domain:infonomena.substack.com
Er, are you advocating that the US should only do nothing or destroy its enemies utterly? And if the standard for utter destruction is astronomically high, doesn't that imply that most of the time the US should do nothing?
Errr... um...errr.... ummm....uuuuur... Correct. Time for the midwit poly-psy majors playing games "inadvertently" getting half a million people killed, with no moral accountability to be out of work. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
Do we need to either cut the baby's head off, or let the baby act out for as long as it likes?
I'm talking about military action not disciplining babies.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
24m ago
... Because they did come up with it? I'm not seeing the problem.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
26m ago
Drones aren't quite like guns since they require conversion and some significant level of skill to weaponize. Petrol-bombs are a thing but we don't worry so much about petrol like guns. Fertilizer -> explosives is a thing but fertilizer doesn't require special licenses to buy, though there is monitoring.
You can do vast amounts of damage with a laptop and internet connection but they're not too regulated.
Whereas guns, rockets, knives, high explosives are easy to weaponize if you have them.
Supah_Schmendrick
29m ago
Er, I'm not a soldier, but at least to me that reads as a criticism of RoE which are badly designed, not of the concept of RoE generally. Otherwise, why specify that it's stupid RoE that you're jettisoning? Presumably there are "non-politically-correct" and "smart" RoE.
guy
47m ago
Were you trying to purchase the car straight-up full cost and they still wouldn't sell it to you ? Or were you trying to get financing on it?
Rex
51m ago
I’m curious if you know much about the Nisour square incident. If you do and you think those guys are guilty, I’d love to hear more.
I’m no expert on the military or counter insurgency. But I did watch a 3 hour interview with those guys on the Shawn Ryan show. It’s very obvious to me that they are innocent. Worse than that, it’s a case where a bunch of veterans were set up up by Uncle Sam in order to kill Blackwater and hurt Eric Prince.
I’ve only heard one side of the story, but they did not look mistaken about the facts nor did they come off as liars.
It seems a shame they’re still being used as examples here for trigger happy war criminals. Especially when we have so many legit cases to point to.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
57m ago
I'll give you German and Polish, and you can chalk up Spanish, Greek and maybe even Italian to a matter of taste, but to claim French cuisine is bad is either a grug-tier or a contrarían for its own sake opinion.
Tenaz
1hr ago
I previously said, twice, that I don't think that Christianity is coextensive with the community of the saved. "You are not Christian" does not mean "you are damned to hell for eternity". I also said "I don't claim that no Mormons are saved or anything like that".
Sorry, I shouldn't have levelled that accusation. This whole discussion is intrinsically tied to the whole "different Jesus" debate--which is that, due to my more esoteric and less meaningful beliefs about the nature of Christ, I actually believe in a whole different (and nonexistent) person and my faith in "that Christ" is of no effect. I should not have associated you with that argument.
As regards Mormon beliefs - well, I would say that the early church seems to have believed that Christ being one in substance with the Father was a core part of Christianity. They believed that enough to put it into the creeds, and to exclude people who denied it. Presumably you take the view that they were wrong, and you can do that, but I don't think it's absurd or uncharitable of me to suggest that, by doing so, you have removed yourself from community with the people who believed that.
Honestly if you're just using "Christian" as a group identifier then define it how you will. What I care about is the underlying implication that frequently accompanies this identifier--that those unworthy of the label are consequently unworthy of salvation. You've been clear that this is not your belief so I don't think we meaningfully disagree on this.
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
Sure, but that also gets to the problem with Protestants. Treating a book as infallible that was created by a church you reject. You could make some apologism for this by pointing out the books of the Bible were really written separately until they were compiled but yeah I think it's a big problem for anyone not Catholic or Orthodox.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1hr ago
And lest you say this is being uncharitable to Hegseth, as yunyun33 noted, he is on record campaigning for war criminals to be pardoned. If you think it's unfair to hold soldiers accountable for murdering prisoners, I think it's fair to characterize you as being pro-war crimes.
anon_
1hr ago
I find that anything between 7 and 13mm is both acceptable to the wife and doesn't get in the way.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1hr ago
The US has a lot of concerns where total annihilation would be wildly excessive and counterproductive. Obliterating Somalia because some enterprising fishermen decided to moonlight as pirates would be silly on top of appalling. It's a level of deranged collective punishment that would instantly turn the rest of the world against the US because nobody is sure when we're going to make an absurd demand at nukepoint. And it wouldn't even work, because the strategy immediately fails against any sort of decentralized opponent.
Doing nothing is comparatively reasonable, but still suboptimal, since having your shipping go unmolested is kind of a big deal.
Stellula
1hr ago
I really wish you and the person below you would just link to the part of the speech you are talking about.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1hr ago
I composed this before Hegseth gave his "war crimes are badass" speech, though I'd argue it vindicates my remark about "warrior ethos" posturing. In practical terms, it is an ethos that glamorizes brutality as an expression of strength and doesn't appear to give much thought to the use of the military as a political tool beyond "kill people until they do what we say" (an approach which has a decidedly mixed record). Thus you end up getting arguments like "we failed in Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan because we weren't brutal enough" when the reality is that these efforts stumbled because the US didn't have a real plan for victory (and in the meantime we killed a lot of civilians). It's not quite a stab-in-the-back myth, but it's the same flavor of copium over the failure of pure force.
At least for now the military is limited to blowing up narco boats
*alleged narco boats
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
AGI Was Never Going To Kill Us Because Suicide Happens At The End of Doomscrolling
I'll go ahead and call this the peak of AI version one-dot-oh
The headline reads "OpenAI Is Preparing to Launch a Social App for AI-Generated Videos." People will, I guess, be able to share AI generated videos with their friends (and who doesn't have THE ALGO as a friend). Awesome. This is also on the heels of the introduction of live ads within OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Some of us were waiting for The Matrix. I know I've always wanted to learn Kung Fu. Others were sharpening our pointing sticks so that when the paperclip machine came, we'd be ready. Most of us just want to look forward to spending a quiet evening with AI Waifu before we initiate her kink.exe module.
But we'll never get there. Because Silicon Valley just can't help itself. Hockey sticks and rocketships. Series E-F-G. If I can just get 5 million more Americans addicted to my app, I can buy a new yacht made completely out of bitcoin.
I am a daily "AI" user and I still have very high hopes. My current operating theory is that a combination of whatever the MCP protocol eventually settles into plus agents trading some sort of crypto or stable coin will create a kind of autonomous, goal-seek driven economy. It will be sandboxed but with (semi) real money. I don't think we, humans, will use it to actually drive the global economy, but as a kind of just-over-the-horizon global prediction market. Think of it as a way for us to have seen 2008 coming in 2006. I also was looking forward to a team of maybe 10 people making a legit billion dollar company and this paving the way for groups of 3 - 5 friends running thousands of $10 + $50 million dollar companies. No more corporate grind if you're willing to take a little risk and team up with some people you work well with. No bullshit VC games - just ship the damn thing.
And I think these things are still possible, but I also, now, think the pure consumer backlash to this silicon valley lobotomy of AI could be very much Dot-Com-2-point-O. The normies at my watering hole are making jokes about AI slop. Instead of "lol I doomscrolled into 3 am again" people are swapping stories about popping in old DVDs so that they can escape the ads and the subscription fatigue.
Culturally, this could be great. Maybe the damn kids will go outside and touch some grass. In terms of advancing the frontier of human-digital knowledge, it seems like we're going to trade it in early not even for unlimited weird porn, but for pink haired anime cat videos that my aunt likes.
BahRamYou
2hr ago
So, does God wait for the Mormons to elect their president and then start sending him messages? Or does he privately message someone first and then that guy uses his secret divine knowledge to become president? Either way seems a little suspicious to me, but then I'm just a dirty heathen.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
2hr ago
I don't think you can separate the things that were grandfathered in from the current good state we find ourselves in. Alcohol is useful for proving trustworthiness within a group. We might never have gotten out of small-scale tribalism without its influence. Guns were a necessary tool for breaking the old social order of kings and nobility. The countries where guns are rare have at least a vibe that no one could ever upset the established order. In America there are times when states, and even smaller groups, defy the federal government using force. The threat of such defiance limits the extent to which the establishment boot can stomp on human faces before it is stopped by force.
TeknOShEeP
2hr ago
There are rules of engagement that are to ensure a country does not win the tactical battle and thereby lose the propaganda war (see Vietnam, and being currently attempted by Israel in Gaza).
And then there are rules of engagement that are simply ass-covering for the REMFs who ordered the operation to begin with (see Afghanistan, Iraq).
And finally, there are rules of engagement for powers who follow Machiavelli's advice to kings (see all sides of WWII, the Mongols under Ghenghis and Kublai Khan, and Rome at its peak).
War is a terrible thing. The modern ideal is that it is to be "civilized" by more humanitarian rules of engagement, but I'm not sure this is true. What I am sure is true is that the current blend of caregory 1 and 2 RoEs used by the US manages to be about the worst of all possible worlds.
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
Er, are you advocating that the US should only do nothing or destroy its enemies utterly? And if the standard for utter destruction is astronomically high, doesn't that imply that most of the time the US should do nothing?
It seems to me that the United States needs to be able to exercise a wide range of levels of military force in order to compel its enemies, including both the extremely high (destroying civilisations with the power of suns) and the moderate to low. As in Starship Troopers:
“Something still troubling you? Speak up. That’s what I’m here for, to answer your questions.”
“Uh, yes, sir. You said the sentry didn’t have any H-bomb. But he does have an H-bomb; that’s just the point. Well, at least we have, if we’re the sentry… and any sentry we’re up against is likely to have them, too. I don’t mean the sentry, I mean the side he’s on.”
“I understood you.”
“Well… you see, sir? If we can use an H-bomb—and, as you said, it’s no checker game; it’s real, it’s war and nobody is fooling around—isn’t it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed… and even losing the war… when you’ve got a real weapon you can use to win? What’s the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?”
Zim didn’t answer at once, which wasn’t like him at all. Then he said softly, “Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.”
Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, “Speak up!”
“I’m not itching to resign, sir. I’m going to sweat out my term.”
“I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn’t really qualified to answer… and one that you shouldn’t ask me. You’re supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?”
“What? Sure—yes, sir.”
“Then you’ve heard the answer. But I’ll give you my own—unofficial—views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?”
“Why… no, sir!”
“Of course not. You’d paddle it. There can be circumstances when it’s just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him… but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing… but controlled and purposeful violence. But it’s not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It’s never a soldier’s business to decide when or where or how—or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people—‘older and wiser heads,’ as they say—supply the control. Which is as it should be. That’s the best answer I can give you. If it doesn’t satisfy you, I’ll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can’t convince you—then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.”
Is any level of force short of complete annihilation 'half ass shit'? Do we need to either cut the baby's head off, or let the baby act out for as long as it likes?
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2hr ago
Where else? I suppose Australia technically has dangerous wild animals in great variety, but guns are tightly controlled there.
While this is strictly speaking true it is slightly (and inadvertently misleading). Australia's most dangerous animals are not ones that you can stop with a gun - an assault rifle will do nothing to stop you from being bitten by a funnel web spider that had moved into your shoe, a perfectly camouflaged snake that you stepped on or a small, transparent jellyfish floating 30 metres away from you. People in rural areas still use them and don't have much difficulty getting them.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2hr ago
No I understood the reference, and I disagree with your take on Christianity. The point of Christianity is to become like God. "God became man so that man could become God."
While an obsessive focus on compassion for the weak and wretched is indeed an outgrowth of Christianity, I personally see it as a cancerous and false one, as many educated and thinking Christians do nowadays.
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
What is the utility of the creeds if not to define who is Christian? Again, that is what they are for. They were created for that specific purpose - to clearly mark orthodox Christians apart from heretics. You could, I suppose, take one of two views. You could suggest that this purpose is laudable but the actually-existing creeds do it wrongly, and instead lock in heresy or error. (I understand this to be the historical Mormon position.) The creeds are in the wrong place or cement the wrong views. Alternatively, you could suggest that this whole endeavour is a mistake. That seems like it would have pretty big implications to me - should Christians not seek to delineate Christianity from heresy?
I interpret your position to be that a basic, perhaps creedal, definition of Christianity is reasonable, but that the actually-existing creeds are too narrow. Perhaps a more minimal creed, one that encompasses not only Nicene orthodoxy but even the likes of Arianism or perhaps even some Gnostic belief systems, would have been better, in your view?
As regards Mormon beliefs - well, I would say that the early church seems to have believed that Christ being one in substance with the Father was a core part of Christianity. They believed that enough to put it into the creeds, and to exclude people who denied it. Presumably you take the view that they were wrong, and you can do that, but I don't think it's absurd or uncharitable of me to suggest that, by doing so, you have removed yourself from community with the people who believed that.
As a final note:
in the end what it boils down to is that you believe God will damn me and my family for eternity because, while we accept his divinity and worship him, and accept his Son as our Savior, we don't have the nature of the relationship between them quite right, and unlike others with those same misunderstandings we're not part of a creedal Christian community. Does this not strike you as obviously wrong?
I previously said, twice, that I don't think that Christianity is coextensive with the community of the saved. "You are not Christian" does not mean "you are damned to hell for eternity". I also said "I don't claim that no Mormons are saved or anything like that".
Personally I consider it usually inappropriate to speculate on who is saved or not saved. That is a matter for God. What I do in life is hope for the salvation of all peoples - as in the Nunc Dimittis: "for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all nations". That is the part given to me.
I therefore, at least, knowing that God desires to save everyone, hope for the salvation of all who earnestly seek God, and who show proof of that desire in their love of neighbour. This does, for what it's worth, put me in company with the Catholics, who teach (para. 15-16, and at more length here) that though all salvation comes from God through Christ, this is possible for those of other religions. If I have given you reason in this conversation to think that I don't sincerely hope for your salvation as well, then I apologise.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
You’re not going to get attacked by a grizzly in a suburb either, you’d have to be way off the beaten track.
Grizzlies no, black bears maybe.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Dingos and saltwater crocs are technically dangerous to people, are they not? No bears, snakes and monitor lizards avoid people, no big cats. I suppose guns are pretty useless against saltwater crocodiles in general but still.
You’re not going to get attacked by a grizzly in a suburb either, you’d have to be way off the beaten track.
The point of the metaphor is to be illustrative of a principle.
To wit, the purpose of military action is to impose your will on another party. It is to threaten, induce, or compel another party to accept your will.
Frequently it is desirable to do so using the least amount of force possible. This is partly because it is frequently preferable to injure the enemy the least amount necessary; for instance, if one conflicts with an enemy with whom one has a trade relationship, one may not want to shatter their economy entirely, or if one is conquering a piece of territory, one probably wants to preserve that territory in as good condition as possible. It is also partly just because of expense on one's own side; if your goal can be achieved with a special forces operation, that is much more affordable than a full-scale invasion. One can get maximum value, so to speak, from one's own military by using the smallest amounts of force necessary to achieve one's goals.
If your military has only two settings, zero and one hundred, you lose a tremendous amount of ability to meaningfully compel one's rivals. If I'm a rival of the United States and I know that the only military force the United States will ever deploy is total nuclear annihilation, then I am free to do anything I like without fear of retaliation as long as I stay below the nuclear death threshold. According to your own words, the nuclear death threshold should be extraordinarily high, so in practice I can do whatever I like. The US has effectively disarmed itself.
It does not seem in American interests, to me, to disarm itself.
Look, the idea that the US has used its military force badly over the last thirty years is extremely defensible and probably common sense at this point. But you are overcorrecting to the point of total absurdity. Has the US military not been used well recently? Certainly. But I don't think the correct response to that is to rule out the possibility of using the US military to do anything.
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