distic
2mo ago
I think I agree, it's just that it is not at all how those purges do happen. The people they are firing are working for legally funded agencies or programs, and they are targeted under the assumption that people working in those agencies or programs are mostly political adversaries
distic
2mo ago
Unless that includes God or Nature as intent sources
Yes it does if you believe nature or God have intents (it works better with God than nature, as most people who think that nature has intent also think that nature is a kind of god). People who don't think God exists or nature has intents also don't think there are purposes in nature.
Intended purpose means that the way you use the tool now (the purpose it's used for now) is what it was built for (the purpose of its creator). For example if you use your shoes to protect your feet it's their intended purpose, but if you use them to kill a fly it's not (presumably).
distic
4mo ago
Those wars don't count. The US at war with small and poor countries. Nobody in the world will ever think the US are a reliable ally unless the enemy is Iraq and Afghanistan, and even in the later case the US did not win...
distic
3mo ago
What is your theory exactly? The proof that Ukraine is a threat to Russia is that Russia decided to increase the threat level? If Ukraine in NATO is dangerous to Russia, what about Finland and Sweden then? The NATO threat on Russia plays absolutely no role in the actions of both sides (excepted as a propaganda tool) therefore it is unimportant.
distic
3mo ago
It's perfectly possible to decrease the threat level significantly, for example by verifiably decreasing the stockpile of nuclear weapons both sides, establishing verifiable demilitarized zones both sides of the border,...
distic
3mo ago
But Ireland and Portugal have also a relativemy weak military and they aren't particularly threatened
distic
3mo ago
All this discussion started with my very falsifiable claim that Ukraine surrendering to Russia would increase, not decrease, the threat level for eastern Europe. I'm not sure how you got to the point that there is any metaphysics involved
distic
3mo ago
Yes we shouldn't have let Turkey do that, but it seems to me the orders of magnitude involved in those wars is not similar at all
distic
3mo ago
Regime change is fine as long as border change isn't?
It's not about being fine or not, it's about disproving the claim that Russia is only interested in protecting itself against NATO
distic
4mo ago
am tired of being a "reliable ally" to "allies" who offer nothing in return but ever-increasing demands, recrimination, and interference in our internal politics
Those allies have offered you a mostly free global market. The network effect means that the value of a network is proportional to the square of its number of users, and allied countries users have contributed in no small part to US big tech consummer basis, even though the US use its tech as a mean of spying on them.
That is why I think that the fall of Trumpism will not come from #Resist, or from democracy, or from the juges, but from capitalism itself.
to my tribe
When Scott Alexander explained this concept, it was meant as something to fight against, not as a political compass.
distic
4mo ago
Europe has a capital market problem but it has no innovation problem. So American companies use the research done in both US and EU and put it to the market (like they do in Facebook AI Research and DeepMind). Or do you think both labs are useless? Huggingface was also created in France untiel they had a need for more funding.
The inexistence of European Big Tech is at the US advantage (they get skills without a competition).
distic
5mo ago
Every human group in existence today owes its continued existence to the fact that its predecessors took land and resources from other groups
Just like you have rapists, thiefs and/or murderers among your ancestors (because everybody does), however murder and rape are still evil.
Now, I’m perfectly happy to discuss whether or not other, more recently-emergent models of geopolitical coexistence have effectively obviated the underlying logic of wars of expansion.
It's not about models of geopolitical co existence, they are just a result of modern democracy and the abolition of slavery. It makes no sense for the US to invade Canada, because what do you do with Canadian citizens? You can give them voting rights, but then it would be a merge more than an invasion; you can give them no rights, but then it creates a class of sub-citizens (it looks pretty unconstitutionnal); you can kill them all, but if you don't think it's bad then I don't know what will be (don't bother me with "we do none of the bad things the fascists did" if you don't believe there are bad things).
It’s very easy to say “fighting wars to obtain terriorItory is wrong” when you’re the United States, surrounded on both coasts by massive oceans, who defeated the last worthy competitor to any of its contiguous territory 150 years ago.
That is a good thing that we were speaking about the US invading territories, then...
The question is very concrete and clear: is it bad for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to threaten to invade several countries which until now considered themselves as US allies?
distic
2mo ago
It does not make sense to me: either you want the historical thing, or you want a sports optimised for tournaments (in its rules and techniques), and in the second case you have modern fencing which is a pretty much optimised olympic sport. But as long as people have fun, maybe it does not matter
distic
5mo ago
"Make America Great Again" sounds pretty palingenetic and nationalist to be fair. And threatening to invade foreign countries is quite militaristic and nationalistic, I'd say.
I agree, however, that there is no totalitarianism in the US right now.
distic
2mo ago
Then just change the rules? For example make any deadly touch eliminatory, so that no one says "I'm going to leave myself wide open and go for an uncovered afterblow" . I suspect the problem is that you want tournaments to be more spectacular than realistic (if the adversaries are more conservative it might get a bit boring)
distic
3mo ago
Cyprus is a very small country with 1 million inhabitants, and Turkey invaded a third (not half) of the country and its population. 300 000 people is the same order of magnitude as just the losses during the war in Ukraine.
About Syria, it's a mess. Everyone and their friend owns some part of Syria. If you can tell me more about it I'm curious, honestly. How many Turkish soldiers are their in Syria? What part of the territory do they control?
distic
3mo ago
No those governments weren't autocratic given that the power has swiftly switched hands. Sure they were and are still corrupt, but the corruption level is continuously decreasing since those revolutions.
distic
3mo ago
Yes it can because:
-
it is not important for Russia: it's just an excuse (once again, if they felt threatened they just increased the threat)
-
It's not important for NATO, given that the west has never really promised anything to Ukraine.
Therefore it seems to me you all say it is "important", but if it's neither important for Russia (their policy proves it) nor for NATO, I don't really think it can be important "per se"
distic
4mo ago
I don't think capitalism will fail and Trump will die with it. I think capitalism will survive but Trump will be destroyed in the process. Americans may be unsatisfied with the way the world works, but they just have unrealistic expectations.
distic
4mo ago
Such are the glories of trade, both sides of it are better off for having the opportunity to engage in it
Yes, but no. The relationship is not even, the US got more value out of it, and on top of that they get intelligence because the tech is used to spy on everyone. It would not be tolerated from any other country.
because they're not contributing to the protection of the network, and the Americans are.
They are spending less, but they are still spending, and they are not responsible for the fact that the US started dubious war they could not win, which costed a lot. When the US called NATO article 5 against Afghanistan, no one betrayed the alliance even though the threat for the global security was very minor.
Anyway it can't be reverted, the trust is lost now.
distic
5mo ago
One of the rules of this place is to be charitable, and I believe that an obvious charitable reading of “leftists don’t care about child rape” is something akin to “policies that leftists champion lead to child rape and so on.”
In this sentence you don't even try to prove you have been charitable, you are just asking others to be charitable with you. Basically "I don't really follow the rules, but I think no one can tell it because it would also break the rules".
A law is not just a piece of paper, and I don't think you can call "bordering on traitorous" something mandated by law (and not just allowed).
I don't know what it means, given that the government always has a political agenda that isn't determined by any legally defined process. The people in charge are appointed by those processes, what they do with the power they get is up to them as long as they obey the Constitution
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