naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
If you disagree with my criticism of oppression-status granting infinite moral immunity, be specific about what limiting principle you'd propose (if any).
I kind of disagree with this, yes. The limiting factor is having a chance to flourish.
Hypothetical: A guy comes into your house to murder you. He has a gun and spec-ops training; you are a keyboard warrior; he will definitely find you and murder you. The best you can hope for is maybe take him by surprise and give him some bruises. Do you hang out in broad daylight, sheepishly say "guess you caught me" and let yourself be shot? Or do you do the fucker as much damage as you can?
The game theory is this: every decision to exploit somebody exists on a margin spectrum. You are trying to extract as much benefit as possible for a given effort cost; if the other can raise the effort or lower the benefit, it incentivizes you to maybe leave them alone. But we never know where somebody's cut-off point is, so there's always an incentive, if you notice you're being fucked over, to do as much damage as you can back.
So there's a very tentative hypothetical we can construct here to advocate for Palestinean terrorism. Israel is clearly fucking them while exploiting "their" land (whether your game theory implementation advocates forgiveness or revenge here probably depends on preexisting sentiment, but revenge is at least plausible), Israel is clearly trying to minimize effort costs with Gaza, maybe if you can impose some costs on Israel, it'll push them closer to the threshold or at any rate strengthen your negotiating position. In game theory, a person who never plays 'defect' isn't an agent but a resource. Hamas chose the most damaging strategy available to them. Did it break existing compacts? Sure, but I'd presume they assumed that they could not get fucked any worse than they were. Will it work? Probably no.
Okay, cynic hat on: no, but the cost of it not working will not fall on Hamas. IMO, Israel can't really do anything (not hugely expensive) here that will hurt Hamas more than it drives recruitment. From the cynical view, Hamas and the authoritarian movement in Israel are obviously just playing Toxoplasma Tennis. B attacks A'. This enrages A! A cannot fight B, so it attacks B'. This enrages B! B also cannot (cheaply) fight A, so it attacks A', and so on. Part of the reason I don't really have a strong moral view against Hamas is that if this is an accurate model, it's obviously "cooperative" to some extent. Hamas benefits Netanyahu, and conversely. And whenever a cycle like that exists, blaming the most recent hit on whoever committed it is looking at the wrong component. It's a systemic effect. Remove Hamas, another terror group will be found. There is a gap here that allows the existence of a feedback cycle, so a feedback cycle arises. Anyway, in this particular case, the cycle might be running out of control because somebody, A or B, underestimated the damage the current serve would do, so it's unclear what happens next. But my moral view to "let's put the angry people in a cage and then send the guard away" is: a stupid game was played, and a stupid prize was won, I feel bad for the victims but not angry at the perpetrators; it's not like they were the load-bearing causal component.
To loop back: why did I say "the limiting factor is having a chance to flourish?" Well, how do you get out of a cycle like this? You find better things to do with your life. Not sure how good a life you could have in Gaza City. If you could have a good life, a dignified life, a life with authorship and respect, and then you go on a revenge bender - well, I am a humanist, I want to maximize flourishing. When people live an unworthy life, I welcome attempts to, even counterfactually, push for a better life; when people could already live a worthy life, I don't. Do I think Gazans lack the capability to live a worthwhile life? I don't know, honestly, but if I wanted to construct a moral case for terrorism, that's where I'd start.
Addendum: When this conflict started, I said to a family member: "I don't think what Hamas did was right, but I am willing to bet on two things: at the end of this, a lot more Palestineans will have died than Israelis; and at the end of this, Hamas will still be there." If Israel wants to convince me that I'm wrong about the Toxoplasma Tennis thing, those are the two factors they should try to improve.
I concede you present a valid justification of orthogonal violence. There are indeed scenarios where effective resistance is impossible, and the only tools available involving making enemy action as painful as possible, third parties be damned.
Even with these concessions, we can still objectively evaluate the legitimacy of this genre of resistance. In your spec-ops assassin hypothetical, the legitimacy of your orthogonal resistance will depend in part to the legitimacy for why the assassin is even after you. Is it because he's dispatched by a tyrannical government intent on silencing your criticism of it? Then yeah, legit resistance, good luck doing whatever you can. But is it because you murdered the assassin's entire family years ago? Well, good riddance to you.
I think pre-committing to orthogonal violence is sometimes rational. Response nuclear strikes in mutually assured destruction are purely orthogonal violence: you destroyed our cities, therefore we destroy your cities. The point is not that the decision is reasonable once the nukes are approaching you, but that being a country which responds tit-for-tat will make it less likely that you are nuked in the first place. Just have enough Petrovs to avoid any false-positives.
Ideally, such orthogonal violence remains counterfactual.
I also agree that there are circumstances where the best you can do is to scratch the enemy with whatever resources you've got. My go to example is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. If the enemies plan is to send your family to Auschwitz, it is entirely permissible to turn your family into weapons which are supposed to hurt the enemy in the process. Under such circumstances, I would be okay with turning children into suicide bombers if they would otherwise be killed in the gas chambers.
The big difference between the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Gazans is that the latter group do not face a genocide. Most of the hardships of the Gazans is a consequence of decisions of their leadership. If you find yourself being an inmate in an asylum, it might strike you as a good idea to attack the orderlies, giving them a black eye in the process. Unfortunately, this will end up with you in a straight jacket, which will lower your quality of life a lot more than the black eye you gave the orderly. If you then proceed to kick, bite and headbutt, the main thing which will change is that you will have more and more constraints. This is the situation Gaza finds itself in. (Of course, this metaphor glosses over the differences in interest between the Gazans and Hamas. Hamas has every interest in turning Gaza into hell on earth, because flourishing people make bad Jihadists.)
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Notes -
I kind of disagree with this, yes. The limiting factor is having a chance to flourish.
Hypothetical: A guy comes into your house to murder you. He has a gun and spec-ops training; you are a keyboard warrior; he will definitely find you and murder you. The best you can hope for is maybe take him by surprise and give him some bruises. Do you hang out in broad daylight, sheepishly say "guess you caught me" and let yourself be shot? Or do you do the fucker as much damage as you can?
The game theory is this: every decision to exploit somebody exists on a margin spectrum. You are trying to extract as much benefit as possible for a given effort cost; if the other can raise the effort or lower the benefit, it incentivizes you to maybe leave them alone. But we never know where somebody's cut-off point is, so there's always an incentive, if you notice you're being fucked over, to do as much damage as you can back.
So there's a very tentative hypothetical we can construct here to advocate for Palestinean terrorism. Israel is clearly fucking them while exploiting "their" land (whether your game theory implementation advocates forgiveness or revenge here probably depends on preexisting sentiment, but revenge is at least plausible), Israel is clearly trying to minimize effort costs with Gaza, maybe if you can impose some costs on Israel, it'll push them closer to the threshold or at any rate strengthen your negotiating position. In game theory, a person who never plays 'defect' isn't an agent but a resource. Hamas chose the most damaging strategy available to them. Did it break existing compacts? Sure, but I'd presume they assumed that they could not get fucked any worse than they were. Will it work? Probably no.
Okay, cynic hat on: no, but the cost of it not working will not fall on Hamas. IMO, Israel can't really do anything (not hugely expensive) here that will hurt Hamas more than it drives recruitment. From the cynical view, Hamas and the authoritarian movement in Israel are obviously just playing Toxoplasma Tennis. B attacks A'. This enrages A! A cannot fight B, so it attacks B'. This enrages B! B also cannot (cheaply) fight A, so it attacks A', and so on. Part of the reason I don't really have a strong moral view against Hamas is that if this is an accurate model, it's obviously "cooperative" to some extent. Hamas benefits Netanyahu, and conversely. And whenever a cycle like that exists, blaming the most recent hit on whoever committed it is looking at the wrong component. It's a systemic effect. Remove Hamas, another terror group will be found. There is a gap here that allows the existence of a feedback cycle, so a feedback cycle arises. Anyway, in this particular case, the cycle might be running out of control because somebody, A or B, underestimated the damage the current serve would do, so it's unclear what happens next. But my moral view to "let's put the angry people in a cage and then send the guard away" is: a stupid game was played, and a stupid prize was won, I feel bad for the victims but not angry at the perpetrators; it's not like they were the load-bearing causal component.
To loop back: why did I say "the limiting factor is having a chance to flourish?" Well, how do you get out of a cycle like this? You find better things to do with your life. Not sure how good a life you could have in Gaza City. If you could have a good life, a dignified life, a life with authorship and respect, and then you go on a revenge bender - well, I am a humanist, I want to maximize flourishing. When people live an unworthy life, I welcome attempts to, even counterfactually, push for a better life; when people could already live a worthy life, I don't. Do I think Gazans lack the capability to live a worthwhile life? I don't know, honestly, but if I wanted to construct a moral case for terrorism, that's where I'd start.
Addendum: When this conflict started, I said to a family member: "I don't think what Hamas did was right, but I am willing to bet on two things: at the end of this, a lot more Palestineans will have died than Israelis; and at the end of this, Hamas will still be there." If Israel wants to convince me that I'm wrong about the Toxoplasma Tennis thing, those are the two factors they should try to improve.
I concede you present a valid justification of orthogonal violence. There are indeed scenarios where effective resistance is impossible, and the only tools available involving making enemy action as painful as possible, third parties be damned.
Even with these concessions, we can still objectively evaluate the legitimacy of this genre of resistance. In your spec-ops assassin hypothetical, the legitimacy of your orthogonal resistance will depend in part to the legitimacy for why the assassin is even after you. Is it because he's dispatched by a tyrannical government intent on silencing your criticism of it? Then yeah, legit resistance, good luck doing whatever you can. But is it because you murdered the assassin's entire family years ago? Well, good riddance to you.
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I think pre-committing to orthogonal violence is sometimes rational. Response nuclear strikes in mutually assured destruction are purely orthogonal violence: you destroyed our cities, therefore we destroy your cities. The point is not that the decision is reasonable once the nukes are approaching you, but that being a country which responds tit-for-tat will make it less likely that you are nuked in the first place. Just have enough Petrovs to avoid any false-positives.
Ideally, such orthogonal violence remains counterfactual.
I also agree that there are circumstances where the best you can do is to scratch the enemy with whatever resources you've got. My go to example is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. If the enemies plan is to send your family to Auschwitz, it is entirely permissible to turn your family into weapons which are supposed to hurt the enemy in the process. Under such circumstances, I would be okay with turning children into suicide bombers if they would otherwise be killed in the gas chambers.
The big difference between the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Gazans is that the latter group do not face a genocide. Most of the hardships of the Gazans is a consequence of decisions of their leadership. If you find yourself being an inmate in an asylum, it might strike you as a good idea to attack the orderlies, giving them a black eye in the process. Unfortunately, this will end up with you in a straight jacket, which will lower your quality of life a lot more than the black eye you gave the orderly. If you then proceed to kick, bite and headbutt, the main thing which will change is that you will have more and more constraints. This is the situation Gaza finds itself in. (Of course, this metaphor glosses over the differences in interest between the Gazans and Hamas. Hamas has every interest in turning Gaza into hell on earth, because flourishing people make bad Jihadists.)
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