SwordOfOccam
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User ID: 2777
SwordOfOccam
4mo ago
Both sides are not equally invested in the outcome.
If you think they are then that’s one hell of a blind spot.
SwordOfOccam
4mo ago
The US government in that case did go to the effort to confirm the individual actually was a member of a terrorist organization.
It was an act of war against an enemy combatant on foreign soil, not law enforcement.
SwordOfOccam
6mo ago
Consider if Trump makes a sufficiently big mess of government and the economy he’s giving the other side the potential to roar back into power with a mandate to do things you (and I) won’t like.
SwordOfOccam
6mo ago
Now add alienating allies into the mix.
Obama was soft on Putin. Trump is another level.
SwordOfOccam
6mo ago
He and Putin went through a lot together on the same side.
Trump wants to be buds.
SwordOfOccam
7mo ago
Median federal job is not the median job so the comparison is not apples to apples.
High-skill federal workers are almost always paid less than private sector.
Source: former fed
SwordOfOccam
7mo ago
Well not begging that question is one of the main points of the book, so no it doesn’t. (Many disagree that he succeeds in the philosophical grounding of his moral frame, but he does try.)
Of course, many people take issue with even the second part where you agree science can help. The “how” as opposed to the underlying “what/why.”
Any moral system requires some axiom to start from and Harris explains how we can use reason to arrive at that rather broad one. The lack of other sensible contenders helps here (for those with proper priors, anyway). Of course, there have been materialist contenders, such as communism and whatever we want to call the anti-human environmentalist ideology.
SwordOfOccam
7mo ago
Sam Harris would not agree that:
we all sort of just know what's right and don't need reference to any kind of overarching moral framework.
His book was focused on countering the argument that science cannot inform morality in some objective way as nonoverlapping magisteria, not outlining a moral framework in any real detail beyond "well-being of conscious creatures." Harris is a consequentialist and very influenced by Derek Parfitt and the overall liberal/humanist tradition. Given the state of the world, no one should argue that liberalism/humanism is humanity's default and indeed Harris's original project was pointing out how badly Islam is opposed to that moral framework.
Atheism by itself is no moral system. Communists were atheists and had/have a moral system quite different from liberalism/humanism. Western atheists today see a big split between classic liberals and post-liberals (i.e. progressives and "Atheism+") split along Culture War lines.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
I’m not engaging with the overall argument, just noting that you are not properly characterizing how debanking works with regard to a very public and very controversial person who has had involvement with the law.
Being banned from social media platforms for violating stated policies is not very exciting either.
I think there is a very real tension in a free society in cases like this. Somebody can be deprived at scale by private actors (who have strongly correlated interests and risks) of a key service—banking—for only appearing to be possibly engaged in illegal activity, with no explicit coordination or direct government involvement (regulation does play a role, of course).
We force medical insurers to serve those they would otherwise avoid and we ought to force sports gambling companies to stop limiting the good players, and there’s a whole host of laws on protected characteristics, but in general companies should have some level of choice to refuse service. “Legal discrimination” remains a minefield.
Ironically, the idea I’ve heard expressed by left-leaning technocrats that every American should have a government-provided checking account by e.g. the Fed to make things like tax rebates and such easier and eliminate unbanking could solve this particular issue.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
I think some contracts are funded up front as well.
I just don’t recall any contractors I know worried about losing pay from shut downs.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
How does one get debanked like that without massive, backdoor coordination of influential people?
Banks know who he is and don’t like the risk profile.
Simple as.
There is maximum pressure put onto him, really the whole debanking thing shouldn't even be legal in the first place.
Freedom of association still goes two ways in some places.
You can dislike the system we have without having to resort to conspiratorializing.
SwordOfOccam
8mo ago
I believe contracts are generally written such that funding isn’t affected by a small shutdown.
This shit is old hat.
SwordOfOccam
9mo ago
Nobody gets confirmed until Trump takes office…
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
Well you’re wrong.
The IRGC’s whole damn bit is doing what the Supreme Leader wants.
The kill list for US officials involved with the Soleimani strike is not some rogue faction’s idea.
You have no idea how to model the motivations and machinations of the Iranian regime. Khamenei loved Soleimani. Soleimani was carrying out the express wishes of the Supreme Leader in his operations.
They were quite surprised about Soleimani’s death. That was a big change for the US to do that.
The Iranians are quite often high on their own supply and don’t just consciously use lies to placate their dumb citizens (as the Russians do). They are actually religious fanatics. They aren’t insane, but they are not nearly as rational as many in the West want to believe and they really do have ideological commitments we find pretty mind boggling. (For instance, a devotion to destroying the state of Israel.)
There is a very high chance the Iranians stupidly try a major attack (for the death of a Hamas leader, not an Iranian, no less), and then Israel responds a lot stronger than they ever have before. I don’t think Israel is bluffing about their intended response and I don’t think they’ll let Biden restrain them.
Common sense would lead the Iranians to back off any large scale military attacks and merely try more of an in kind response like assassinating a Jew somewhere, but their egos and rhetoric is making it clear they want to do more.
Hopefully, the wiser more risk-aware advisors to Khamenei win the day.
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
This is a dumb take because Iran launched 300+ drones and missiles in what became the first large scale test of Israel’s Iron Dome.
They did not expect 99% of those to be shot out of the sky.
That’s not a “token” or “symbolic” response just because it turns out to have been militarily ineffective. They did not use Hezbollah because when Hezbollah does decide to go all out then Israel will invade. It’s kind of a one time option.
In contrast, Israel’s response to the first overt attack from Iran was to destroy a key air defense system.
Now that Iranians know the ineffectiveness of their first try, yes, they will have to up their game to try to overwhelm the missile defenses, including coordination with a major launch from Hezbollah.
If Iran starts attacking commercial shipping then the US Navy will make the Iranian navy disappear pretty rapidly.
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
Don’t confuse Iran’s lack of effectiveness with the intent to be pragmatic.
They have the intent to assassinate Trump and a whole list of other people they blame for the Soleimani strike.
And if their missile attack had killed Americans in Iraq, Trump would have responded in kind and we don’t know how that escalatory cycle would have gone. (Iran believes they did kill troops, so they think they got one over on Trump.)
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
That is not a valid interpretation of standard procedures.
I believe you are conflating what I am talking about with metadata rules and some particular authority.
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
Well the main goal would be to wreck Hezbollah.
No idea how they would decide whether to occupy southern Lebanon again.
I’m guessing they wouldn’t opt for an occupation. Gaza is going to be enough of a problem.
But yeah, overall Israel knows it can’t take out Hezbollah the way it can Hamas.
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
As someone who used to be one of those GS-9s, this is a pretty accurate take.
The NSA in particular takes compliance very, very seriously out of the self-interest of not losing the legal authorities granted by congress and approved by the courts.
I was once tracking a foreign target for quite some time. And then I saw she was conversing with a family member about how to get a spouse a Green Card.
Uh oh.
Turns out this lady and her sister were born in the same small college town I was, and were looking to come to America with their husbands.
At that point, we had to either delete all the things related to this person, or jump through all the hoops necessary to justify continued efforts (which in theory was possible, since she was the employee of a foreign government). But we opted to just delete all the things given she wasn’t sufficiently high-ranking to justify the effort and was clearly trying to leave her job.
(I should point out that if a US Person contacts a valid intelligence target, those comms are going to be collected by default and retained if there’s a valid reason, without a warrant beforehand [though with a shit ton of other oversight and approval]. Just ask Mike Flynn.)
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
Well sure, war has consequences.
Consider that it might be Israel doing it and not the US. If Iran conducts a major missile/drone attack on Israel and does real damage then Israel has said they’re going to take the gloves off. I believe them.
I don’t think the US would attack non-mil infra unless Iran picked a fight with us directly and did some real damage.
Iran would be a failed state pretty quickly if its oil revenue dried up and Israel can destroy that infrastructure from the air. I’m not sure exactly how many strikes it would take to say eliminate half of Iran’s oil output for ~months+, but oil fields, refineries, and pipelines are easy targets that can’t really be hardened.
Of course, the more pressing threat for Israel is if they need to invade Lebanon to attack Hezbollah and its missile sites, in which case they’d be devoting the vast majority of their air power to that operation.
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
Nobody wants to mount a ground invasion of Iran because the Iranians have a large military with a great deal of ideological commitment (unlike Saddam).
However, bombing Iran’s oil industry into the Stone Age is pretty doable. Iran’s navy and Air Force would get wrecked very quickly.
What’s tricky is that Iran learned from Iraq and Syria and built their nuclear facilities inside mountains. So there’s no way to destroy the program without boots on the ground.
I don’t know what contingency plans Israel has for enforcing their red line that Iran cannot achieve a nuclear weapon.
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
And they are legitimately considered very good in the industry by penetration testers.
They fucked up an update big time, but they got their market position by having a competitive product.
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
How high of LSAT did Hillary need to get into Yale?
My understanding is that Dems and gov officials consider Hillary to be plenty sharp. Kamala not so much.
SwordOfOccam
1yr ago
K, but far from all, like the 2400 killed personnel and eight battleships that took damage.
With advance warning, the US could have intercepted the attack, which was an act of war from the get go, and simultaneously had the justification for war and started off by fucking over the Japanese. An ambush on a surprise attack is the best kind.
What’s beneath this place is conspiratorial thinking that doesn’t even make sense in the context of what the damn conspiracy theory context even is.
I can compare to my slightly younger self here because I bought a house over a decade ago, a condo about a decade ago, and I will soon almost certainly rent because housing costs have exploded, even though I am far wealthier than I was the last times I moved in the same metro area.
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