conversely, teaching econ to an anthro major won't go well because the anthro major won't have any intuition for calculus
Do econ majors have any actual intuition for calculus either?
A long running joke where I live has been that one degree program in a local technical university is ”business studies for people who know math”.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
That’s fair to an extent. I think it hews much more closely to the history of the West Bank though. Also, how much has Israel tried to do anything real with the PA in recent decades, let’s be honest, not much at all. My understanding of the timeline is the nation-building was decent for the first five years or so but the Second Intifada, Camp David failure, and re-occupation in 2002ish wiped it almost all out, both trust and infrastructure, to fitfully restart a bit again for a few years, until Bibi 2.0 around 2009. Basically as soon as he showed up it went into a permanent stall/holding pattern at best, and Bibi’s preference was deliberately for a weak PA, so if anything state unofficial policy has been to undermine the PA where possible. That’s been the status ever since, for 15 years or so now. I should also note that the few years immediately before 10/7, this was especially noticeable (eg the PA was ignored in the Abraham accords). For fairness we should note 2009 is also when Abbas began clinging to power undemocratically.
The Gaza situation is a bit harder to parse. We follow a similar trajectory but with more radicalism and less autonomy and more violence on both sides (not equipped to discern scale but I think in this time some assassinations took place). Until the increasing violence, withdrawal, and 2006 elections with Hamas getting a plurality followed by a swift 2007 civil war overthrow. I think with respect to the analogy, for Gaza the clock on the analogy basically restarts there: a failed and violent state with religious extremist terrorists in charge, a total war of annihilation, occupation, all the things I compared.
So for West Bank you’d be fairly accurate in saying nation-building was tried (and the relative stability of West Bank is probably owed to this!) but for Gaza I think the Israelis need to seriously consider a similar game plan as the US.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Yes, two people can both be wrong in this framework- unlike the neo-morality view that there is a victim and an oppressor.
Celestial-body-NOS
Why should Man not rebel against Nature, when Nature herself is in rebellion against Justice?
1d ago
· Edited 18hr ago
Which is why I really would prefer there to be some 'objective' "test of willpower" element involved. If you force them to endure some sort of uncomfortable experience without giving in to temptation or dropping out before the finish, its MUCH harder to rig the system.
Yes, this could be the literal equivalent of The Gom Jabbar (but with less severe consequences). If you can't endure a couple minutes of excruciating (but not injurious) pain... I DARESAY you probably aren't 'mature' enough to handle real life.
One problem with that is that some people are born with high pain tolerance and would be able to pass such a test well before they are even close to mental maturity, while others are born with low pain tolerance and could not pass such a test at any age despite having far better judgement than the former.
(Another issue is that the entire point of improving society is to reduce the amount of human suffering [some would include animal suffering in this] in the world, and such measures would be a gigantic step backwards for very uncertain, if any, benefit.)
Edit: Would a society, which officially considers those with lower pain tolerance to be lesser, be willing to offer a child undergoing chirurgery for a malfunctioning gallbladder pain management beyond 'bite the leather strap'?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
Peripherally, I think your point has a kernel of truth, but I worry that you're constructing a worldview in a direction that is prone to revanchism and decoupling from reality. Your complaints sound uncomfortably close to the logic behind that infamous Smithsonian poster, but complaining about blue, rather than white power structures.
At least, it makes me uncomfortable even though I think there are certainly elements of truth to it.
It does not matter that Israel has not signed on to the first Additional Protocol, because it’s now customary international law, making it binding to Israel (and to everyone). This was even reiterated in 2020 by Israel:
Israel is not a party to the Additional Protocols, but is fully committed to the customary law rules that are reflected in some of their provisions. In this regard, Israel reiterates its position, which it shares with other States, that some provisions in the Additional Protocols do not reflect customary law. In Israel's view, among those provisions is the First Additional Protocol that, in whole or in part, do not reflect customary law, are, for example, the provisions found in articles 1(4), 35(3), 55, 43 to 45, 37(1) and the articles concerning belligerent reprisals, alongside a considerable number of other provisions in the First and Second Additional Protocols that we will not elaborate upon here in the interest of time. Assertions to the contrary, made by certain actors, lack substantiation in sufficient State practice and opinio juris.
Now, again, it doesn’t matter that Israel isn’t a signatory whatsoever, and even their opinion on what constitutes international custom isn’t determinative of anything, but it’s telling that they do not even specify article 54 as a reason for their not being signatory. (That’s, of course, the purpose of the lawyerly language that follows; but lawyerly language will not save malefactors from either God or international courts of law). This is probably because, as of few months ago, any reasonable nation would have considered “you’re not allowed to purposefully starve civilians” part of the custom of international law.
Aguilar claimed that M855 is some super special uniquely evil armor-piercing military combat KILLING
It is only by your own reading that he compares M855 to another lethal ammo type, rather than the various sub-lethal ammo types. I don’t consider this any point against him, and I think it is unreasonable to read his sentence as indicating such. He was a commander of special operations who previously fought ISIS, and previously commanded the entirety of the West Asian special operations (I’m pretty sure; from something I found online). He knows his munitions.
If it's not about M855 specifically, why'd he spend so long telling us how terrible it is?
I think he’s shocked that he was equipped like this, with lethal rounds, when tasked with giving aid to starving unarmed people. Maybe he doesn’t assume people would assume the ammo type is so lethal. He’s talking to normal people, not military guys. As I sourced to you in his video, his group was using the lethal ammunition to disperse the crowd. This all seems quite reasonable to me.
in fact the scenario you're calling a war crime -- using lethal weapons in self defense against unarmed civilians -- is not forbidden by that cite; it actually looks a lot like it's explicitly permitted.
If they’re shooting civilians, who are not endangering their lives, then it constitutes directing attacks against the civilian population. There are ample sources of Israel doing this, not just from Aguilar. So I provided you another video where he explains that this is what’s happening.
using lethal weapons in self defense against unarmed civilians -
It was not in self-defense, it was in crowd dispersal.
you just pushed it aside and baldly asserted that this behavior will be found to violate the statute once it gets to trial (which you know will never happen).
It’s very obviously against the statute to kill civilians, who are not endangering their lives, as evidenced in what I sent you, no matter what the excuse is. This is according to Aguilar’s testimony. I don’t know how many more times I can reword this to someone who is intent on finding every plausible way to misinterpret it. Remember, it’s a long video of him talking, not writing a high school thesis; the meaning of what he says is clear when you listen to the audio or even just read what he says with an holistic understanding (not just focusing on the verbiage of an isolated sentence).
The starvation charge has nothing to do with the carrying-lethal-weapons charge
Huh? It’s another example. All of this is talked about in the OP. So I’m providing you another example, if you’re for some reason intent on disagreeing with Aguilar because he didn’t talk about munitions neurotically enough or something, or if you think he meant the starving children were threatening his life.
I feel comfortable saying neither you nor Aguilar meet this minimum standard
I feel comfortable agreeing with you that you feel comfortable saying a lot of things. In this, we can find some common ground. I guess because we’re rehashing:
-
You weren’t familiar, at all, with what is normatively used in crowd control scenarios in Israel, even for lethal ammo. I corrected you.
-
You read his statement as implying that a lesser-lethal ammo can go in his specific gun, rather than sub-lethal ammo, which is just a misreading.
-
You read his statement as indicating that the crowd was trying to assault them, which is just wrong, so I provided another source clarifying that the civilians never posed a risk.
-
You had no idea about the concept of customary international law, or that the first protocol is binding to Israel insofar as it is customary
SSCReader
1d ago
And your students being more left of you in general doesn't say much, since having the proclivity to comment on a forum like this already makes you a highly atypical academic, but also, if you teach high schoolers or above, this is entirely consistent with the notion that academia is responsible for the flow of ideas to these students, via their exposure to academia in grade school and middle school.
We wouldn't normally call that academia though. And my experience right now is that these kids are getting their ideas from their parents and from Tik-Tok. So they come in already having opinions about Palestine for example. They weren't taught that in elementary school. And as I said before they are also left of most of my colleagues as well (who are yes a bit to the left of me on average).
But again you have it reversed. Critical theory is a creation of the Blue Tribe, it didn't create the Blue Tribe. You're again just saying Blue Tribe places do Blue Tribe things. Well yes, of course they do. If they didn't they wouldn't be Blue Tribe! All the concept of critical theory does is putting an academic skin on things Blue Tribe people already believed. They believed it, then they taught it in an academic way, but the Blue Tribe already HAD those beliefs. So the students are at best being taught how to express the things they already believe in an academic fashion. Because it's the very water they and their parents swim in.
Academia is downstream not upstream in other words. Academics frequently overestimate their own importance. Don't fall for it.
GBRK
1d ago
if you were to estimate the level of care you owe to the following people
That I am obligated to owe? 10. Always 10. God is pretty explicit about this.
That I am physically capable of owing without supernatural intervention?
... admittedly less than ten in all respects.
But I don't think ranking people by how much you "owe" them makes sense. If you're going to rank people, rank them by your ability to help them. If you have a glass of water and a man is about to die of heat stroke, you should give it to him regardless of which of these men he is. You should also take the chance to restrain him, if he is likely to harm innocents, but in any case should help him survive. If you have a glass of water and ten thirsty man, give it to the man for whom it maximizes the chance of survival (plus survival chance multiplied by net good the man will do over his life, to the best of your ability to estimate second-and-third-order effects.) You should help your wife, or a member of your community, over a total stranger, not because the stranger is a distinct, worse class of human, but because you are more capable of helping your wife or community member. Your help goes further, and does more good in the world. But again, that's a matter of maximizing good, not about people being entitled to different levels of brotherhood.
...and that's why I give some, but not all of the money I allocate for charity to the GiveWell foundation. It's a very cost-effective way to do lots of good, but I'm also uniquely capable of targeting "good" when it's aimed toward buying gifts for my family, or drinks for my friends, or donating to my own local parish.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
I should have been more clear, yeah. But the thought remains, because as I mentioned the normal left (which even Vance distinguishes from the far left) are still mostly fans of the civil religion stuff. Other parts of the left aren’t as loudly America Sucks and in fact disagree. So I think he’s exaggerating the trend.
To attempt being more specific, if we use the Pew Political Typology groups, as of 2021 the “Progressive Left” is 12% of Dem and Lean Dem people, and though there isn’t an exact question on patriotism, there is this perhaps-proxy: “there are other countries better than the US”. It might interest you to know that there’s a huge chasm between them and the rest of the main Dem alliance. They respond 75% yes. “Outsider Left” (16%) also land at 63%. Here’s the catch, every other group, Left or Right, is at under 25% on this same question including Establishment Liberals and Democratic Mainstays.
If we’re talking immigration, as of then the “Democratic Mainstays” (28% of coalition) were notable doubters on a few measures. It depends heavily how you slice the adjacent questions though, for example “America’s openness to people from around the world is essential to who we are as a nation” has a sharp divide (70 and up vs 30 and below) but the Stressed Sideliners join an actual defection from the Ambivalent Right on the upper end.
GBRK
1d ago
He doesn’t care about the pieces of shit.
"Love thine enemy."
I know not everyone is a christian. But aside from the fact that everyone should be, it's just good game theory. A society that has made a pact to be utilitarian still has all the justification it needs to prevent bad individual behavior, but at the same time doesn't risk arbitrarily turning its instruments of judgement against someone without regard for their preferences just because they're doing something someone else doesn't like. But to defect against that is to ask people to in turn defect against you. And as proof for the danger of that, I'd point out that that's what the OP was literally doing against these "pieces of shit"-- presumably, reacting to some prior defection. I know, in turn, that no society can survive unilateral total disarmament... but disarmament need not be total, merely proportional. Spending less of your effort caring about bad people is still better than spending none of your effort.
Plus, it's just good virtue signaling. If a man will give his son a fish, that says little about what he'll give a beggar. But if a man will give a beggar a fish, he must be generous indeed to his sons! I would rather be friends with a generous man than a stingy one, and will therefore work harder to make it into the good graces of the latter man. That's the (nonreligious) essence of being a good person: the ability to gain long-term benefits from your reputation!
07mk
1d ago
A brief look at the recent history of the awakening clearly shows the ideas flow from the institutions to the children,
Does it? I can assure you in very Blue Tribe places that is not so. Maybe you can argue it flowed from Blue Tribe places to Blue Tribe academia to academia in general.
Considering these "woke" ideas specifically have academic heritage, I'm not sure how this flow of ideas is plausible. Is the contention that these ideas that explicitly source themselves on stuff developed by "critical X theory" and "X studies" departments of the past 50 years actually somehow flowed into these departments through influence of people from Blue Tribe "places," who also influenced their children with these ideas? To whatever extent this is true, it just seems to be a way of describing the process by which academia developed these ideas - it's not surprising that the people in academia who developed and propagated these ideas largely came from cultures that were predisposed to such ideas.
That protests happen on college campuses does not mean the colleges are responsible for the ideas those protests are expressing. As I pointed out the kids I get in my classes are already well to the left of me in general.
That the protests are based around ideas that are essentially word-for-word, identical to those taught by academia is what means that colleges are responsible for the ideas those protests are expressing. No one's making any claims about proximity or location.
And your students being more left of you in general doesn't say much, since having the proclivity to comment on a forum like this already makes you a highly atypical academic, but also, if you teach high schoolers or above, this is entirely consistent with the notion that academia is responsible for the flow of ideas to these students, via their exposure to academia in grade school and middle school.
That was exactly my experience as someone who grew up in Blue Tribe environments. My experience with proto-woke ideas (I was ahead of the phenomenon by about a decade, but the typical sociopolitical narratives that were hegemonic at my schools in the 00s would have been nearly indistinguishable from the typical SJW and "woke" ideas from the late 10s) was that they absolutely flowed in from academia to students, with my parents being essentially non-factors (this part is likely mostly caused by my own parents' parenting behaviors and hard to generalize), with my earliest memories of such ideas being from my 4th grade homeroom teacher.
TIRM
1d ago
And people used to fuck before marriage anyways. The puritans commonly had premarital pregnancies. Covered up by rush marriages.
Fornication was indeed a crime. Like smoking weed today. Illegal and popular.
GBRK
1d ago
My school teachers are not trusted to make good judgments.
"X" are not trusted to make good judgments is why any variant of corporal punishment/extra bullying/more police brutality doesn't work in person. We intuitively want to do this because through the vast majority of our evolutionary past we lived in small bands with a smaller population than dunbar's number where the discretion of a few enfranchised elders and warriors was a fair, just, and effective way to police our behavior because they could know everyone under their authority as a fully realized person. But while that remains an effective approach even now, in many small agricultural communities, it's indisputably a bad model for policing a city.
Are you familiar with the phrase "trust the science"? Where does "the science" come from?
blue tribe people make blue tribe institutions, which in turn generate a consensus reality wherein Blueness is obviously true and correct, with contrary facts elided or buried. Academia is a knowledge-generating apparatus, together with media. By the time a Blue Tribe kid arrives on campus, their reality has been defined by this apparatus their entire life. Then they spend four years being taught and graded and managed by high-status members of this apparatus, often in a close pseudo-paternal relationship, with discrimination against anyone contradicting the apparatus being policed by the full force of the institution backed by the power of the federal government, to say nothing of the informal status economy, before moving into a career where office life is similarly policed.
None of this seems mysterious to me. It seems pretty obvious to me that it's an interlocking system of control, wherein each of the components is purposely designed to bolster and reinforce the others. It's almost certainly true that solving it by aiming at Academia alone won't be sufficient, but that doesn't mean that it isn't necessary.
FlailingAce
1d ago
Yeah I've shot the M9 before as well. The Sig is definitely better but it's still not great.
The Sig safety has several problems: it is not particularly easy to hit (especially to put it on fire from safe), its action is in a non-intuitive direction relative to the safeties on most other Army weapons, and it's not actually marked which direction is safe, so guys who don't use it a lot will accidentally have it on safe/fire when they meant the opposite.
You can mock my experience if you like but I sure as hell don't know any direct action guys who use the Sig, most have a personal sidearm they use instead, and some units will have a few random Glocks or other pistols in the arms room that they use on the range to qualify.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
She's refusing to see a therapist alone or with me, she's refused to see a psychiatrist.
If you have the capacity, you might consider talking to a therapist for yourself, partially because this is a lot to deal with, and partially because they may be more familiar with resources and ideas that may be helpful to her.
It probably isn't much, but you have my sympathies and prayers, anonymous internet friend.
GBRK
1d ago
We are the primary constraint on Israel's conduct during this war.
Maybe.
Without American restraint there already would be no one alive in the Gaza strip
Definitely not.
In a counterfactual world with full american support for israel, I actually seriously doubt they would genocide the palestinians. It's just bad geopolitics-- they're surrounded by arabs on an sides, and several of those arab nations can very credibly threaten to nuclearize.
I recognize that this was probably hyperbole-to-demonstrate-a-point rather than an actual assement of what israel would do, but it's worth remembering that "kill them all and salt the ashes" is historically not what most empires do with their enemies. that's especially true with succesful empires. A more realistic strategy looks like either "collaborate with local elites to suppress popular sentiment in response for tribute" or "raise up a local minority group to serve as a precarious class of administrators beholden to your own political order." Plus some sort of long-term incentives against childbirth and in favor of out-migration... were I genuinely trying to eliminate a particular ethnic group as a local political force, I would be encouraging late marriage age, spending a long time in foreign countries in guest workers, gating employment behind credentialing, enforcing wealth transfers from the young to the old, increasing the employment rate of women, and so on and so forth.
aqouta
1d ago
If Israel had to buy its munitions (either in the short term or long term) it would impose more pressure to finish the war quickly, or in general do more diplomacy and less bombing
The quickest way to win a war against an intransigent opponent when you have total military supremacy isn't less bombing and more diplomacy, rather the opposite. Same goes for people's plans to defund the iron dome. The cheapest way to do things is the bloodiest.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Very
-
I can with a great degree of safety (90%? 95%?) avoid questionable girls right off the bat by sight.
-
I can avoid places where underage girls hang out pretty easily and costlessly
-
No one actually checks their dates ID.
I can't avoid places "people who didn't take or can't pass the sex test" hang out. I can't read it at a glance. I'd HAVE to actually check.
Rosencrantz2
1d ago
Maybe but I definitely remember Lewinsky being villified across the political spectrum, which wouldn't make much sense if she was viewed as a a non-consenting victim by either side. Here's one example from a republican rabbi, as I remember it there was a lot of this sort of thing around: https://observer.com/2014/05/monica-should-apologize-to-hillary/
aqouta
1d ago
No! We gave them a shitton of money to rebuild stuff, tried mostly to avoid civilian deaths, helped them set up a new government for themselves, tried all sorts of education and policy interventions, lots of stuff
I mean Israel has done this too over the years, It tried to create a government for the Palestinians in the PA through the Oslo accords. You need to extend the Afghan analogy. All of America's, much larger, neighbors would need to explicitly support the Taliban. You have to remove the Ocean separating the countries so that the Taliban can plausibly be in any city in American in under an hour if not held at bay. You need the aim of the Taliban not to be to kick Ameicans out of Afghanistan but actually out of all of America or preferably kill every last American. The existential threat is pretty important, America could always have just left Afghanistan, that's just not an option for Israel.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Prison guards at least seem to believe that bribery is incredibly widespread in the profession and that it does not, on average, put a very high premium on the lives of sex offenders.
I DON’T disagree that finding two guards willing to personally kill someone is a tall order- probably most prisoners would shrink from doing that. Finding two guards willing to accept money for letting someone- especially a pedophilic pimp- die- either at his own hand, or someone else’s- seems like… Tuesday.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
Unfortunately, no. Just one person having them can be a deal-breaker. There are rare mutations where chromosomes are malformed, and during the process of recombination when embryos form, they just don't pair up right. It would be exceedingly unlikely to find someone with the same kind of defect, such that this goes off without a hitch.
It's still not the end of the world. IVF usually helps find the embryos that would be viable.
SSCReader
1d ago
A brief look at the recent history of the awakening clearly shows the ideas flow from the institutions to the children,
Does it? I can assure you in very Blue Tribe places that is not so. Maybe you can argue it flowed from Blue Tribe places to Blue Tribe academia to academia in general.
That protests happen on college campuses does not mean the colleges are responsible for the ideas those protests are expressing. As I pointed out the kids I get in my classes are already well to the left of me in general.
Specifically, this makes women legally children again.
More options
Context Copy link