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wayfarer
15m ago
I think that burden on arguing that murder is actually fine is on people claiming that vastly higher murder rate would be an improvement.
And that you would not like world where "significantly interrupting my life" would result in murder. I assure you that nonzero number of people think you are significantly interrupting their life.
I put RI in the same category as Worm or Wheel of Time: I admire it, I'm glad to have read it, and while 'low status'...But it desperately needs to be about 30% its wordcount.
I'm having a hard time finishing out Worm because of this. Specifically, I realized I do NOT need a whole chapter of Taylor's internal monologue as she ruminates on/processes the last set of horrifically traumatic events. I enjoy almost every other aspect of the story and writing, but this is what pads it out.
Like we get the point. Humans pretty much suck, most humans with powers suck, being a 'villain' is apparently the only way to do good as it lets you break rules that need to be broken. You can try to justify your behavior or just admit that you're doing what makes you feel better and/or indulging your worst impulses.
Great, now we didn't really need a mile's worth of internal angst written out to achieve a couple inches of character development.
Actually that may be a notable problem with ANY long running piece of fiction, from One Piece to The Walking Dead (TV show).
The main characters are constantly having life-altering experiences and thus should be experiencing rapid personal change, but they also have to remain stable enough over the course of the story that their arc doesn't feel rushed, and reaches the 'satisfying' endpoint. Also if you alter a character's personality too much fans might revolt.
And most writers seem to err pretty heavily on the side of stability. Which means they have to pace the character development out over dozens of chapters. Some, I guess, resist the impulse to have said characters ruminate constantly on their experiences despite it not altering their thinking much.
SSCReader
33m ago
Except...it's probably not true:
No one doubts that Kitty Genovese, 28, was stabbed to death in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., in the early hours of March 13, 1964. However, the story of the impassive witnesses seems to have sprung up about two weeks later.
Trial testimony established that Winston Moseley attacked Genovese not three times but twice, with a 10-minute hiatus in between, argues Levine. When the first attack happened, on Austin Street, a shout from a window scared Moseley away. In addition, a retired police officer recalls that, as a boy, he saw Genovese staggering down Austin Street and Moseley fleeing in the opposite direction, and that his father called the police. Others have also said that they called, Levine adds.
As Genovese made her unsteady way around the corner and down an alley to the back vestibule of the building where she lived, Moseley returned and attacked her again — out of sight of the Austin Street windows, says Levine. A man whose apartment had a view of the second stabbing contacted another resident, who immediately called the police, according to the trial. That woman then rushed to the mortally wounded Genovese, holding her in her arms until the ambulance came, according to trial testimony.
In 2016 the New York Times (which was responsible for claiming many witnesses did nothing), admitted it's story was flawed and inaccurate. And that many fewer people were probably aware of the attack than they claimed and that of those who were aware did take some action (such as calling the cops).
"While there was no question that the attack occurred, and that some neighbors ignored cries for help, the portrayal of 38 witnesses as fully aware and unresponsive was erroneous. The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital."
"Immediately after the story broke, WNBC police reporter Danny Meehan discovered many inconsistencies in the original Times article, asking Gansberg why his article failed to reveal that witnesses did not feel that a murder was happening. Gansberg replied, "It would have ruined the story.""
The attacker was initially scared away by someone intervening, but that person did not realize Genovese had been stabbed, so when she got up and walked off he assumed everything was ok. But the attacker disguised himself and came back and found Genovese in the alley where she had collapsed where he then raped her. But that was actually also reported to police at the time, and a neighbor did come out to help, but it was too late. Most of the so-called 38 witnesses who watched and did nothing while she was murdered, were not in fact aware that a murder was happening at all.
Remember, the media even back in the 1960's was still about getting eyeballs and the whole story was the result of a single New York Times article.
Shrike
39m ago
Nuclear weapons make you functionally immune to a conventional invasion and will make anyone think twice about even striking within your borders.
They pretty obviously don't.
It's definitely true that nuclear weapons are very powerful and that having them ups the ante for an invader. But we've had a lot of experience recently concerning the limitations of being a nuclear-armed power and that's not reflected here. I agree with you about the issues with soft power but both in your original post and here you're using language that suggests that having nuclear weapons gives you some kind of immunity while Russia – the world's nuclear power – has been subjected to a conventional land invasion and have been struck within their borders innumerable times by Ukraine. Israel's nuclear weapons may have caused Iran to think twice, but it hasn't stopped them from repeatedly launching conventional ballistic missiles at Israel many, many times.
Once they are, you essentially waive all your chances to military deterrence.
Deterrence was invented to deal with the problem of other people's nuclear weapons. (This is an exaggeration, but it's very common to see the word "deterrence" preceded by the word "nuclear.")
I don't disagree with everything you say: yes, the US is vulnerable to internal unrest, as all countries may be, yes having nuclear weapons does allow you to use them to effectively defend yourself, thereby making it more likely that attackers will not attempt to militarily conquer you in your entirety but they're not magic.
I don't know that this is true. There was a lot of fear about Iraq getting one, and after we utterly demolished their ability to make war in the first Gulf War, they were never a credible threat.
Presumably if the Iranians can enrich uranium once, they can do it again. Israel killing every single nuclear scientist and obliterating every nuclear facility might set them back a generation, and that might be long enough for the problem to become moot. But generally speaking, if Iran can do it once, they can do it a second time.
I could be wrong about this, but my recollection was that Iraq was never nearly as far along the "make nuclear weapon" tech tree as Iran was, and their reactor (the one destroyed by Israel) was constructed and serviced by France. I don't think Iraq had nearly the in-house expertise Iran does (Israel's campaign against Iranian scientists notwithstanding).
Secondly, Iran has relatively good relations with North Korea and might simply be able to procure functional nuclear weapons from them (I have no idea what North Korea considers sane or not).
We cannot get continuously bogged down in a 20 year nation building/peacekeeping quagmire.
But that's what would be required if our goal is to prevent Iran from ever developing a nuclear weapon using military force alone. Quite possibly boots on the ground could be avoided, but it would require, presumably, an indefinite persistent air interdiction of any nuclear capabilities.
Or how else do you propose to once-and-for-all prevent them from rebuilding their nuclear capabilities? The other paths are 1. overwhelming humanitarian disaster (such as nuclear weapons) of such magnitude as to turn Iran into a political non-entity, 2. some sort of deal, or 3. installing or allowing to be installed a new regime.
I want it done now when it's going to be the easiest for us to do.
I think we're both on the same page here, but it won't be easiest for us to do it now, it will be easiest in probably one or two weeks or so.
You opened your original post saying that you were arguing in opposition to the "let the two parties sort it out" position, but it seems to me that you're happy to let Israel sort it out and your main concern is that they will be unable to "finish the job." What exactly do you think the US can do that Israel cannot?
It's true that the US has MOPs that may be able to penetrate some of the Iranian underground facilities. If they can't, we'd need to use nukes (which Israel already has). If Israel has airspace control over Iran, they can (I think) keep the bunkers closed indefinitely by bombing their entrances, so it's unclear that the US has a huge advantage over Israel in this regard. The main abilities the US brings to the table are
- MOPs (which may or may not work, but can't guarantee that Iran won't just rebuild what has been destroyed)
- A very large army (but you don't want ground occupation)
- Hundreds of interceptors (but we don't want to use them, because China)
- More air power of the sort Israel essentially already has (which seems relatively pointless right now if the Israeli air campaign is as effective as is currently believed, doesn't it?)
So what exactly do you think the United States should do?
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
47m ago
Take the output from one LLM and feed it to a different LLM from a different company for verification. Not perfect but works more often than it should do.
Shrike
50m ago
the majority of rabidly pro-israel partisans I've met are republican and therefore at least defacto ukraine-skeptic
To be fair, if you are trying to prevent nuclear proliferation than you should be skeptical of Ukraine. The longer the war drags on, the higher the odds of them procuring a nuclear weapon go. (How high or low those odds are I'm not sure, but I wouldn't rule the possibility out.)
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
55m ago
Sure, they shouldn't be completely discounted.
I agree with this. Read the Mistborn trilogy instead, @Lizzardspawn. You get a full story, still set in the Sanderson world, in a tight package.
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