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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   5733 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for October 2022

Y'all must be trying to kill me. The sheer volume of quality contribution reports, combined with the outrageous volume of text you maniacs generate every week, made this an astonishing month to be sorting through the hopper. By far the busiest month for AAQCs since I took over the task. This made winnowing them down especially challenging, and some very good posts simply didn't make the cut simply because the competition was so fierce.

Good job, everyone.

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:

Quality Contributions in Culture Peace

@problem_redditor:

Contributions for the week of September 26, 2022

@PmMeClassicMemes:

@KulakRevolt:

Battle of the Sexes

@Tanista:

@problem_redditor:

@Ben___Garrison:

Contributions for the week of October 3, 2022

@Primaprimaprima:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@FCfromSSC:

@urquan:

Identity Politics

@Stefferi:

@urquan:

Contributions for the week of October 10, 2022

@urquan:

@Amadan:

@Chrisprattalpharaptor:

Battle of the Sexes

@VelveteenAmbush:

@sodiummuffin:

@JTarrou:

@bsbbtnh:

Identity Politics

@georgioz:

@gattsuru:

Contributions for the week of October 17, 2022

@MadMonzer:

@Minotaur:

@faceh:

@Butlerian:

@FCfromSSC:

@hydroacetylene:

@urquan:

@Eetan:

Identity Politics

@Hoffmeister25:

Contributions for the week of October 24, 2022

@urquan:

@johnfabian:

@LacklustreFriend:

@FCfromSSC:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

Battle of the Sexes

@cae_jones:

@SSCReader:

@Hoffmeister25:

Identity Politics

@FCfromSSC:

@Tanista:

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When military law does become a thing, the first written prohibition of torturing POWs appears to be included in the 1863 Lieber Code (issued by Abraham Lincoln to govern Union troops in the Civil War - again the Lieber code states that it is formalising a rule that has existed for a long time. The Lieber Code formed the basis of the 1907 Hague Convention which was the first international treaty prohibiting torture in wartime. The Hague Convention was agreed by military leaders who all agreed that aggressive war was legal and sometimes ethical, and from the records of the debates leading up to the Convention we know that they would not have banned torture if they thought it had military utility.

The First Hague Convention (II) of 1899, in article 4, specifies that:

They must be humanely treated.

But "humanely treating" PoWs is more expensive than starvibg and enslaving them. So pure short term profit motive can't be the reason. What is more the cause behind this clause is reciprocity: if we agree to treat the PoWs we capture with dignity, so will the enemy. Thus our soldiers will be better off.

There are other article which follow the logic, of prohibiting tactics known to effective, on the grounds that each state will also thus not be victim of them:

(II) Article 7:

The Government into whose hands prisoners of war have fallen is bound to maintain them.

Failing a special agreement between the belligerents, prisoners of war shall be treated as regards food, quarters, and clothing, on the same footing as the troops of the Government which has captured them.

(II) Article 23:

To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;

See above.

(II) Article 22:

The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.

If one accepts that the military leaders of 1907 were driven by pure pragmatism, and disregarded any morality, one is hard pressed to consider Allied leaders of 1945 to disregard it further. In fact, in 1941 many other prohibitions, such as the previously mentioned one on Aggressive War (Briand Kellogg pact of 1928), came into existence.

Yet by WW2 the logic of "total war", of "shortening the war by any means" was accept by Churchill, Truman, FDR.

(II) Article 23:

To employ poison or poisoned arms;

To employ arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to cause superfluous injury;

Nuclear arms cause radiation sickness, yet even our more civilized time few would declare them useless because of this.

(II) Article 28:

The pillage of a town or place, even when taken by assault, is prohibited.

Valuable materiel could be procured from a captured settlement and foot soldiers are, if nothing else, more capable if they stave of starvation, even by means of food and drink stolen from hostile civilian population.

(IV,2)

The Contracting Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.

As late as december 1943 the Americans under FDR, a man who is commonly considered to be at least as humanitarian as any original signatory of 1899 convention and thus not prone to cruelty-for-cruelties-sake, still thought it necessary to manufacture and prepare mustard gas.

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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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