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Notes -
This collusion, if still present, would change the future.
The question is not whether schröder worked for gazprom, he clearly did, but whether german policy is meaningfully impacted by such things.
I predict germany will continue to act in line with similar countries, not pro-russia.
Your belief now is that there is collusion. This should be a falsifiable belief.
My belief, lack of collusion, is falsifiable . If france and italy, say, join a no-fly zone or send jets, but germany doesn't, the belief is falsified.
I’ll recap . Your belief:
has failed to give accurate predictions of germany’s policy on ukraine, months ago, and a few hours ago
is used to explain behaviour that is unremarkable compared to other countries, forcing you to cook up a specific reason for each country
will be maintained no matter what happens
It already changed the present, and by that of course it changed the future, but that already happened. You can not just choose an arbitrary point in time and say "no, disregard what happened before that, I want future changed only from here forward". The future changing already happened, we live in that future that has been changed.
OK, so we agree they were friends with Russia, but you think them being friends with Russia did not influence their decision process at all. That's a very implausible belief, but then how do you explain them, including current minister of defense, arguing for removing sanctions from Russia? How do you explain their constant delays - for a year now - in sending heavy armaments, including blocking other countries from doing it? If you hold a powerful position, you have a friend and you consistently act in a way that benefits this friend - how many people would conclude your friendship affected your decisions, and how many would pretend there's no way to know that because somebody said something on some internet page about "paying dividends"? I sense an attempt to confuse the issue here.
In theory, yes. In practice - how do you falsify a belief that the coin toss came out heads? Maybe if somebody proves you that you suffer from hallucinations that make you see a coin that comes out tails as heads, but we both know it's a very far reaching scenario. In practice, if you saw it come out heads, you'd be convinced it's heads, and pretty much nothing practical would falsify it. So blind obsession with falsification is misleading here - you do not owe anybody to construct some imaginary constructs to mock-falsify in the future things that you already know to be true.
That's exact opposite of the truth. My belief predicted German would be dragging their feet with providing necessary amounts of help - and they have been dragging their feet for a year now. My belief predicted affected people would argue for pro-Russian moves - and they had argued for pro-Russian moves, including removal of sanctions. The fact that they finally, after years of affecting German policy (remember, the war started in 2014) start to lose their influence, does not mean the past predictions were inaccurate - my belief does not claim they will be in power forever, nobody is in power forever.
It is remarkable compared to other countries like Britain, Poland, Estonia, and even the US. It is unremarkable compared to countries like Spain or Japan, but comparing to those is not exactly comparing the same situations.
I do not see a reason to change beliefs on the past unless the past changes. If the documents come out from, e.g. Putin, and there would be reason to believe they are not lying (don't know how, but let's assume it) where he says "we tried our darnedest to corrupt Germans and influence them, even hired Shroeder for Gazprom and gave him and others tons of money, but they have proven absolutely incorruptible, and refused to ever do anything for us at all, these people are saints and not men, we just can not corrupt them!" - yes, I will have to amend my beliefs about the past, as the model of the past changes. Since no such revelations were made, the model of the past stays as it is, and my beliefs about the past do not change, for there's no reason for them to change.
Yeah imo you kinda do, if you want to have epistemic hygiene. Anyway, I think we've covered our respective positions, thanks for the discussion.
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