute 100% proof.
One obvious problem is that scientists (and doctors) are so incompetent that any attempt to prove a miracle medically or scientifically can easily be dismissed as incompetence or fraud. And in fact this is what happens, there are plenty of allegedly scientific attempts to probe paranormal topics and the accusation hurled at the experimenters is always that they are frauds or that their study designs suck. Which is probably true! Probably most study designs suck! So any time you bring up a study or a "medically verified miracle" it is very easy to dismiss it on the basis of "fraudulence and/or incompetence."
I'm not Catholic, so I don't have a good perspective on their methodology (and miracles are not really my jam anyway, so I don't good sources or really strong opinions on the famously reported ones) but my understanding is that the Catholic church actually does scientifically investigate miracles as part of their canonization process. Maybe some other Mottizens can point out some specific compelling cases. But I doubt anyone who is not already sympathetic will find them persuasive since "well they are motivated to find miracles," which again goes to a catch-22, since few people who are not so motivated bother to go looking for them.
The long and short of it is, though, as I understand it, is that there have been scientific investigations of miracles, they do convince some people, and other people remain unconvinced.
Except of course, it doesn't happen.
Well, actually, things impossible according to the known laws of physics do happen. And when they are proven to be true beyond a reasonable doubt, scientists literally invent magic an invisible practically unfalsifiable mystery substance to explain them. But I don't particularly think this increases the credibility of religion, it just decreases the credibility of scientists. Which is much the same reaction skeptics of "woo" have when research that seems to validate "woo" comes out.
Sure - I mean, my understanding is that there are a few different theories that claim to explain it. The details are inside baseball to me, but it seems to me that oftentimes ambiguous evidence like this can cut more than one way (more on that in a second).
My position here, to be clear, is that people should try to match theories to observations. If you observe something miraculous, you should try to formulate a theory to explain it. "We made an observational error" should be considered (and of course as you know scientists do sometimes predict cool things like Neptune and sometimes they goof up and observe faster-than-light particles that aren't real). What makes me cranky is excluding observations because they don't fit to theories (which for all the dunking I do on DARK MATTER is what scientists would be doing if they didn't invent something like it).
Well, first off thank you for the interested response.
Secondly, let's think through this a bit. If I logged in here and reported that I had successfully regenerated a limb through prayer, would you believe me? You can investigate the Miracle of Calanda for yourself, whatever you can say about it it does seem to be better documented than "Shrike, anonymous Motte user, reports spontaneous leg regrowth." Even if I did provide documentation, would you find it easier to believe in a miracle or in a freak of nature?
If you would find it easier to believe in a miracle, then why is the Miracle of Calandra not enough for you? Is there a specific methodological flaw in the reporting that you have an issue with (which, who knows, if I looked into it I might have as well, I am very open-minded to that possibility) or do you just think that sometimes people are dumb and fooled? In which case why would I providing convincing documentation of a miracle persuade you?
Thirdly, to answer your question directly - I would expect for it to be possible to work. In my religious tradition (and indeed in most religious traditions, I imagine) God does not necessarily act as believers would wish 100% of the time. (There's an interesting question of whether or not it would be sacrilegious in some way to checks notes ask God for a miracle to win an online argument, hahahaha!)
(If your question is "why don't you run an RCT or something" then sadly the answer is that I am in the wrong field. If GPT makes billionaires of us all then I wouldn't mind joining a Motte Joint Task Force On The Investigation Of Miracles though!)
Finally- if I was to test it scientifically (that is, attempt to replicate a miracle) I would probably have to follow the procedure alleged in the miracle (which as a non-Catholic and also as a person with both of my legs, I would frankly be loathe to do).
With all this being said, if I do encounter something extraordinary* that seems to be the direct result of prayer I will certainly consider reporting it to the Motte.
*To be entirely honest I have, several times, had various events that might be described as "answers to prayer" or "synchronicity," but I do not think that people who have not experienced them will find them particularly compelling. In my own personal experience it is extremely easy to write things like that off as "happenstance" regardless of how unlikely they are, and none of my personal stories are particularly startling.
If this is actually true, I (and I am being quite serious about this) would recommend that you consider taking up prayer, understanding that God is not a magic wand. For the reasons I laid out above, I think that you would find an event that happened to you much more persuasive than an event that happened to me.
Now, maybe I misconstrued or misunderstood you, there. Happy for clarification.
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