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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   4098 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 9, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Has bombing of civilian targets by air ever successfully lead to a surrender, leaving aside the use of nuclear weapons at the end of WWII?

Arguably, the destruction of civilian targets by bombing civilian targets in japan, which seems like very roughly 300k, so 150k without nukes, was at the same scale as the nukes: The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. So it was a significant contributor then. And, iirc, Japan was close to surrendering even if the nukes hadn't been used.

And, iirc, Japan was close to surrendering even if the nukes hadn't been used.

I wouldn't bet on it. After one nuke they didn't surrender. After two nukes their hardliners nearly pulled off a self-coup to prevent a surrender. After zero nukes? Japan wasn't "close to surrendering", they were planning "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million". Civilians were supposed to fight with rocks and sharpened sticks until the point of capture, then kill themselves before they could be taken alive. The only debate about the civilian mass suicides that had already occurred is to what extent they were prompted by coercion vs deception vs voluntary choice.

I hate the term in general, but I feel like Japan is the exception that proves the rule? Yes, the Japanese ultimately surrendered under intense bombing, but it was post near-total military defeat, and it required the murder of hundreds of thousands over years, closing with the atomic bombs.

It just seems like over and over attacks on civilian targets lead to the population rallying to fight rather than give up and surrender. And every time it happens we're shocked.

I hate the term in general, but I feel like Japan is the exception that proves the rule?

Maybe you hate the term in general because it's nearly always badly misused? ...But you misuse it in the most typical way here, so....

"The exception that proves the rule" is a coherent, well-defined concept. A straightforward example is a sign like "No Parking On Tuesdays Between 3 and 5 PM." The rule, which is unstated, is "you may park here." The text of the sign describes the singular exception to the rule "not on Tuesday between 3 and 5 PM." The rule is strictly implied by the sign, as is the corollary "unless otherwise stated, no other exceptions exist."

Japan, here, is merely an exception. Rules have exceptions quite often, but "the exception that proves the rule" is a very specific type of logical inference that doesn't apply in this context.

Yeah it's really, stating an exception to an unstated rule proves the unstated rule exists, but that's not nearly as pithy.

I always envisioned in the sense that if you can think of a single exception, then otherwise the rule is sound.

If you were to say "humans don't have brown hair" that's immediately false because you can think of dozens of examples otherwise. But if you could only think of one exception to a rule, then in general it's fairly sound.

Yeah, I tend to go with this one.

The Nazi bombing of Rotterdam likely resulted in the Dutch quickly surrendering.

Wait I thought the Dutch actually surrendered already before and the message just didn’t get through to the German bombers?

Thanks, have to look into that.

At the time it was claimed more than 40,000 had died in the terror bombing of Rotterdam, but the actual figure was more like 1,000.

Threat of bombing caused surrenders in early WW2, when Germany invaded the Low Countries.

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