domain:inv.nadeko.net
anti_dan
47m ago
Should we be holding Republicans responsible for the recent stories of people trying to kill protestors yesterday?
Held responsible? OR Get credit for?
This is the really intractable portion, because killing protestors is probably net pretty good when done by private individuals. Protesting, even the "peaceful" kind is still highly antisocial, at best being a massive waste of time and resources. But usually also significantly interrupting business and people's lives. And more realistically, nowadays, most are used as cover fire for violent crisis actors. Its probably bad if police just shoot them, but guys sniping them out of windows would get us back closer to a more healthy equilibrium where protesting is reserved for important government scandals like covering up sex rings and the like, not for when a teacher's union wants a 10% raise or ICE agents are check notes executing lawful detention orders.
Is your position here is that if we get attacked by a foreign adversary it is because we deserve it? [Edit to add – if Russia could have avoided having to worry about such things if it didn't pick fights with foreign countries, does that mean Ukraine doesn't have to worry about it, in your view?]
I don't think that can be anything but a straw man of your actual position, but – it really doesn't matter whether Iran or Russia were in the right or not, we need to pay close attention to the conflicts going on around the world or risk learning their lessons the hard way.
(JD Vance if you're reading this get Hesgeth to fire a five star every month until we have soft cover around all of our strategic bombers.)
What about the protests prior to the Gaza war where they gunned down a bunch of protestors from the other side of a fence?
That should be a higher margin of 'israelis bad' since there was no major conflict going on at that time. I appreciate that civilians die in wartime. But we are approaching Tiananmen square level territory, just without the tanks or 'occupying a key area right outside of govt building' bit. And nobody outside the pro-Palestine people in the West seem to have ever heard of this, it allows a strange narrative of 'oh the Palestinians just woke up one day and decided to zerg-rush israel in the october 7 attacks' to emerge. If you shoot the protestors, it's going to weaken the 'peace' element. People are going to get grievances and be hateful when you shoot them.
More than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers, week after week at the protest sites by the separation fence.
The Commission investigated every killing at the designated demonstration sites by the Gaza separation fence on official protest days. The investigation covered the period from the start of the protests until 31 December 2018. 189 Palestinians were killed during the demonstrations inside this period. The Commission found that Israeli Security Forces killed 183 of these protesters with live ammunition. Thirty-five of these fatalities were children, while three were clearly marked paramedics, and two were clearly marked journalists.
At the demonstration site in El Bureij:
Mohammad Obeid (24) Mohammad was a footballer. At approximately 9 a.m., Israeli forces shot him with a single bullet in both legs while he was walking alone approximately 150 m from the separation fence. His injuries ended his football career.
Schoolboy (16) Israeli forces shot a schoolboy in the face as he distributed sandwiches to demonstrators, 300 m from the separation fence. His hearing is now permanently impaired.
It goes on and on and on... The Israeli military is, understandably, quite cruel and hateful of the Palestinians.
anti_dan
1hr ago
Maybe at trial that helps you get to reasonable doubt, but given the video evidence there was no way he wasn't getting arrested and the case with just the video is strong enough to indict (indeed few are not). Its not a slam dunk case you would want to prosecute without the gun on his person, but you can still ethically put it on.
Closedshop
話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分
1hr ago
where and when it is supposedly the situation?
AFAIK it was never ever in no location considered the way you claim
The other poster is too narrow in saying just sex, but for most of known human history, men trade resources for sex and offspring. What exactly do you think a man is doing when he provides for his wife? Divorcing your wife because she was barren, while frowned upon, was completely acceptable. Maybe it's different in the enlightened 21st century (I don't think it is), but historically, most, if not all, marriages were entered into to support tangible, real world gains. Love was something you developed later, if it developed at all.
jake
1hr ago
Policy debate, or that's how I got to it, anyway. If you're not familiar or only passingly familiar, critical theory is sometimes (well, sometimes when I was in, probably dominant now) employed in the type of argument called "kritik," or Ks. Capitalism K, Securitization K, Biopower K.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
1hr ago
I asked it right now, and it got everything right. How long ago was this?
I even used the basic bitch 4o model. There are better ones that I have access to as a paid user.
https://github.com/vectara/hallucination-leaderboard
The current SOTA LLMs hallucinate as little as 0.8% of the time for well grounded tasks, text summarization in this particular case. Of course, the rate can vary for other tasks, and the results worsen when getting into obscure topics.
I thought your position was specifically that being concerned with the enforcement of borders or your country's strategic security was pathological.
The only sort of people I know that believe this are anarchists of various stripes, some of which I'm good friends with actually. I assure you they're not made of straw.
But given your answer this is surely not your position, so can you explain how come you believe this without having to make yourself the enemy of Leviathan?
Are you maybe one of those people that believe that we should have a global government or something? Or some kind of multilateralist who thinks states can diplomacy their way out of the state of nature?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1hr ago
Nice takedown of that strawman.
Ah I see, you've never actually lived in a failed state and have therefore no organic understanding of the necessity of a monopoly on force for what you consider a normal life to even exist.
That's easy to remedy, Hispaniola is really nice at this time of year. You can have a quick trip to Haiti and the Dominican Republic and convince yourself which society you'd prefer to live in based on their approach to border enforcement.
Be sure to ask any insurance providers what they think of either place, though you might have trouble finding any in Haiti at the moment.
I will say I don't even mind anarchists myself, so long as they can take a hard look at a lawless society and genuinely desire it for themselves. Me I'm more of a Leviathan guy, private property, courts and all that jazz you know.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
2hr ago
The majority of what he posted on Twitter before he became Pope (which wasn't much) was criticism of Trumpist policies or ideas.
sockpuppet2
2hr ago
How are tiers simpler than a continuous scale? Why max speed, rather than power (which limits both speed and, indirectly, acceleration)?
sockpuppet2
2hr ago
Eh, if he'd ditched the compromising stuff (like the gun) at some point he probably could have brazened it out.
How?
fribble
2hr ago
These days, outright hallucinations are quite rare, but it's still worth doing due diligence for anything mission-critical.
I asked chatgpt what the 4 core exercises of the LIFTMOR routine were and it didn't get a single one correct. It's a simple question to google so I am not sure how it got it so wrong. When I changed the question to specify the LIFTMOR routine to help counteract osteoporosis, it got it right. Google doesn't require the additional context.
During the trade war with Canada the Canadians threatened to turn off its electricity supply to America. Trump and MAGA used that as a reason why America couldn't rely on foreign countries for electricity:
They really cannot grasp the correlation between their behavior and outcomes and think that's a good argument.
Hadad
2hr ago
Yes, the cost is potentially great. That's the primary limiting factor, for which we should all be grateful. And we should dread any context that alters that balance.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
2hr ago
It's a reference to a supposed Russian proverb "the Jew will always tell you what happened to him, but he'll never tell you why."
Iran and Russia got hit because they engaged in acts of war against other countries. It doesn't occur to "they" that you can avoid having to worry about such things if you don't pick fights with foreign countries.
It's basically the mindset of the prison gang guy who's big and tough and strong and always thinking about how he will defend himself from attack, who sees of himself as a hard-headed realist, and is 10x more likely to die a violent death than the average schlubby insurance agent who never thinks about self-defense at all. MAGA is an entire political movement based around this mentality, which wants to drag the entire country down with it.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
Part of, sure. But im pretty sure they weren’t choosing fashions or foods or other products because they were associated with abolition. Modern politics isn’t politics as they would have understood it. It’s more of a lifestyle brand in our culture. And in a lot of ways I think I would compare our way of thinking about our political party affiliation much like someone pre-enlightenment might have thought about religious denominations. Today nobody really gives a fuck what denomination of Christianity you follow. And outside of highly religious regions of the country, nobody’s even that upset by the idea that you’re not Christian at all. Most people believe or don’t but it’s not the thing that drives their thinking. Go back to the reformation, and it mattered quite a bit both to you and everyone around you what type of Christianity you practiced. Be a Catholic in John Calvin’s part of France isn’t good for your lifespan. Be Protestant in a Catholic region and it’s likewise not a good thing. And most people were not only willing to die rather than renounce their version of Christianity, but likewise willing to see others punished for not being the right kind of Christian. Minus the killing (at least thus far) this is how most people approach politics. Our system is the only good and true, and the reason you aren’t a good red/blue is that you are evil or deluded. And each part of the political spectrum has its preferred lifestyle. MAGA types like to style themselves after working class interests. Blue tribes tend to like more arty things. But why should this go along with politics?
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3hr ago
I disagree. Like I said, I thought book 4 was excellent (I would say it's my second favorite behind Words of Radiance). Which is why I'm saying there isn't really agreement on this point, so it would be more accurate to advise new readers "I don't really care for the books after this point, but many people still like them, so you may or may not find it enjoyable".
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
3hr ago
Who's they and what's why in this context? I don't get it.
erwgv3g34
3hr ago
Somebody over in the old country asked for rationalist podcast recommendations. I had a nice list ready to go, but Reddit keeps deleting my comment as spam no matter what I do. So for lack of a better option I'll just post it here:
- The Methods of Rationality Podcast
- Rationally Speaking
- The 80,000 Hours Podcast
- "#25 – Robin Hanson on why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do"
- "#32 – Bryan Caplan on whether the Case Against Education holds up, totalitarianism, & open borders"
- "#126 – Bryan Caplan on whether lazy parenting is OK, what really helps workers, and betting on beliefs"
- "#172 – Bryan Caplan on why you should stop reading the news"
- The Bayesian Conspiracy
- Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot
- Dwarkesh Podcast
[1] https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/rationallyspeakingpodcast/rs135-9.mp3
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
3hr ago
I won't claim this dynamic never happens, that would be silly, but you're not really engaging with the idea if you think it can only be invoked in this sense.
Burke, whom it would seems farcical to call a tyrant, summed up the issue pretty tightly in my opinion:
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites [...] It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3hr ago
Ideally, the responsibility is not imposed. In practice, people pollute the commons and infringe upon others' freedoms.
This is why we have laws and governments. All laws and governments are restrictions on liberty.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
3hr ago
Why?
I recently got into an argument regarding Israel vs Iran with a staunch "America First Isolationism Now" type. It cemented my views on the issue, not from an "Israel is righteous and Iran is not" angle but a practical weighing of the facts. The other party's opinion was "I don't want another war, and that region is bloodthirsty anyway. Let them sort it out." My thesis is simply: I cannot understand anyone who has Western or even strictly American interests in mind could think that the strikes on Iran are none of our business.
Mind you, I don't mean "United States Government" interests. I mean the interests of every single living American.
To recap the history: The current Iranian regime rose from a revolution overthrowing a US-backed monarchy, which we had previously supported economically and supplied with military technology (The F-4 and F-14 being the big examples you can still see today). Said regime hates the US with a burning passion, both for backing the monarchy and for getting in the way of a regional Islamic revolution in the entire region. This is why they back the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hamas and Hezbollah are strictly against Israel, but the Houthis were explicitly anti-American and attempted to strike us, luckily with no loss of life (RIP drones). I can't say the same for the militias in Iraq, which successfully killed several US service members in 2023. Nowadays that's mostly directed at Israel, but I cannot imagine these groups and their funders suddenly had a change in heart towards Americans themselves.
Even putting that all aside, even when you think the whole region is a backwater shithole that can sort itself out, a hands-off position on Iran makes no sense when they're developing nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a complete game changer, making your nation functionally immune to any threat to its sovereignty. It was bad enough when North Korea developed them, but I can at least understand the hesitancy there due to its Chinese backing and already-existing existential threat to South Korea (thousands of artillery pieces would reduce Seoul to rubble regardless of NK's nuclear program). More than that, North Korea is an extremely poor country which has continuously struggled to develop a missile program. I don't think that it's outside the realm of possibility that they do, but again, at least there's some reason as to why we all sat around on it.
This is not true of Iran. Iran has ties with Russia and China, but they've never made so bold a defense pact as China did with North Korea. They are geographically separated from their backers as well. This makes them assailable. However, they are not geographically separated from the west. Iran already has MRBMs that could be converted to take a nuclear payload right now. Those threaten our bases and our allies. They have a functional space program, and if you have put a satellite in orbit you can build an ICBM. Those threaten the continental US. Iran has demonstrated that it has the intent to strike the west and US if it can. They are working on the capability, and once that's done, an active nuclear arsenal presents them the opportunity at any time. They will be incapable of being invaded lest you risk nuclear hellfire for the region, at absolute best. The only time you can strike them is now, before their nuclear program yields results.
I was genuinely shocked when I saw the posts from Rubio and the like denying our involvement in the Israeli strikes and implying that they were unwarranted aggression. Personally, it makes me understand why some people think Israel is simply America's attack dog, doing the dirty work we don't want to be involved in directly. Perhaps it is will be a fortuitous outcome for us simply because Israel would be in even more danger, and felt they had to attack no matter what. I wouldn't mind Iran buckling without a single American life lost.
I mentioned this in another post long ago, but it seems to me that echoes of the bygone neolib/neocon 90s and early 2000s world order have been crystallized in a really stupid way. An aversion to quagmires and wars of questionable outcome seems to make a lot of people (including Rubio - a bad indicator of the administration's position) think that any American intervention is some kind of ill fated, possibly bloodthirsty action. In the opinion of the person that spawned this post, it would be a war to continue some kind of dominion in the Middle East, which would hurt individual Americans to benefit the rich and powerful. While I don't think the US can magically fix countries in the area (see: Iraq), there is a middle zone between "Try to prop up an unwanted regime after removing the previous one" and "do nothing". Applying Iraq's sample size of one reeks of an embarrassing application of prior results to me.
At the end of the day, I can say that Israel's righteousness in this matter does not have a bit of sway as to whether or not I think these strikes are justified (or whether or not American involvement is a good thing). I do not want another nuclear power in the world, especially one so blatantly aggressive toward the West. I will admit that the odds of them cementing their own destruction via a nuclear strike against another nuclear power is low, but I worry about the insurgents they fund or political instability within leading to a device going "missing". That these are even possibilities makes my skin crawl. I find it ignorant and borderline cowardly that there are so many purportedly in favor of American interests who can plug their ears and say "let it sort itself out".
As an aside, to illustrate where I'm coming from: In political terms I am completely disinterested in the outcomes of the world apart from America. Not that I consider them lesser, or that any disasters anywhere else are unimportant; but I still must practically value my home, my life, and those of my loved ones first. As such, I strongly empathize with the "America First" sentiment. What I don't empathize with is the completely unrealistic expectation that we can simply close our borders, give people the middle finger, and not wake up to a vastly worse world for us in twenty years. The world is connected, and a collapse in one place will have follow on effects in others. See: Syria, Haiti, Somalia. You'd have to be crazy to think that every administration in every coming year would be able to or even want to hold the borders that tight and move all manufacturing to be domestic (the only way to be truly isolationist in my eyes). That's just a pipe dream. Thus America taking its hands of the reins would not be truly isolationist, and the soft power we'd be subjected to by countries filling in the void we leave would affect us at home. We already have adversaries fanning the flames of social unrest in the country (and useful idiots that play into their hands), and that's bad enough. A United States is impossible to invade. A broken one is anything but. So global affairs are our business, and if America can project its power to mitigate much worse threats downstream then I am on board with that.
This doesn't mean I blindly want a war, or to bomb every single potential threat all the time everywhere. But nuclear weapons make this entirely a different question.
More options
Context Copy link