domain:nature.com
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
24m ago
I just don’t see either war actually stopping just because we said so. Most especially with Israel. Israel is much more likely to ramp up attacks on Palestinians if a state is announced because they understand that this is their last chance to do something about the issue before the rest of the world decides whether or not to defend Palestine. They know a state means weapons pointing at them and they won’t have it. TBH if think the bombings if Rafa are about European states recognizing Palestine as a show of resolve— if Palestine is recognized then we have to neutralize it.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
40m ago
Stagnant rather than growing. Fairly sure about that one.
Feels like decay rather than stagnation, but I may be wrong.
I've been worried about the fresh-meat-pipeline since we migrated, and AFAIK so far we don't really have one beyond word of mouth. But I don't havy any good proposals on how to fix it either.
he's a far-out third (fourth?) positionist calling 80% of the political spectrum progressives.
Not a bannable offense. In fact, plausibly true, given some conceptual understanding of those words and the concepts underlying many people's positions. Kinda funny that this is what comes top-of-mind when thinking about why he was banned. Really bolsters jkf's claim.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
1hr ago
Because they make things sound big while making the speaker sound smart.
TowardsPanna
1hr ago
Why do people love to use terms like "orders of magnitude" and "exponentially" these days, even when they don't apply?
Hyperion
1hr ago
And does that follow for his discussion of distrust of the media, of Nature, of the institutions like the NIH? Does it follow for flippantly stating the CIA killed JFK and covered it up for sixty years? Sachs has been burned recently, and so I don't think he's changed his stripes but he's certainly informed by experiences in the last four years.
Reversed stupidity isn't intelligence. You can't just reverse the positions of your enemies and arrive at the truth.
His claim that their would be peace if Israel just acknowledged the Palestinian state is more than laughable. Hamas controls Gaza and is the mortal enemy of the PLO. They threw PLO members off the tops of buildings when they took control of Gaza. Acknowledging Palestinian statehood would do less than nothing to solve the current conflict. Hamas is going to fight to the death either way.
Sachs knows less about geopolitics than he does about economics, he's a laughing stock that gets trotted out for the public by credulous or ideologically motivated journalists like Tucker.
Sure, these are good points you bring up to criticize America, but what is the better alternative? When we consider long periods of peace, it's accomplished under a hegemony of powerful nations aligned in goals/culture or a singular empire.
I'm not defending US in all of its actions and agree there is plenty to criticize in what they have done on the global scale. But I don't think any of these things really addresses the core of my argument. The mutually assured destruction is an alternative to relative peace without needing global hegemony and even then plenty of conflict was done via proxies AKA the Cold War. It prevented full-scale war between the US and the Soviet Union. Personally, I think peace achieved via MAD is worse than peace achieved via a global hegemony. For all the wars that have existed from 1945 to today, in comparison to eras throughout human history, we exist in a relatively peaceful era.
Indeed, we should strive to be vigilant and not use this line of argument to just absolve the USA of what it has done, especially when it has negative outcomes. At the same time, it doesn't mean we shouldn't aim to preserve a powerful global presence. The best argument against focusing on that currently is that America has enough domestic problems to deal with. But it doesn't mean we should abandon our position either.
When we look at US-caused international conflicts, we have to consider, whether the primary purpose is to maintain and grow the American hegemony in service of maintaining global peace, or if that is being used as an excuse with some other primary motive in mind (fund the military-industrial complex, drum up support for an upcoming election, etc.). If the former, I think that would warrant a legitimate criticism about the pitfalls of relative peace achieved through this method and find ways to account for it. But if the latter, that's not really a criticism of the model. People will always use existing values and models to justify whatever they want to do, but it doesn't mean that it's wrong.
What do you think would be a better path to a more peaceful world, and what can be done to maintain it?
Edit: Not a response to you directly, more of my thoughts concerning people who say the US spends too much on the military and then act like we would have world peace if America just drastically cut its military budget. I think there is legitimate criticism to be had of the military-industrial complex to take into consideration, but I also feel like many people with that sentiment take this era of relative peace for granted. Do they not read history? Do they not consider human nature?
Yes, America has instigated wars with little to no benefit and should be rightly criticized. But this does not mean the military is useless or that having a military presence globally is a strictly negative thing. I acknowledge that if I wasn't an American and a foreigner, I would have reason to want to break the American-led global hegemony, especially if I was for example Chinese. But I'm an American, and I am more favorable to a world under American values than a world under Russian values or a world under Chinese values. I'm not so naive to believe that you can have hundreds of relatively equally powerful countries acting independently peacefully. What would stop one country from just using force to take the resources of another? Sanctions? Their "image"? Propaganda on the citizens to make them not want to fight? You only need a few people to maintain an army that can suppress people. These things have to be backed up by military force otherwise it's futile.
I am for maximizing human potential and development, and the countries that aligned with American values post-WWII saw tremendous economic growth and development. Now one could make arguments about how countries that didn't had their growth artificially restricted by American policies against its adversaries or how the growth of America and its allies came by extracting value unfairly from its adversaries, but for the person that is born under a richer country, does that really matter? Countries that aligned with the US and adopted positions favorable to the US are far, far better off than those that didn't. Just look at North Korea versus South Korea. If I were born in a foreign nation, I would be extremely grateful if my country chose to lick the boots of the American imperialist ambitions some 50-60 years ago and benefited greatly from it, than if they didn't and my country ended up in poverty instead.
What use is my country's culture and tradition if the average GDP per capita is $1,000 and I have to live as a farmer when it could've had a GDP per capita of $30,000 and my quality of life is vastly superior? Why do so many people leave their countries to try to come to the US if culture should matter more than economic growth and prosperity? I don't particularly care for preserving the culture of every other people in the world, especially when said culture is an active detriment to the growth and development of those people. This doesn't mean I think we should just make all of the world America, just that we shouldn't go out of our way to preserve existing cultures. And just for good measure, I'm going to repeat myself that this doesn't mean America is absolved of all its wrongdoings, or that we should be careful in adopting this perspective without criticism, but I don't see a better alternative that would realistically work without fundamentally changing human nature. I'm going to make this claim - that the world today for the average person is far better due to America taking a global position than it would have been if America chose to stay neutral during WWII and take a far more isolationist approach.
It is definitely convenient to paint anyone who disagrees with American foreign policy establishment as an extremist. It is blatantly propagandistic however and just sheer boo outgroup demagoguery.
The reality, is you are dealing with people making valid arguements, and it is actually false that these arguements and perspectives are part of a far left or far right perpective, except that they are part of perspectives of both moderates, far left, far right, whatever people. And of course outside the USA, you will find again even more so people and majority of spectrum be critical of the many immoral and against international law actions of the foreign pollicy establishment.
Ironically, the current American establishment is far more far left extremist than Jeffrey Sachs and you got plenty of people who combine far left extremism with supporting imperialism. Sachs seem more like a more timid leftist than say Joe Biden.
Moreover, this also applied during the buildup of WW2. The majority of Americans opposed involvement and also had a negative opinion of both the nazis and Stalin. Really, it was more like opposition to Iraq, Vietnam which again the driving force was not far left american haters, and it would be to strawman and negatively exaggerate people like Sachs to paint them in such colors.
The American goverment highly subverted and full of communist agents didn't just support intervention to WW2 but was massively for Stalin and helped him above and beyond to take half of Europe, when they could have followed better policy that wasn't as pro communist. The great book Stalin's wars goes more into this, showing how even after the Soviets were winning, they were prioritised to get help over even American troops and many more examples of this policy direction.
Additionally, when it comes to supporters of WW2, which changed after pearl harbor, there were those who had pretty far right views and wanted to kill the Japanese and saw them as racial enemies, or supported destroying the Germans because they saw them as enemies and were pro warcrimes. It really is overly reductive and just conveniently propagandistic to try to frame the policies taken by the state department, often highly influenced by foreign lobbies, as a moderate position that only far leftists and far rightists could oppose. This is false, and you will find people whose perspective pattern matches to far left, or far right among supporters of such foreign policy. Today, it is especially far leftists who openly see the GAE as a empire for imposing their ideology.
Skepticism of American foreign policy is widely popular because it does plenty of immoral and wrong things. It is in fact quite popular among non americans of all persuassions. And to a lesser extend it is popular among Americans and promoted by the most popular host in Tucker, because the framing that it is all for Americas interest against foreign enemies, isn't accurate when it comes to Ukraine and Israel too. There is in fact a redistribution outwards and of course in favor of the weapon manufacturers that are some of the biggest donors of think tanks. There are also foreign lobbies like the israeli lobby which support wars for self serving non pro American reasons. The America first identification of movements skeptical of American foreign policy, including by Trump in part, is not accurately captured by labeling it as far right just cause you say it is. There is validity in their perspective that interests of American people are not put first.
Now, I wouldn't argue that we need to be maximally skeptical of American foreign policy establishment and maximally apologist of non American powers. There are those like Chomsky who went too far in that direction, but certainly skepticism and opposition to the current foreign policy uniparty has many humanitarian, real politic, and other grounds to stand upon, such as seeing it leading the world towards more world war paths and can't be dismissed by booing them as extremists.
All powers need to know there will be opposition when they violate certain norms. To avoid bad behavior you need to let them know those that behave badly, and would behave worse still, that there will be opposition and hostility and consequences. Hence, why those favoring totalitarianism where certain groups are beyond criticism, and poison the waters by slandering critics are promoting something incredibly dangerous.
What are you going to do about international conflicts on which the USA plays a role at causing? Surely, you would want USA to dissuade other countries from causing trouble but be critical when USA itself causes trouble?
Do you think, we should see all the warmongering USA is responsible both in wars and including coups, funding extremist rebels as in Syria, as something that shouldn't be challenged and an acceptable sacrifice for the greater good? Because this way of thinking is exploitable and will lead to more bad behavior by the warmongering, CIA coups parts of USA.
Including those who deliberately might want conflict with other great powers so that they can be defeated and there would be American hegemony over them. If MAD is part of world peace, then that MAD includes the existence of rival powers too. Now, I don't think the way is to turn a blind eye to China, etc, but neither is to treat the American foreign policy establishment as the good guys.
I think in your model of world peace, you should not neglect to consider how American imperialist deeds, which include funding their own color revolutions/rebels should be restrained, because they actually have been the more warmongering active player around the globe.
Of course, it is also legitimate to treat the warmongering and threat of more, by non American powers as a problem.
Some part of the previous peace, relates to a different more friendly attitute of American foreign policy towards countries like Russia and China. And moreover, the fact that China was weaker, growing and not perceived as a threat while China it self also became more brazen. The Ukraine issue has been constantly debated, but certainly the Russians did have their own aggressive moves in Ukraine, in addition to the oust of their guy there from a western backed coup (with people like McCain openly supporting it). It seems to me that both the USA and the Chinese and Russians became more aggressive.
An aggressive American world dominance hegemonist perspective that seeks to dismember rival powers like Russia and China and seeks their submission as countries is itself war causing, and possibly ww3 causing. If there weren't nukes, it might have lead us there already. But international peace would require a general deescalation, not just from the USA, of course.
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
2hr ago
I think you don't fathom the amount of "engineering" it would take to double or triple sunshine hours in the British Isles...
Also smog, acid rain and ozone are the opposite of good examples.
2rafa
2hr ago
And does that follow for his discussion of distrust of the media, of Nature, of the institutions like the NIH? Does it follow for flippantly stating the CIA killed JFK and covered it up for sixty years?
Sure, this kind of hippie left think health authorities help the pharma companies cover up the “cure for cancer”, believe in chemtrails, have an extreme distrust for anything that comes out of a lab (including vaccines), and certainly believe in JFK and 911 conspiracies.
theincompetencetheorist
2hr ago
So I've started to see Elon (and many other tech CEOs for that matter) as living LLMs most of them can guess the correct technobabble to look smart for people that don't have knowledge of the areas they talk about. There is no true understanding of the things that he has been speaking about lately and has managed to staff with people that have been able to correct him in the past, but now no one can contradict Elon anymore. He is surrounded by yes-men and has been successful too many times being contrarian that there is no one to save him anymore. You are essentially listing stuff that is straight from Elon and someone who truly knows something about cars, running a social media company or rockets are able to correct or massage the message down the hierarchy anymore.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
2hr ago
Depends on whom you ask.
For much of German society, it's just a question of passport.
For the left-leaning parts of it, it's a question of residence.
The Right is divided on the issue.
laxam
2hr ago
I can kind of see it. The Federal government in 1860 more than 10x'd itself in just a few years, going from spending $80 million a year in 1860 to spending $1.3 billion in 1865. Over the course of doing that it organized and prosecuted a Continental war against a peer competitor, successfully. Starting from almost nothing in terms of the scale of its military.
Could you see the US government of today suddenly spending $30-40 trillion and getting anything comparatively useful done? That's 'jumpstart space colonization' money and I'm skeptical we'd get 'Moon Dust for All' once all was said and done.
NullHypothesis
2hr ago
I got curious so I found some better stats:
In the first quarter of 2024, fully-electric vehicles (BEVs) declined to 7.3% of new sales market share in the United States. Of the nearly 3.8 million light-duty vehicles sold in America in Q4, 268,909 were fully-electric Tesla’s share of the EV market held steady at 52%, but is down significantly from 60% in Q1 2023, and down from 79% market share in 2020.
So Tesla has maintained consistentl sales of units of cars in the past 8 quarters while the other players are growing. 52% is still a lot but it doesn't seem like Tesla is able to really grow it's customer acquisition rate. EV in general is also slow to catch on. But in comparison to another individual company Tesla is still far ahead.
In comparison to Apple in 2024:
In the US, iPhones hold a market share of 60.77%.
But this was a drop from when Apple basically had 100% of the market since they were basically the first popular smartphone. I think the fact that EV has a strong competitor in just regular cars (EVs are not that much better than regular gas cars, while smart phones were vastly superior to flip phones) coupled with many other players entering the market before Tesla could grow too big makes your summary correct.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
2hr ago
Well, it didn't. There was no split. The militant atheists appeared, most disappeared, and the ones that remained seamlessly converted to postmodern progressivism.
2rafa
2hr ago
Cars are just too expensive to be iPhones. Apple hit that perfect price point where people are willing to pay $1000 vs a $300 Android because of the OS, convenience, style, brand and lack of desire to switch, and that means huge margins for Apple. People are not willing to pay $70,000 for a Tesla vs $35,000 equivalent tier other car. That’s real money, which many car buyers literally cannot afford.
Skibboleth
2hr ago
Jeffrey Sachs is an economist. Why should I regard his opinion on international relations or diplomacy? He doesn't make much of an argument; he just sort of assumes, as many people do, that the US has the ability to dictate terms to people.
it's refreshing to hear someone so clearly say that this is a war of choice, and the choice is being made by the USA
I can't help but feel like Russia might have had something to do with it.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
2hr ago
it also being somewhat difficult to do a mass-export of your original, full-quality photo data.
How is it difficult? I regularly takeout photos at original resolution and then compress the cloud copies.
I guess you won't respond since you blocked me, but perhaps someone else has context.
NullHypothesis
3hr ago
On the matter of public health there aren't any strong arguments I've seen in support that those lies that benefited the public on the matters of public health. Maybe someone could steelman their position because I can't think of any. I was thinking more in terms of geopolitical conflicts between nations.
Sachs' version of tell the truth isn't reveal all secrets, but to be honest about our past dealings and future intentions.
This better clarifies his position and I am in general agreement with that approach.
Honestly I barely read the rest of your post because it's the same arguments that got us here.
Honestly you don't have to mention this. I'm just asking questions to facilitate discussion and to better understand why governments behave the way they do, and if there is actually any value in doing so. You might not want to hear the reason, but I do, and I'm sure others do as well. Isn't that the point of this forum? To shed light and try to understand the opposition? Maybe there actually is some value in what they have to say. If not, then it better equips you (or anybody else reading) being able to point out the flaws in their reasoning.
I get your frustration, I really do. The government's fearmongering of and lies regarding Covid was an absolute disaster and I still feel the ramifications today. I feel like it robbed me of 4 years of my life, and that my life is worse today than it was at the start of 2020. But I still want to understand the line of reasoning and support of government lies (not necessarily of the response to Covid, but in general).
To fool your enemies, you must first fool your friends - this is a proverb for a reason. Now you may personally disagree with this as a matter of principle and refuse to engage with such an idea, but you cannot deny the utility it has. I think one could make a strong argument in support of such tactics in times of war. If one agrees with the argument, then it goes to reason there is some line where the cost to benefit justifies or denies it's usage. I don't think refusing to acknowledge its utility just because it can then lead to a discussion of where and when its justified is appropriate because most of the world is not black and white and most behavior of people isn't black and white.
Less lying. A whole lot less lying. From everyone, especially if you think it's for the common good, I don't believe you and don't want to hear it.
I'm trying to recall who said it but the general idea is that the most dangerous type of people who believe they are doing something for the good of humanity. I think there are people who would vote for or be in support of governments lying to the population if they believed it was for the common good. We see people defending the government's response to Covid to this day. Getting mad at these people won't get them to change their minds. The ones that do are just as susceptible to shifting their feelings back with an equally emotional response from the other side. I seek to hone my arguments so that I can at least convince those who are willing to listen.
But I'm not going to let the specter of the Orient let the lying fedgov off the hook for their lying ways.
Sure, let's hold the government accountable for their past actions. But we live in the reality we live in. What would be the best approach to China now? Personally, I think the US could benefit from not playing world police for a decade and just focusing on solving our internal problems. But what are the potential consequences of that?
My belief is that the world can only be mostly peaceful if there is a significantly powerful force that is so powerful that it makes it not worth it for a foreign nation to cause war. In that case, I'd rather that force be the US and not China. The reason we don't have wide-scale World War 1 and 2 style conflicts anymore is because of mutually assured destruction and the fact that most of the world is now aligned with US and US interests and values. But if human history teaches us anything, it's that if someone can bully someone else out of their resources, they will do that. On a micro-scale, the only reason we don't have large portions of the population stealing from each other is because society (with the use of physical force such as police) keeps us in check. As soon as we started defunding police crime went up. I believe the same applies to larger scales. Remove the US-aligned hegemony and we will start to see more international conflicts. This is a belief I haven't really honed, so I'm open to criticism and a better alternative theory regarding minimizing international conflicts.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
3hr ago
Yes, I would think so. You could replenish oxygen and reject CO2, which was the main difficulty as I recall. Maintaining a closed environment is not that hard if you can add and remove gasses, just look at nuclear subs.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
Which longtime posters were banned recently? I don't even know, there used to be a weekly thread about who got banned in the last week.
All I can think of was Hiynka and he's a far-out third (fourth?) positionist calling 80% of the political spectrum progressives.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
3hr ago
That also means that Ohio keeping Biden off the ballot doesn't actually bring any greater likelihood of secession/major consequences.
The problem there is that everyone's running 1.2-tits-for-tat and as such once the door's been opened it becomes more likely that somebody winds up doing it in a plausibly-in-play state.
I challenged you directly if you think you should excuse blatantly immoral and destructive conduct under the idea that US hegemony is good. It seems to me that you want to do that and are just trying to promote it based on arguing that US hegemony is good actually. But you also accept restraint and criticism. And it doesn't seem that you really do in a substantial manner.
There are a few problems with this. Which is that destroying other countries and causing civil wars to cause more US hegemony will result in far more devastation.
And part of the peace has been because of existence of other powers and not adopting fully culturally marxist agenda. When Japan open its borders and follows more the cultural marxist agenda the result wouldn't be good for the Japanese but worse. Moreover, the existence of an other, helps restrain predation by Americans against their allies, and now seems less so.
Anyway, a USA that is against the immoral conduct of other countries, and restraints it self from instigating more trouble, will work better. Part of my solution includes a push for general deescalation that includes non Americans also doing that through negotiations and attempts to diplomacy being part of the process. I am not suggesting that the USA should stop having a military, but I do think that the neocons being highly representative of what I am critical of a criminal conduct, as a faction are removed from any influence.
When people like Bret Stephens arguing to replace the white working, this isn't good because higher GDP, because this agenda also comes along with massive redistribution, and quotas at expense of targeted group. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-09-30/how-corporate-america-kept-its-diversity-promise-a-week-of-big-take
The package offered by the modern GAE is also unattractive to many African countries because it comes with prioritising submission to cultural far leftist agenda. Chinese investment with less lecturing is more attractive. So, one of my alternatives is to abadon that and ideology of woke/neocon types to be abadoned. However, I don't think ideology should be absent from global politics. There is a value in certain human rights, and want those genuine rights to be protected. But the general cultural marxist conception of rights should be thrown to the garbage. It is both bad in its own right, but also alienates people who would be otherwise more positive towards USA influence.
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