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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3798 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 9, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Has bombing of civilian targets by air ever successfully lead to a surrender, leaving aside the use of nuclear weapons at the end of WWII?

Arguably, the destruction of civilian targets by bombing civilian targets in japan, which seems like very roughly 300k, so 150k without nukes, was at the same scale as the nukes: The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. So it was a significant contributor then. And, iirc, Japan was close to surrendering even if the nukes hadn't been used.

I hate the term in general, but I feel like Japan is the exception that proves the rule? Yes, the Japanese ultimately surrendered under intense bombing, but it was post near-total military defeat, and it required the murder of hundreds of thousands over years, closing with the atomic bombs.

It just seems like over and over attacks on civilian targets lead to the population rallying to fight rather than give up and surrender. And every time it happens we're shocked.

I hate the term in general, but I feel like Japan is the exception that proves the rule?

Maybe you hate the term in general because it's nearly always badly misused? ...But you misuse it in the most typical way here, so....

"The exception that proves the rule" is a coherent, well-defined concept. A straightforward example is a sign like "No Parking On Tuesdays Between 3 and 5 PM." The rule, which is unstated, is "you may park here." The text of the sign describes the singular exception to the rule "not on Tuesday between 3 and 5 PM." The rule is strictly implied by the sign, as is the corollary "unless otherwise stated, no other exceptions exist."

Japan, here, is merely an exception. Rules have exceptions quite often, but "the exception that proves the rule" is a very specific type of logical inference that doesn't apply in this context.

I always envisioned in the sense that if you can think of a single exception, then otherwise the rule is sound.

If you were to say "humans don't have brown hair" that's immediately false because you can think of dozens of examples otherwise. But if you could only think of one exception to a rule, then in general it's fairly sound.

Yeah, I tend to go with this one.

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