flailingace
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User ID: 1084
flailingace
5hr ago
Okay, the answer to this is actually pretty simple.
In short, the fear of all the Western players is nuclear escalation. There are three ways this likely happens. One: Ukraine starts winning the war, and Putin is pushed into a corner. Two: Russia starts winning the war and gets too close to NATO countries, which leads to direct conflict with NATO, which Russia cannot hope to win without relying on nuclear weapons. Three: regime change in Russia. Putin is a known entity, but anyone who takes his place, especially in the context of a coup, would likely be more radical. Putin already keeps a lot of radicals around who are openly calling to use tactical nuclear weapons, and in a regime change scenario we have no idea who would end up on top.
Once you have this framework, everything NATO and the Biden admin has done is obvious. They can't let Russia win the war, but they also can't let Ukraine win the war. So what's the solution? Slowly degrade Russia's capacity in a way that doesn't destabilize the country, until eventually their economic and domestic issues become so serious that Putin thinks it's better to come to the negotiating table.
What are the problems with this? We're seeing them right now. Firstly, Russia is not as alone on the world stage as Western leaders thought. Putin has in fact built a coalition of autocratic states that are backing his play. North Korean arms and troops are now directly participating to cover the manpower losses in the Russian army. Iran likewise has fully aligned with Russia. This threatens to make the Ukraine war into a world war without the West changing their policies.
Second, the West does not understand the Russian people. Russia is perhaps the most fatalistic country in the world, and also one of the most resilient. The Russian people can handle a lot of suffering and punishment. Poorer Russians are quite happy to roll the dice as assault soldiers in a war where they will very likely die. For Westerners, a mortality rate of 5% in our military would be shocking - nobody would sign on. But a poor Russian with no other path to prosperity (many of them actual criminals freed from prison for this chance) will sign on to a 50% chance of death, shrug his soldiers and say "maybe I'll get lucky". Russians are also quite patriotic, and willing to suffer to see their country succeed. Combine this with the increasing levels of information control (it is, for instance, illegal in Russia to speak poorly of either the government or the military) and you'll see why there is no public outcry against the war - Putin's popularity has actually increased as the war drags on, despite signs that the Russian economy could well collapse within a year. In other words, there is no pressure on Putin to change. Quite the contrary, things really seem to be going his way.
Western countries, if they were able to continue the current levels of support, might have been able to continue the war at the current level for another year, at which point there's a real chance the Russian economy would fall apart. This was essentially the Biden strategy. However, Ukraine is almost at the end of it's rope. They cannot recruit enough to sustain the fight, as anyone who was going to volunteer did so two years ago. And many Western publics have gotten tired of spending boatloads of money on a strategy that has not been explained to them, that in fact looks like a black hole of taxpayer funds with no end in sight.
And so, I'm somewhat hopeful about Trump coming in. I think he can credibly threaten to change the status quo. The way I imagine it is: he proposes a cease-fire deal, which both Russia and Ukraine must refuse based on their geopolitical needs. Then, because Russia turned it down, this gives Trump carte blanche to increase support, not just in materiel but in the permission to strike into Russia that Biden has been refusing for the past two years. In other words, Trump may have the freedom to actually apply pressure to Putin in a way that the Biden alliance has steadfastly refused to do out of fear of escalation. I may be wrong, and Trump will swing the other way and force Ukraine to roll over and surrender. But I personally doubt it. I don't think he wants to go down as a deal-maker who lost a negotiation with Putin. I think he's fundamentally a bully, and will effectively use the power of the US to force Putin into a negotiation where Trump comes out looking like the winner. As far as I can tell, that's what the MAGA people mean by peace through strength.
flailingace
2d ago
I think that kind of media is essentially fan-fiction though. Unless they're actually selling all their possessions and going to lie in a field I don't think they -actually believe- that stuff. It's red meat, just like you see in political bubbles. Some radicals may actually believe it, but it's in the same way some radical left-wingers think Trump is an actual Nazi or right-wingers think Democrats actually want to destroy the US. It's a bailey belief.
flailingace
2d ago
The point of talking constantly about election integrity (not just here but in the media space generally) was to motivate election watchers. Despite the inherent issues with our election system, which make it arguably the least secure of any Western democracy, the amount of Trump supporters who have prepared to ensure the integrity of this election through proper channels essentially ensured that rigging could not occur. That's regardless of whether you think rigging would have occurred in the absence of this strategy.
flailingace
16d ago
My objection to AI creative work generally is that AI is not an individual with particular tastes and intentions. It's a conglomerative average. Even if you're running the end process on your GPU using prompts you created, the training was done in a data center the size of a small town over the course of billions of billions of operations over more training data than it would be possible for one person to view in a lifetime. Conceptually it would be like taking all the artists New York City and glomming them together into one giant flesh blob monster that you then chain up in a basement attached to a printer that churns out derivative work. That's how it feels to me, aesthetically. The end product may look fine, but it isn't intentional the way art made by an individual is intentional. The details are chosen by averaging training data details, not because they matter.
flailingace
1mo ago
This argument is just the diversity boogeyman in a different form. I.e. how can Congress pass laws that are good for all Americans when it's full of white men?
Now, obviously hydroacetylene's suggestion wouldn't be practical to suggest in a modern Western country (even though it's how the US system was originally designed). But your objection that it leads to political violence is belied by the levels of political violence we have today.
The point of limiting the vote to a cohort like the suggested one is to make sure all those voting are people of good character, invested in their community, and care about people other than themselves (i.e. their family). The idea that male heads of households would vote against the interests of their wives is pretty cynical, for instance, and in the type of society that is being suggested here I would expect these voters to be more concerned with the well-being of their whole family than, say, current voters who are often single-voter issues on purely self-interested things that affect them, like student loan forgiveness or even abortion. It also incentivizes people to get married, have children, and buy a house, all things that we want. For these reasons it seems like a pro-social and useful suggestion, and I think your objections to it are surface level and apply even more strongly to the current system.
flailingace
1mo ago
Just for your understanding, this is exactly the danger of the Russian style of disinformation. It is decentralized and not tied to any particular narrative or to truth in general. The agents will amplify both true and false stories with impunity. This is because the stated goal of the Russian propaganda machine in the West is not, for example, 'make Russia look good' or 'show hypocrisy in Western countries'. The essential goal is to create division in Western societies over the long term by degrading trust in institutions, information sources, and each other.
So yes, in this case Russian disinformation may be amplifying actual government failures. In other cases it may be making things up wholesale. The point is to be aware that there are malign agents (and not just Russians) whose purpose is to turn this into a political or cultural battle rather than giving a clear picture of reality, and then factor that in to our assessment of the situation.
flailingace
2yr ago
I think the reason for the 'religion' is that typical human relationships have in many ways broken down, especially male-female ones. When I hear descriptions of therapy they sound to me a lot like talking to my wife about something important, except that in my case we know each other and what we need far better than any therapist could.
flailingace
2yr ago
Yeah I don't really like reading either, that other stuff is definitely more entertaining, but it's ultimately useless and a waste of my time. If I want to be of any use thinking about or talking about a topic I need the depth that comes from reading. It forces you to think about it. Audiobooks don't usually work as well, because I can hear what they're saying without thinking about it, plus with reading I can spend the time I want on a thought or a piece of the text where audiobooks/videos just move on.
It's not about maximizing harm to Russia. It's about harming Russia in a way that doesn't destabilize it. Western intelligence is terrified of the balkanization of Russia, because it has nuclear weapons stored all over the place, and even one ending up under the control of a lunatic would be enough to end the world. See also my comment one level up for my fuller thoughts.
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