Tree
21hr ago
Good stuff. I don't understand americans obsession with "confronting" china (it's so far removed from any real threat against the US), but I certainly don't begrudge them for looking for a quid pro quo with us europeans.
Quick question re: drone swarm versus fighter jet. One of the popular discussions between amateur war nerds these last years is the question of aircraft carriers, with the ‘contrarian’ side postulating that in the event of a peer conflict, all those deployed will be sunk pretty much immediately, and the ‘conventional’ side maintaining that surely no, the navy knows what it’s doing. This new paradigm sounds like the former are correct.
Tree
1d ago
I don’t see any evidence that you can influence criminals by making their punishment “less cool”. If there was, we should spank them in public or something.
We’re dealing with total morons here. They don’t really understand cause and effect. They basically have no awareness outside of the next ten minutes, if that.
I admire the endless optimism of people who try to whisper in the ear of criminals : ‘Hey…. Man…. We fiddled with the judicial reform knobs again, and now instead of a low chance of getting caught and a heavy sentence, you get a high chance of getting caught and a light sentence, so can you please do less crime, please?’
“Sir, that is a similar expected sentence per crime. As a rational man, I cannot change my behaviour on that basis.”
Actually, he’s not going to say that, because he did not understand the previous sentence. Incapacitation is the only one who really works because it does not require criminals to understand anything, unlike deterrence and aftereffects.
Tree
1d ago
Scott’s essay made clear to me how much of this is really a cost issue. Or to put it another way, the reason we have crime and a raft of other problems is because of cost-insensitive idealists. Although it could solve the crime problem, incarceration simply costs too much. So we should look into physical punishment, maiming, the stocks.
But I’d like to propose the fairest and cheapest solution: randomized death sentences. When you’re convicted of a serious crime, they hand you a pair of dice, and if you roll snake eyes, you get two in the back of the head. If not, you’re freed. Incapacitation-wise, it’s the equivalent of a long prison sentence for all who roll for a fraction of the cost. And you avoid negative after-effects for being institutionalized with criminals. "Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot."
Tree
2d ago
Every society has murder too. That does not make murder conductive to a functioning society, or some kind of pillar of capitalism.
Tree
2d ago
Getting a good price does not require deception. You’ve got Costanza’s walkout gambit. That’s your main leverage, you don’t need to lie.
The main relationship of capitalism is not adversarial, but transactional. Communism tries to make all relationships familial, ends up hierarchical. It is particularly prone to lies and manipulation because two communists always have to figure out which one is the child and which one is the parent in that familial relationship, so which one should help the other, or exploit the other, while capitalists can just trade for mutual benefit, or walkout. Capitalism, far from requiring deception, barely requires language really. You just pick a number and the other monkey either nods or fucks off.
We are socially evolved to lie.
A) Disagree. Most people dislike it. You could similarly say we are socially evolved to screw over other people, murder them, which is kinda true and largely not true. B) Naturalistic fallacy. C) Both people lying and reaching a compromise price is not a socially beneficial outcome, all the scenarios are equal, just a zero-sum game between you and the salesman.
You conflate self-interest with selfishness and selfishness with dishonesty. Capitalism harnesses self-interest, not dishonesty or distrust. Those are not conductive to a functioning society.
Tree
2d ago
You sometimes hear a similar idea from russians, who complain that they weren’t vaccinated against western brain viruses like marxism and so got it particularly bad. Then again that’s germany, and they can’t really say they managed to only express a benign form of 20th century ideology.
Tree
2d ago
No, that’s all immoral and unnecessary. That whole class of workers that used to be so numerous, the used car, the door-to-door salesman, the commercial : I was glad when they mostly died, courtesy of internet comparisons and other things. So were most people. Even them, presumably. I was once in a position where my incentives were to be be less than completely honest with clients, and when I fell into that temptation, it was a soul-sucking experience.
Aside from being unpleasant for all concerned, it’s just not a good long-term strategy to lie to people.
Is it wrong to lie to a car salesman about how much you are willing to pay to try to get a lower price?
Yeah, it’s wrong. It’s not necessary to lie, you can say ‘I don’t want to pay more than X“”. In effect you’re just lying out of social cowardice, you don’t want to say ‘I’m cheap’ so you say ‘I can’t pay more’.
Tree
2d ago
Some of your theses I disagree with:
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Every lie is the same. It’s one thing to imply you’re just a regular guy by pretending to love fast food or a popular policy, more than you really do. It’s another to knowingly tell straight lies like ‘I grew up poor’, ‘The election was stolen’, ‘Our poll says Kamala wins’.
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Evil always wins, who lies more wins more. A society where ‘lying is dominant’ would be more like Mao’s China, or even worse. There’s far too much truth and negative feedback on lying in our society for this to be our situation.
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the cafeteria tray theory of morality. I don’t believe that if you refuse to eat the baby, the next guy will eat the baby.
Tree
3d ago
You argue for tolerating lies, which you say is upstream of politicians’ tendency to lie, so by that logic you cause lies. You defend the dishonesty of politicians even though you are clearly bothered by it. You choose to ignore your moral instincts for this sophistry.
Tree
3d ago
When you say that politicians are not decent people and should never be trusted, that’s not condemnation, or normative in any way?
A society’s tolerance of lies, or politicians’ moral status in that society, are not all-or-nothing propositions.
Tree
3d ago
I don’t understand what’s so hard about condemning lies. To be clear, you think that Trump’s, above average tendency to lie, is morally perfectly fine, even required of a politician.
I don’t accept the responsibility of ‘us voters’. I don’t vote for liars generally. Some politicians lie more than others, and in different countries, at different times, politicians’ lies are more or less normalized.
Tree
3d ago
It sounds like you are both condemning and condoning the lies, and I don’t think that works. Either those political operatives have a duty to win the election at the cost of honesty, or not. Either we get the politicians we deserve(condemnation) , or we all lie to each other by mutual consent.
And I don’t think the latter situation is desirable or stable. Politicians lie to people, who know they lie, so they become politically disaffected, so the politicians lie more brazenly to keep them engaged, but the people know they lie and trust them even less; At some point all communication between them becomes pointless. Why would you normalize lies and encourage this spiral?
Tree
12d ago
There was an actual genocide perpetrated by U.S. backed "rebels" against arab religious minorities such as the Yezidi
Isis wasn't US backed. Do you mean some precursor groups? I thought Isis were mostly sunni militias led by ex-baathist officers.
complete with the taking of women as sex slaves (at least one of whom "wound up" - three guesses as to how
That actually interests me, but it's not in the article. Some hamas fighter was in isis and brought her home as a souvenir ? That's my best guess, I give up. How?
Tree
12d ago
I sure hope it's all bluster/madman theory. I do think one should refuse such an order. I understand the need to tolerate collateral damage, but this is nothing but collateral damage. With any luck nuclear disarmament weirdoes have infiltrated the siloes and are just waiting for the right time to not push. Possibly the most lives a man could ever save, allbeit at the cost of a boring career.
Tree
12d ago
When russians fight, they only gain experience and become stronger. When ukrainians fight, they just die.
When russians have to re-equip their army, they only get better and more efficient at manufacturing. When westerners have to re-equip a small army, their empire just collapses.
Tree
20d ago
I don’t let people choose their colors. They get on the binary tree like everyone else.
“grey tribe” : left-right-right
“communist”: left-left-left
“center-right” : right-left-right
“conservative”: right-right-left
Tree
1mo ago
Did you predict the 2022 special military exercise? What were the visible actions that were not part of the historical pattern of exercises-that-were-not-starts-of-war? There wasn't some big propaganda push afaik, and neither was there a withdrawal of the hundreds of billions in economic funds that subsequently got trapped in western banks.
Tree
2mo ago
gaming would of course be extreme. Give me a contract that guarantees me 41 hours a week and pays me almost all the money in the 41st hour please.
I don't think there would be any more gaming than on any other tax change of that sort. Claiming to not be paid for the first 40 hours is convoluted, and besides, lawmakers aren't total morons and usually close such simple holes in the laws they write.
Don't you have such tax exemptions for night work, sunday work, overtime work in the US? They are very common in Europe - Sarkozy passed one (winning campaign slogan: "work more to earn more"). So did Hitler, and it held up.
Economically, the argument’s pretty straightforward. Why favour the hard-worker over the smart-worker? You can’t really entice workers to be more productive, but you can entice them to work more. So this is better for GDP.
Politically, people think it’s fairer to be rewarded for conscentiousness than intelligence. You could sell it as industrial policy, onshoring. You need more people in factories doing dumb stuff for long hours if you want to compete with china.
Tree
3mo ago
The material is immaterial – what’s punishable is the broken promise (signature) that the bridge would stand.
I fear that in your attempts to shield some people from accountability you have descended into total nihilism. “No one will ever be held accountable, even if they build a literal doomsday device.” “Okay! That’s bad!”
Tree
3mo ago
They’re not analogous. People consume oil and tobacco willingly. They don’t, or wouldn’t, aquiesce to GoF research or a cardboard bridge. If we’re trading horses, you could have oil spill C-suits. Of course we can’t draconically punish a low-level technician for releasing a virus if he was not adequately compensated for that responsibility.
I know this secretary in a big company, she would produce and present documents for the (somewhat dumb) CEO to sign and she was revolted that he wouldn’t understand, or even read, most of what he was signing. One day she was in a hurry to get some papers through, and instead of waiting for the CEO, another executive suggested that she sign them herself. “I’m not paid to sign!” she replied. And that’s true. The signature has to mean something. Some skin in the game, buck stopping power. In theory, they’re compensated for it, but they’re not really accountable for it. That's the way the managerial class wants it. But the rest of us don't have to take it.
Tree
4mo ago
Your google search proves that it's impossible to kill a man with a pot of boiling water. You have to immerse him in boiling water.
Tree
4mo ago
What level of punishment would feel more appropriate?
It would be nice if she at least offered Seppuku.
“That won’t be necessary, officer. Half your ear will suffice.”
Tree
4mo ago
The republicans stopped Trump from taking the crown after J6 because he’s senile?
Tree
4mo ago
I award some points to democracy because a monarchy or dictatorship would definitely be stuck with Robinette I the Senile.
Do you think the republicans could force an equally-impaired Trump to renounce earlier? I don’t.
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Trump is more stubborn
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Personality cult around him is stronger
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Loyalty and respect for elders are right-wing values
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Maga siege mentality
It was less about using drones versus carriers, more , ‘missiles are to carriers what drones are to planes’, the offense getting way too cheap for carriers to stay viable . Although I suppose a missile is a kind of rocket-powered drone, and boat drones and sub drones are also a threat. The Carrier started off all ATT no DEF, and as the things that could kill it got smaller and faster and cheaper, its ATT was no longer a DEF; every fly can kill it but it can’t kill every fly.
‘Not as unfindable as they once were’ , that’s very very euphemistically put, no? Unhideable, more like. I don’t mean just PRC killer missiles. Iran or Sweden could sink them. Way below peer.
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