The only person who has a remote chance of caring about us is Trump.
Wait, wait, don't bring out the pitch forks... yea, I know he is a walking ego trip, yes he is a arrogant SOB.. I am well aware of that... but he also has nothing to gain by screwing us at this point..
That doesn't mean he cares about you, it just means he's responding to different incentives.
He is now old, very wealthy, and has nothing else to do but take the country in a new direction.
He also isn't owned by lobbyists or 30 years of political connections the way Bush and Clinton are.
If Bush or Clinton are elected, exactly nothing will change. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten.
The fact he has different baggage doesn't he has no baggage. If anything I'd say he's more likely to have some massive skeletons stuffed in the closet of an unsavoury operator.
As for a new direction 'new' doesn't necessary mean better, I don't see how a guy batting to the looniest of the fringes is going to be a change for the better.
At least Trump will kick over the table and say, "new direction".
Will it turn out well? Hard to say, we won't really know without trying, but at some point we either try something new, or accept the current situation forever.
First, who in their right mind gets in an insult fight with a professional comedy writer?
Second, once they're in that fight who throws out insults like a 5 year old and acts like they're kicking ass?
Trump was obviously once competent enough at one thing to make billions, but at this point, in this context, it's pretty clear that he's spent so long surrounded with yes-men that he's completely out of touch with reality. The prospect of having him in power scares me more than Sarah Palin.
Ensure isn't really designed for long-term, one-food use like Soylent.
So if you have a long term medical condition that prevents you from eating anything non-liquid what do they give you and why wouldn't they want to make it suitable for long-term one-food use?
My guess is it's because it's really hard and they don't know how to do that. If Soylent thinks they've done it they're probably just shooting at a lot easier target.
They may have other advantages over Ensure such as taste or market image, but I'm really dubious it's a medically superior drink.
It's not the weapons that are the problem, it is the people who abuse them.
There is no basis to presume that artificial intelligence is likely to pose a greater threat to mankind than natural intelligence already is without either subscribing to the notion that some mystical force or agency that is allegedly the product of millions of years of natural evolution being the only thing that prevents human beings from acting unethically when we there isn't an iota of evidence to suggest that such a thing even has any kind of objective existence in the first place, or else simply allowing one's imagination to overrule their common sense.
Well for one thing in my original post I listed 4 factors that made AI dangerous in a way human intellect isn't. You've only argued one of those 4, and even if I were to completely concede the point the other 3 still makes AI uniquely dangerous.
Second the "mystical force or agency" you're referring to is evolution. When we have good ethical instincts that's a product of evolution, when we have bad ethical instincts (ie psychopaths) that's also a product of evolution. That's because those instincts are just a method for operating with other intelligent creatures, there's huge adaptive pressure to get that right so it's built into our minds at a very low level.
Every intelligent human is going to have an operational system of instincts for dealing with other intelligent creatures simply because you can't take out that much basic functionality and still have a working mind.
But an AI won't have that same foundation, it is going to be extremely difficult to predict how it will think or to constrain it to have certain instincts.
I'm saying that we should have no more to fear from a machine that lacks ethical constraints than we should a human being who lacks said constraints...
Except the machine may be exponentially smarter and able to replicate with extreme speed.
AI is ultimately intelligence that happens to be artificial instead of natural, and is no more worrisome about the fact that it doesn't have millions of years of evolution behind it as prosthetic limbs, no matter how advanced or sophisticated they are likely to become, are problematic for amputees.
That's a poor metaphor since prosthetic limbs fulfil a relatively simple task with simple constraints.
A much better metaphor might be artificial vs natural weapons. Natural weapons include fists, feet, and teeth. Artificial include knifes, guns, bombs, and nukes. It's clear that artificial weapons change things significantly.
As I said, we will always have much more to fear from the human beings that control such advanced technology than the technology itself.
They're a risk too but humans are much better understood as an intelligent entity.
Natural intelligence has ethical constraints developed by millions of years of evolution
This notion is routinely spouted by people who express fears about AI, but it irrationally elevates the concept of so-called "ethical constraints" to being some mystical property of natural intelligence that is apparently somehow actually separate from it, and somehow unlikely to exist in artificial intelligence when there isn't any reason to think that it should be, or that it is likely to be.
We will have much more to fear from humans who might use AI to further their own agendas than we would from AI itself.
Huh? I'm having a little trouble parsing. You seem to be claiming that what we consider ethics are both integrally linked to our intelligence and that they are going to exist in artificial intelligence? (It actually looks like you say they're unlikely to exist in AI, but I think that would hurt your point).
"Ethics" as we define them, but more broadly every action we take that isn't completely rational, is likely a product of evolution and culture, hardwired into what we consider our intelligence. There's no reason to think AI would naturally have these characteristics, nor that we could easily replicate them if we wished.
We simply don't understand how a highly intelligent AI would think, for instance is desire or want a fundamental characteristic of intelligence or just intelligence as its evolved? What if we make a mind that doesn't have a comparable characteristic, what does it do?
When you break it down it shows you were you have a problem and gives you some detail so you can intelligently analyize the numbers.
Your number is not useful for intelligent analysis. It exists merely as a mindless shock number to confuse peasants.
I'm not a peasant. And I'm now done entirely talking about this number. Bring it up in any capacity and i'll just ignore it. I don't even want to talk about your opinion of the nature of the number.
You want to understand the numbers better read the papers. The point is to capture more of the externalities of the conflict, it may be imprecise but it's a completely legitimate measure. Ignore it and you're not having a serious discussion.
The Iranians for example think they're going to join the US and Russians as big boys at the table with their nukes.
No they don't, they think they'll deter a potential first strike by Israel, and achieve some additional prestige in the Middle East.
As to allying with dictators or opposing democracies... where have I said that that is the basis by which I determine friend or enemy? You're not making sense. You imply I do not choose my enemies carefully and then when I call you on it you say that I will not ally with certain types of governments and I will sometimes support other types of governments. And? Why is this strategically relevant to me?
Why do I care if a country is democratic or not from a military strategic perspective? You're projecting your own ideology and morality on me. While I believe in freedom and democracy etc... I am not bound to prioritize it in strategic matters. My priority there is the well being of my own people. if allying with a dictator to assist British and European industrial needs during the Cold War helps allies resist Soviet pressure then why wouldn't I do that?
So you're no longer arguing for US interventions based on doing good for those people?
Consider the difference between North Korea and South Korea. We could have saved lives in the war by letting the north dominate the south as well. In your mind this would have been worth it? Should we have allowed that or were the civilian deaths acceptable given the outcome?
You're damned no matter what you say because your entire moral framework is naive.
If you say the North Koreans should have been allowed to dominate the south you are saying that we should never fight against anything... including fascism. So the Nazis etc should have just been allowed to take what they want. Fighting them after all cost civilian lives.
But you're also damned if you say we should fight them because it fatally undermines your position that the civilian deaths means we can't go to war.
Your entire position is goofy.
I never argued that you can never intervene because of the total casualty counts, I argued that it raises the bar.
The Korean War was justifiable on those grounds, the additional death and suffering from doing nothing would have dwarfed the consequences of the act they did. Of course I have no idea how clear that was at the time.
As to ad hominems... I'm not going to get tied up in semantics. If you attempt to invalidate my position based on a baseless character assassination then I'm going to slap it aside and tell you to try something else. You say you don't want to do that? Okay... good. When you do it again, I'll remind you of your own words. Until then... I'll just leave it there.
I didn't say I didn't want to do it. I said I didn't do it.
Why is it the property owners reponsibility to go find and talk to the drone operator? The drone operator, on the other hand, knows where his toy is going so maybe HE should actually act like a responsible person and let the property owners know what he is doing ahead of time.
If he was doing something potentially invasive or that would legitimately cause the owner to worry.
If he's just flying in the area than you're effectively advocating the banning of drones in municipal areas. Even flying in your own backyard could potentially be looking out at the entire neighbourhood.
I wonder that the video and data didn't go up immediately. A couple of days is enough to edit the telemetry and video. Maybe they're honest, maybe they're not. However, it seems really unlikely that someone would be massively offended by a drone 70 meters up.
If they were going to file charges against anyone, it was really stupid for the police not to impound the drone as evidence.
It's a viral news story, are you really shocked the drone owner took a week to decide he wanted to talk to the media and give them a presentation?
Heck, maybe he has a job and simply didn't have time until the weekend.
Vice president Cheney shot a man in the face with birdshot. It barely broke the skin. And the victim was 78 years old. Skin gets easier to tear as we get older.
Though Cheney usually hangs out with fellow lizard folk and their skin is far more robust.
...no more dangerous to our existence than natural intelligence is.
And no less, for that matter.
There is nothing inherent to being "artificial" that should cause intelligence to be necessarily more hostile to mankind than a natural intelligence is, so while the idea might make for intriguing science fiction, I am of the opinion that many people who express serious concerns that there may be any real danger caused by it are allowing their imaginations to overrule rational and coherent thoughts on the matter.
Except for several characteristics that are specific to artificial intelligence.
1) Natural intelligence doesn't really go above 200 IQ at it's absolute max. Artificial intelligence could potentially go far higher.
2) Complex natural intelligence replicates very slowly. Artificial intelligences could replicate in seconds.
3) Natural intelligence has certain weaknesses such as basic math, artificial intelligence will lack many of these weaknesses.
4) Natural intelligence has ethical constraints developed by millions of years of evolution and a highly developed education process, sociopaths are quite rare and usually harmless. We have no idea how to encode such an ethical system into an artificial intelligence.
It depends a lot on what the artificial intelligence looks like but we would be dealing with a fundamentally different kind of consciousness, it could be innocuous or extremely dangerous.
To clarify my point: The article mentions Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steven Hawking. What do they all have in common? They are not AI researchers. The author of the book is a philosophy professor. They are all talking about and making predictions in a field that they aren't experts in. Yes, they are all smart people, but I see them doing more harm than good by raising alarm when they themselves aren't an authority on the subject. An alarm that isn't shared with the experts in the field.
To be fair the AI researches aren't experts in strong AI either, they're qualified to say we're not there yet, but they can't really say how far off "there" is because they don't know.
As to whether or not I'd count my own dead. Of course I would. I'd count them seperately though. I'm not rolling all the numbers together.
I want a number for my own dead. I want a number for enemy dead. I want a number of civilians I killed. I want a number of civilians the enemy killed. And you might as well throw out some estimates of how many 'excessive deaths" happened MINUS the above numbers. Though I warn you that I"m going to take that stat with fucking bags of rock salt.
Why? What does it even matter? If I go through the trouble of generating those numbers are you going to think differently if they achieve some threshhold?
As to your statement that you're not moralizing. Okay. Any attempt to morally judge US actions in this thread going forward is going to pointed at and I'm going to ask why you're doing it.
Moralizing and making moral judgments are different things.
As to the US not directly fighting the Russians and Chinese in vietname. Debatable. Absent Russian and Chinese support the Vietcong would not have been a credible resistance. There was a vibrant supply network. And there was also intelligence provided to them by the Russians and all sorts of other stuff. All of which ignores the point that we were directly fighting the Chinese in Korea and we didn't nuke them. What is more, in Korea we also engaged Russian pilots with some frequency and that didn't lead to nuclear war either.
With the exception of the claims of engaging with Russian pilots (which I hadn't heard of before) none of those things count as direct fighting.
No one wants a nuclear war... nukes are vastly over rated for their utility in diplomacy. Do you find the French to be formidable military powers? They have nukes. And no one cares.
Depends on the objectives the groups is trying to achieve.
This implies that people I deem enemy are done arbitrarily and unreasonably and without due consideration. That's not an argument I've seen you even attempt to make. And here you are presuming. Rejected.
It's done with more bias and prejudice than you realize. In the Middle East the US regularly supports theocratic dictators but overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government. It's not random but alternate interests play a large role.
And as to your statement that I don't consider collateral damage, this is obviously a very very stupid strawman because I made it clear repeatedly that my people have invested our blood and treasure into avoiding collateral damage. Name any other country in history that has taken the same pains to limit collateral damage.
You're essentially claiming that because you put due diligence into avoiding killing civilians during a military operation or drone strike that you don't have moral culpability for their deaths. But you're not adequately considering those civilian deaths as a factor before starting the conflict.
And as to your statement that I don't consider collateral damage, this is obviously a very very stupid strawman because I made it clear repeatedly that my people have invested our blood and treasure into avoiding collateral damage. Name any other country in history that has taken the same pains to limit collateral damage.
Try.
You instantly fail. And from this you presume I don't care?
It's a weird request since no developed country in recent history has been involved in as many conflicts.
But I'd say all the countries that are counselling the US to not go to war are giving greater care for limiting collateral damage, they're making that request even though they don't bear any of the costs for going to war themselves.
To the contrary, you know I care which is why you're trying to pull my heart strings on the issue. You know damn fucking well I care. I simply reject yo
No, it isn't the lowest number... it is the number of people we killed.
Your number includes people the Taliban killed and people that neither side killed.
I'm not accepting it. And if I see that number cited again in this discussion I'm going to ignore it.
I reject it.
It's the number of additional people that died because of the conflict. If there was no conflict they wouldn't have died.
In fact you just eliminated your argument against autonomous weapons as well. Because if in choosing your course of action you aren't willing to consider people who were killed by the other side they you're not going to consider your own soldiers killed by the enemy. You can't count all the secondary benefits of US military actions without counting the costs!!
As to your argument about unintended consequences, you're attempting to moralize the issue. Moralizing requires intent.
Moralizing requires me to actually moralize. Show me where I moralized.
Will we go to WW3 over Latvia? Funny question. Will Russia? Why do people think nukes are going to fly in a proxy war? Did the US nuke Russia or China in vietnam? We didn't nuke China during the Korean war even though some of our generals REALLY wanted to.
You weren't directly fighting China or Russia in vietnam.
No... there's no WW3 response in Latvia... either from the US or Russia. Russia has said that if pressed by superior conventional forces they reserve the option to use tactical nuclear weapons to break enemy formations. While the US takes the threat seriously, we also have made it known that if he does that it will be an escalation of hostilities that will be met with proportional responses. We have lot of conventional explosives that rival small nukes.
And then they escalate back and you have a Nuclear holocaust. It's not guaranteed nor even most most likely outcome which is part of the problem because Putin thinks he can win a limited Nuclear exchange against a small European nation without drawing a major response.
As to me sounding like an extremist... define what that means. baseless insult are of no value. I could as easily respond that you sound like a space hamster from Neptune who is plotting to steal our peanuts and fresh broccoli.
You're claiming that anyone whom you deem an enemy should die and you're unwilling to consider the cost of collateral damage such actions may incur.
To me that's extreme unnecessarily damaging actions to achieve an objective, ie an extremist.
Your position is an ad hominem. You say because you are X you are wrong. Rejected.
Backwards.
Ad hominem would be if I said your positions were wrong because you were an extremist, what I said is your positions are extremist and you now sound like an extremist.
As to direct conflict causalities being an over simplification... its what we did. What happens when you do what we did in some rube goldberg butterfly effect statistic is not something we have any control over so I'm not going to feel responsible for it.
You did it because it's easy to measure and it's the lowest number.
And the fact that a war could severely destabilize a county is the most predictable consequence ever, the party starting the war absolutely bears responsibility. It's the most basic "you broke it you bought it".
Moral judgement require intent. So you're citing a lot of deaths of people we didn't kill, didn't intend to kill, were killed by our enemies, etc and I think you're doing that just because you want a big number to play pathos games with me on.
The whole crux of the argument is over unintended consequences!
I don't find it to be intellectually honest. Use a number that more closely approximates what we ACTUALLY did not what happened to people we didn't kill but rather who we actually killed.
You don't think the US bears any moral culpability for people who die because they attack a country and cause mass instability and you should only count directly intended casualties.
Yet at the same time you're claiming the US is justified in launching conflicts because they're imposing Western hegemony. And why is Western hegemony good? Because it imposes a particular brand of stability.
And you're accusing me of being intellectually dishonest?
As to nato expansion not necessarily being the right move... and what is? What I find the most annoying about this argument is that you're not owning any course of action. You're basically just undermining and gainsaying things. Which is fine if you're going somewhere. But if you're just shitting all over people without offering an alternative then I don't find the argument to be compelling.
Back the creation of a pact of ex-Warsaw nations minus Russia.
They don't look like a Western expansion so Russia is less paranoid, and as a group they can make believable claims that they will go to war against Russia to defend eachother (is the US going to start WWIII to defend Latvia?).
You do not want us to take more causalities. I say this because I do not want my people to die and because I do not want my people to hate. You have no respect for the life of my people or our souls. But... consider what we will become if we are full of blinding rage? We are not a stupid people. We are not poor. We are not foolish. Get us mad enough and we could rape the world.
Getting us that mad is not in your interest. You think we are unreasonable now? Think again. If the terrorist shit doesn't stop we're going to be frothing. Our rage will turn into black hatred... and then we'll kill. Not to make peace. Not to end war... to kill and destroy.
You honestly sound like an extremist, I would not trust you with autonomous weapons because I feel you'd use them without restraint trying to force change via military threat.
Plain crap. You know not what you are talking about. I've spent years there working as an aid worker and you assessment of the situation on the ground is laughable in its naivete. The reason it is hard to develop a country is because the governments are kleptocracies in almost every case. You analysis is typical lefty conspiracy thinking.
There are countries in Africa where all the citizens belong to the same tribe. And still there are problems.
I mean come on where do you get your information? The Onion?
In your experience why are the government kleptocracies? (not a rhetorical/combatitive question, I'm genuinely curious about your perspective)
I don't how many times I have to make it clear to you that i'm not going to talk about iraq because its a fucking whine and I don't find it useful on the issue of general US foreign policy or geopolitics.
I wasn't talking about Iraq!!
Yes I mentioned it at the end of my last post but the vast majority was about other topics.
Your 250k number was mostly talking about Iraq so far as I know and the methodology on that number is a fucking joke as well. But you know what... I'm not talking about it.
Hmm, what did I say again?
"Afghanistan there's possibly in the range of 250K deaths, and a lot of the country is still under Taliban rule."
So that number is specifically about Afghanistan, your own source that contradicted you was about Afghanistan, the only time I said Iraq was in explaining that I'd already talked about a similar number for that war.
As to excessive deaths... I don't find this to be a useful statistic because it conflates all deaths into one number. Its more complicated than that and I don't appreciate over simplifications.
But taking only direct conflict casualties is a massive oversimplification.
How can you possibly imagine that destabilizing a country doesn't cause excess deaths? How can you ignore that cost when launching a war?
As to NATO expansions, look at what happened to countries under Russia's sway versus our own? I have very little sympathy for the Russians whining about people leaving their sphere of influence. It isn't merely the US and Russia to consider but the people caught between. The Eastern Europeans HATE the Russians. Consider what Poland etc could be today if they had not suffered under Soviet domination? The Russians can frankly go fuck themselves on the issue with a rake. Their management of their terroritory has been incompetent for generations. Look at Russia itself. The country should be extremely rich. Vast natural resources, an impressive industrial base, a generally well educated population, and they're geographically positioned between the biggest markets in the world.
All that is completely true.
But it doesn't mean that a NATO expansion was the right move. If you try to wave a magic wand and make the world a better place you run a very serious risk of making it worse.
As to your desire for Americans to die in wars... No. You can die. Your children can die. Your people can die. I am not sacrificing my people. If you want to sacrifice yours that is your own business. Some cultures worship death and desire it for themselves and everyone. My society desires life. We want to live. I will not send my people to war with inferior weapons because people like you feel it is unfair for us to have such an overwhelming advantage. War isn't about fairness. War is about killing the enemy. Crushing him. Bring him low, looking into his eyes, and watching him break. That is war. And robotic weapons service that function. If you feel that countries without our technological sophistication shouldn't engage in war with us... I agree. Doing so is idiotic on their part. It isn't a fair fight. They can't win. So they just shouldn't. Takes two to tango.
So you love life yet you really want your enemies to die.
Autonomous weapons are kind of like nukes, nice for your side but terrifying for the other side.
When the Western hegemony drops BILLIONS will die. Billions. Civilizations will be snuffed out in days to months. As the global trade networks collapse the global economy will collapse and any country that isn't self sufficient for food will starve. England for example... they rely on food imports. To blockade England is to defeat it... for if she does not surrender she shall starve. And England isn't alone in that. many countries rely on the global trade networks to survive. Just to EAT.
""No I didn't, I was doing it in the context of the Iraq war where they're understood to be excess deaths."" excess deaths?
First, we're not talking about Iraq. I told you that.
I wasn't talking about Iraq, I was referring back to a previous statement I'd used that happened to include Iraq.
Second, we're talking about Afghanistan.
Third, "excess deaths" what does that mean?
Exactly what it sounds like, the additional deaths that occurred because of the conflict.
Fourth, your cited kill number did not include context, it did not separate out people that would have died if there were no war, the actual causality figures are actually highly estimated and no one really knows what they are, you conflated people killed by the enemy with people killed by the US, you conflated soldier deaths with civilians, deaths caused by famine or disease were conflated with deaths from weapons, etc etc etc.
It's approximate, which is why there are large ranges given in the estimates (I've actually chosen conservative ones), but wars can certainly cause famine and disease and those deaths matter.
Anyway, we've come to the part of the discussion where I have to start looking things up.
During the war in Afghanistan (2001–present), over 26,000 civilian deaths due to war-related violence have been documented;[1]
Hey! It's right there in the first sentence! That's actually a pretty good sentence.
29,900 civilians have been wounded.[1] Over 91,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are recorded to have been killed in the conflict, and the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may include an additional 360,000 people.[1] These numbers do not include those who have died in Pakistan.
So your source gives a bigger number than I do!
Counter the USSR's attempt to conquer europe and the world actually.
We did what we could to make the Russians feel comfortable.
The NATO expansion was a tough call, I might have actually done the same, but it would have been very threatening to Russia.
Look how the US reacted to potential communist states in South America. How do you think the US would have felt if they joined the Warsaw pact, if Canada started discussing it?
The opposition to the anti ICBM technology was also taken as bad faith. Why does Russia want the US to stop developing it unless Russia wants to intimidate the first world with nuclear weapons?
Because it changes the equation from MAD, where no one will fire their nukes, to the prospect of a winnable nuclear exchange. And that tech won't stay with the US, it will spread to places like India and Pakistan.
You don't know what the internal dialog is... you just know what is in the media. Furthermore, when has the US ever talked about invading a country like it was no big deal?
Granted that was a bombing campaign not an invasion, but anyone who was paying attention heard the neocons itching for an Iran invasion to follow up Iraq and the rumour is that it was only the higher ups in the Pentagon that managed to talk them down.
That's how EVERY country in the middle east got its current territory. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, etc. Not one of them got it any other way.
I don't know about others but Iran's borders have been stable for a very long time, and I think the others were fairly stat
So at the end of the day: if these populations wish to enter the first world, the first step to take is to assert their ownership of the land they occupy on the continent, decide on their own borders
Bad borders are bad, but trying to redraw borders? That can be much, much worse.
One of the big rules in Africa (and pretty much everywhere) is you don't change national borders because that introduces massive stakes and is a recipe for wars and rebellion since every group decides they want their own country comprising of every bit of land they think their group is entitled to.
or (like other countries in the first world), abandon tribal identity so they progress on to greater things like indoor plumbing and medical research.
That's the solution but I think it's far from simple. Look at the US, there are two parties sharing a white Christian base and the political system has been deadlocked and dysfunctional for half a decade.
What do you think would happen if half the country was Protestant and the other half Muslim, or New Jersey was 50+% Italian descent, Michigan 50+% Nigerian, Texas 50+% Mexican, etc. Getting people to cooperate in a political system is not simple.
I'm sure that some people will still blame "colonialism", although that hasn't even been an issue for generations now.
Even then, we've seen many other regions, like most of Europe, China, Japan, South Korea and even Vietnam, go from total devastation due to war to modern societies capable of producing such research, over roughly the same period of time. Why isn't Africa progressing when so many other nations, often with much fewer resources and far less support, and coming from a much worse situation, managed to turn things around?
Colonialism is still a huge issue because the colonial borders are still in place, the borders were designed to keep them weak by putting rival tribes in the same country.
In Europe and Asia a government can get reasonable levels of support across most of the country because they figure they're all on the same side, so you get investment in the future and a generally functional society.
But in Africa it's really hard to develop a country when a government can never get real support outside of their ethnic group, everyone ends up playing a zero-sum game and you end up with corruption and violence. All that's going to fix it is a lot of time until African's start thinking of themselves as primarily members of their country and not of a tribe.
You're implying that we just killed a quarter million people with no context, reason, and that we did so intentionally.
No I didn't, I was doing it in the context of the Iraq war where they're understood to be excess deaths.
You're also attributing all deaths to our actions when the responsibility has to be spread around to include the taliban, various terrorist sponsors, and natural forces like famine etc that kill people without any direct human volition.
I glibly dismiss the question because it isn't intellectually valid.
If you want to talk about death tolls in war zones we can do that. But laying all the death's at our feet like we intentionally killed all those people, had no reason to in, and we are solely responsible is invalid.
It's a standard methodology. Over the period X deaths would normally be expected instead Y occur, Z=X-Y is roughly the number of excess deaths attributable to your actions. You're not as nearly guilty as someone who pulled the trigger but in a debate of whether an act contributed to the greater good the fact remains that Z lives were lost due to that act is completely relevant.
Wrong, we tried to actually rehabilitate Russia. We would not have funded their space program or made so many diplomatic gestures if we wanted to treat them like an enemy.
There was even serious talk about inviting them into NATO.
As to surrounding them with enemies... all we wanted to do was secure the self determination of past victims of their aggression. Our intention was not to threaten Russia but to give other nations a chance at freedom, modernity, and prosperity.
NATO was an alliance formed to counter Russia, it's easy to see why inviting former Warsaw pact members into NATO would be viewed as a hostile act.
So your suggestion when NATO members invoke our aid to deal with a relevant operation in their territory and put diplomatic pressure on the US to provide logistical and tactical support... we should do nothing?
It's not just the conflict itself but the internal dialogue. You don't think other countries are listening when presidential candidates talk about invading other countries like it's no big deal?
As to the legitimacy of Israel... it is no less legitimate than any other power in the middle east.
I didn't say it was illegitimate, I said that its creation was a legitimate target for criticism as a very ugly form of colonialism (lets treat the land owned by these brown people like they're not even there and let some white Europeans settle it). And their current settlement policy is so indefensible I don't know that I've actually seen anyone ever defend it.
What nation do you hail from?
Canada
As to innocent people getting killed in a war... that is not unique to the drone strike.
As to collateral damage ratios... we spend more money and effort avoiding collateral damage than any other power in world history.
In WWII the axis powers inflicted a 3-1 civilian-military death ratio, and that includes the holocaust.
The 10-1 ratios in drone strikes that I cited, which are the only decent estimate I could find, are not something to brag about.
And even if they were lower than usual they're only acceptable if the acts themselves are necessary, I find it dubious that these actors in other countries are particularly legitimate terrorist threats.
What is also plain to me is that our heart strings are being played upon here. You say what you think will effect us emotionally and psychologically.
Were I a soulless monster you would not be telling me these things. You cite civilian causalities because you know it effects me and you know I care.
See, I am aware of myself. I don't cite this becuase I don't care but because I make a point of stepping outside myself a
""Afghanistan there's possibly in the range of 250K deaths, and a lot of the country is still under Taliban rule."" I'm not seeing a problem.
Seriously? A quarter million dead people and you don't see a problem? I'm going to hope that's just short hand for "oh it's terrible but it's worth the cost for the part of the country that's more free than before".
This presupposes that the Russian empire would not seek to restore past territory at some point in the future.
There's other ways to protect against that, principally not treating Russia like an enemy to contained.
The assumption was that it was safe to treat Russia like a potential enemy and surround then with NATO forces because they wouldn't dare thwart American power. Clearly that was not the case, Putin turned hostile, and Ukraine is now paying the price.
That war was predominantly desired by the Europeans and not the Americans. Our assistance was invoked by the French etc because they lack the logistics to project power even so far as north africa without our support.
I'm not sure what you're laying at our feet here. What did you want the US to do?
Possibly not get involved.
I admit it's not easy to see an atrocities and simply let it progress, I was partially in favour of a Libya intervention and I'd probably decide the same way over again, but helping is a lot harder than dropping some bombs so the "good guys" win and it's hard to see what the destabilization might do.
Read the rhetoric coming out of people that are highly critical of US middle east policy and it often gets anti Semitic. When it comes from middle easterners it is guaranteed to get anti Semitic but shockingly you'll see that out of French and English people as well. Its kind of sad.
There's definitely antisemitism, though it's ironic that you're mentioning it after that response to 250k dead Afghanis.
But there's also a lot of very legitimate criticism of how the Israeli state came to exist and how it's acted over the last 40 years, especially with regards to the settlements, that has nothing to do with antisemitism.
As to your experience... I'll refer you to your line about people not understanding their own misdeeds. You don't really know why you're saying things sometimes. You don't see the layers of influence and supposition in it all.
Possibly, but so far I'm doubtful you have better insight into my motivations on this subject.
As to drone strikes... its a weapon and a tool. No more capable of creating a terrorist than a pistol shot to the back of someone's head. They're not going away. Get use to them.
As to the notion that killing one terrorist leads to 5 more. Not in our experience. They tend to come from places that have no family connection to the person being killed. The reason person X becomes a terrorist is almost never because we killed his friend or his brother or something. Typically they're radicalized somewhere and they would have come or done something no matter what because they were radicalized.
Would you find it acceptable to kill ten Americans to kill one terrorist? There's a very clear message that the lives of those Muslims don't really matter, it's not hard to see how that message would create a lot more Muslim terrorists.
With so much moving to mobile devices and applications I wonder about the state of open source on those platforms and how developers can make a living while writing open source mobile apps.
The ads and sales that most mobile apps use to generate revenue aren't really an option for open source apps. Does that mean developers have to rely on a donations or are there other ways they can fund their work?
Ok weird thing, I thought I had sent the AC post but that was actually just some random AC. I got an email for your reply, it just brought up the thread, I saw your response to the AC and thought it was your response to me (I assumed I'd be logged out and posted AC).
Either way since you took time to respond to the AC I'll respond a bit on their behalf:)
As to gaining our "way" by using military force... first that doesn't go against our principles or we'd have talked to the Imperial Japanese and Nazis instead of bombing them into submission.
Actually you did mostly talk to them. The US came very late to both world wars. (though you did pretty much all the fighting against the Japanese).
But with Iran you engaged in the talk and it worked, you get a less hostile Iran with a lower chance of Nukes, the alternative was likely a Middle Eastern North Korea.
Furthermore, our "way" needs to be defined because there is this implication that we have some sort of secret or exclusive agenda that only profits us when really it is in support of the entire first world as defined by the original paradigm... aka our allies. This would include the entire EU, our middle eastern allies, our asian allies, our african allies, and our American allies. Our way is in the service of that interest which likely includes you. I don't know what country you're from but it is probably a first world country.
Canada, and I don't claim it's a secret agenda, it's just an observation that the US is a very bossy and aggressive country and diplomacy looks a lot like a demands for capitulation.
As to putting a gun against someone's head being anti democratic... our democracy didn't happen because we asked the British nicely to let us form a republic. We violently rebelled. This notion you're pushing that violence is inherently bad is simplistic and erroneous.
And being a Canadian we asked politely and got our freedom without any bloodshed:)
I'm not interested in talking about Iraq. Its a fucking whine at this point.
Sure, toss out Iraq.
Afghanistan there's possibly in the range of 250K deaths, and a lot of the country is still under Taliban rule.
The mid-2000 NATO expansion pissed off the Russians and is likely responsible for Putin's invasions of Georgia and Ukraine.
The Libya intervention brought about a civil war.
The US overthrew the moderate democratic rulers in Iran to install a dictator (which led to the Iranian revolution).
The US supported dictators over South America, supplied rebel groups and taught them how to torture.
The US is currently supporting dictators in the Middle East.
As to various nations not being happy with the US... the vast majority of that is either unhappiness that we stopped them from raping their neighbors or a mixture of envy/shame at someone being more powerful and a generous dose of ignorance as to how vital that power has been to the global status quo that everyone takes for granted.
Except in South America and the Middle East where the US supported the people who raped their neighbours
And his bias against the US was based on the belief that the US attacked Serbia for no reason in the Kosovo war and that his people were absolutely not genociding the Albanians.
The lesson there is people are blind to their own misdeeds.
Most of the anti US stuff boils down to something like that. And the thing is that the US gets that attitude no matter what we do. We go to war. People say they hate us. We don't go to war... and literally the same people say they hate us because we're not going to war.
Generally not in my experience. They want the US to be more cooperative and less dictorial with its influence. Drone strikes are a good example, you kill one terrorist and create five others.
As to the effectiveness of war... I disagree. War is extremely effective. Can politicians fuck it up after the military wins? Sure. Name something politicians can't fuck up? If you undermine the military victory by pulling forces out and abandoning the area after winning then... yeah... your victory isn't going to mean much because you've ceded all won territory by default to any other competing power which is likely to be the inevitable remnant of your enemy.
Beating armies is easy, the problem is when you have a population who doesn't really like you and doesn't share your objectives.
if the US had dropped the two atomic bombs on imperial japan and then just left... no occupation... no rewriting their constitution... no carefully sculpting their political environment for generations... then they could have just reverted immediately back to the imperial Japanese mindset.
Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. The fact Japan was very homogeneous helped.
And your citation of Vietnam or whatever else... you're ignoring that we won the battles and had the ability to dictate the nature of the societies but we ceded that by abandoning the area. Which was a political decision based on domestic political considerations and not a military decision.
You're assuming you had the ability to create the society, Vietnam isn't Japan and the Vietnamese may not have cooperated.
Slashdot Mirror
The only person who has a remote chance of caring about us is Trump.
Wait, wait, don't bring out the pitch forks... yea, I know he is a walking ego trip, yes he is a arrogant SOB.. I am well aware of that... but he also has nothing to gain by screwing us at this point. .
That doesn't mean he cares about you, it just means he's responding to different incentives.
He is now old, very wealthy, and has nothing else to do but take the country in a new direction.
He also isn't owned by lobbyists or 30 years of political connections the way Bush and Clinton are.
If Bush or Clinton are elected, exactly nothing will change. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten.
The fact he has different baggage doesn't he has no baggage. If anything I'd say he's more likely to have some massive skeletons stuffed in the closet of an unsavoury operator.
As for a new direction 'new' doesn't necessary mean better, I don't see how a guy batting to the looniest of the fringes is going to be a change for the better.
At least Trump will kick over the table and say, "new direction".
Will it turn out well? Hard to say, we won't really know without trying, but at some point we either try something new, or accept the current situation forever.
Just read this twitter exchange. It's not a policy position or anything like that but I think it's illustrative.
First, who in their right mind gets in an insult fight with a professional comedy writer?
Second, once they're in that fight who throws out insults like a 5 year old and acts like they're kicking ass?
Trump was obviously once competent enough at one thing to make billions, but at this point, in this context, it's pretty clear that he's spent so long surrounded with yes-men that he's completely out of touch with reality. The prospect of having him in power scares me more than Sarah Palin.
Ensure isn't really designed for long-term, one-food use like Soylent.
So if you have a long term medical condition that prevents you from eating anything non-liquid what do they give you and why wouldn't they want to make it suitable for long-term one-food use?
My guess is it's because it's really hard and they don't know how to do that. If Soylent thinks they've done it they're probably just shooting at a lot easier target.
They may have other advantages over Ensure such as taste or market image, but I'm really dubious it's a medically superior drink.
It's not the weapons that are the problem, it is the people who abuse them.
There is no basis to presume that artificial intelligence is likely to pose a greater threat to mankind than natural intelligence already is without either subscribing to the notion that some mystical force or agency that is allegedly the product of millions of years of natural evolution being the only thing that prevents human beings from acting unethically when we there isn't an iota of evidence to suggest that such a thing even has any kind of objective existence in the first place, or else simply allowing one's imagination to overrule their common sense.
Well for one thing in my original post I listed 4 factors that made AI dangerous in a way human intellect isn't. You've only argued one of those 4, and even if I were to completely concede the point the other 3 still makes AI uniquely dangerous.
Second the "mystical force or agency" you're referring to is evolution. When we have good ethical instincts that's a product of evolution, when we have bad ethical instincts (ie psychopaths) that's also a product of evolution. That's because those instincts are just a method for operating with other intelligent creatures, there's huge adaptive pressure to get that right so it's built into our minds at a very low level.
Every intelligent human is going to have an operational system of instincts for dealing with other intelligent creatures simply because you can't take out that much basic functionality and still have a working mind.
But an AI won't have that same foundation, it is going to be extremely difficult to predict how it will think or to constrain it to have certain instincts.
I'm saying that we should have no more to fear from a machine that lacks ethical constraints than we should a human being who lacks said constraints...
Except the machine may be exponentially smarter and able to replicate with extreme speed.
AI is ultimately intelligence that happens to be artificial instead of natural, and is no more worrisome about the fact that it doesn't have millions of years of evolution behind it as prosthetic limbs, no matter how advanced or sophisticated they are likely to become, are problematic for amputees.
That's a poor metaphor since prosthetic limbs fulfil a relatively simple task with simple constraints.
A much better metaphor might be artificial vs natural weapons. Natural weapons include fists, feet, and teeth. Artificial include knifes, guns, bombs, and nukes. It's clear that artificial weapons change things significantly.
As I said, we will always have much more to fear from the human beings that control such advanced technology than the technology itself.
They're a risk too but humans are much better understood as an intelligent entity.
This notion is routinely spouted by people who express fears about AI, but it irrationally elevates the concept of so-called "ethical constraints" to being some mystical property of natural intelligence that is apparently somehow actually separate from it, and somehow unlikely to exist in artificial intelligence when there isn't any reason to think that it should be, or that it is likely to be.
We will have much more to fear from humans who might use AI to further their own agendas than we would from AI itself.
Huh? I'm having a little trouble parsing. You seem to be claiming that what we consider ethics are both integrally linked to our intelligence and that they are going to exist in artificial intelligence? (It actually looks like you say they're unlikely to exist in AI, but I think that would hurt your point).
"Ethics" as we define them, but more broadly every action we take that isn't completely rational, is likely a product of evolution and culture, hardwired into what we consider our intelligence. There's no reason to think AI would naturally have these characteristics, nor that we could easily replicate them if we wished.
We simply don't understand how a highly intelligent AI would think, for instance is desire or want a fundamental characteristic of intelligence or just intelligence as its evolved? What if we make a mind that doesn't have a comparable characteristic, what does it do?
When you break it down it shows you were you have a problem and gives you some detail so you can intelligently analyize the numbers.
Your number is not useful for intelligent analysis. It exists merely as a mindless shock number to confuse peasants.
I'm not a peasant. And I'm now done entirely talking about this number. Bring it up in any capacity and i'll just ignore it. I don't even want to talk about your opinion of the nature of the number.
You want to understand the numbers better read the papers. The point is to capture more of the externalities of the conflict, it may be imprecise but it's a completely legitimate measure. Ignore it and you're not having a serious discussion.
The Iranians for example think they're going to join the US and Russians as big boys at the table with their nukes.
No they don't, they think they'll deter a potential first strike by Israel, and achieve some additional prestige in the Middle East.
As to allying with dictators or opposing democracies... where have I said that that is the basis by which I determine friend or enemy? You're not making sense. You imply I do not choose my enemies carefully and then when I call you on it you say that I will not ally with certain types of governments and I will sometimes support other types of governments. And? Why is this strategically relevant to me?
Why do I care if a country is democratic or not from a military strategic perspective? You're projecting your own ideology and morality on me. While I believe in freedom and democracy etc... I am not bound to prioritize it in strategic matters. My priority there is the well being of my own people. if allying with a dictator to assist British and European industrial needs during the Cold War helps allies resist Soviet pressure then why wouldn't I do that?
So you're no longer arguing for US interventions based on doing good for those people?
Consider the difference between North Korea and South Korea. We could have saved lives in the war by letting the north dominate the south as well. In your mind this would have been worth it? Should we have allowed that or were the civilian deaths acceptable given the outcome?
You're damned no matter what you say because your entire moral framework is naive.
If you say the North Koreans should have been allowed to dominate the south you are saying that we should never fight against anything... including fascism. So the Nazis etc should have just been allowed to take what they want. Fighting them after all cost civilian lives.
But you're also damned if you say we should fight them because it fatally undermines your position that the civilian deaths means we can't go to war.
Your entire position is goofy.
I never argued that you can never intervene because of the total casualty counts, I argued that it raises the bar.
The Korean War was justifiable on those grounds, the additional death and suffering from doing nothing would have dwarfed the consequences of the act they did. Of course I have no idea how clear that was at the time.
As to ad hominems... I'm not going to get tied up in semantics. If you attempt to invalidate my position based on a baseless character assassination then I'm going to slap it aside and tell you to try something else. You say you don't want to do that? Okay... good. When you do it again, I'll remind you of your own words. Until then... I'll just leave it there.
I didn't say I didn't want to do it. I said I didn't do it.
Why is it the property owners reponsibility to go find and talk to the drone operator? The drone operator, on the other hand, knows where his toy is going so maybe HE should actually act like a responsible person and let the property owners know what he is doing ahead of time.
If he was doing something potentially invasive or that would legitimately cause the owner to worry.
If he's just flying in the area than you're effectively advocating the banning of drones in municipal areas. Even flying in your own backyard could potentially be looking out at the entire neighbourhood.
I wonder that the video and data didn't go up immediately. A couple of days is enough to edit the telemetry and video. Maybe they're honest, maybe they're not. However, it seems really unlikely that someone would be massively offended by a drone 70 meters up.
If they were going to file charges against anyone, it was really stupid for the police not to impound the drone as evidence.
It's a viral news story, are you really shocked the drone owner took a week to decide he wanted to talk to the media and give them a presentation?
Heck, maybe he has a job and simply didn't have time until the weekend.
Vice president Cheney shot a man in the face with birdshot. It barely broke the skin. And the victim was 78 years old. Skin gets easier to tear as we get older.
Though Cheney usually hangs out with fellow lizard folk and their skin is far more robust.
And no less, for that matter.
There is nothing inherent to being "artificial" that should cause intelligence to be necessarily more hostile to mankind than a natural intelligence is, so while the idea might make for intriguing science fiction, I am of the opinion that many people who express serious concerns that there may be any real danger caused by it are allowing their imaginations to overrule rational and coherent thoughts on the matter.
Except for several characteristics that are specific to artificial intelligence.
1) Natural intelligence doesn't really go above 200 IQ at it's absolute max. Artificial intelligence could potentially go far higher.
2) Complex natural intelligence replicates very slowly. Artificial intelligences could replicate in seconds.
3) Natural intelligence has certain weaknesses such as basic math, artificial intelligence will lack many of these weaknesses.
4) Natural intelligence has ethical constraints developed by millions of years of evolution and a highly developed education process, sociopaths are quite rare and usually harmless. We have no idea how to encode such an ethical system into an artificial intelligence.
It depends a lot on what the artificial intelligence looks like but we would be dealing with a fundamentally different kind of consciousness, it could be innocuous or extremely dangerous.
To clarify my point: The article mentions Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steven Hawking. What do they all have in common? They are not AI researchers. The author of the book is a philosophy professor. They are all talking about and making predictions in a field that they aren't experts in. Yes, they are all smart people, but I see them doing more harm than good by raising alarm when they themselves aren't an authority on the subject. An alarm that isn't shared with the experts in the field.
To be fair the AI researches aren't experts in strong AI either, they're qualified to say we're not there yet, but they can't really say how far off "there" is because they don't know.
As to whether or not I'd count my own dead. Of course I would. I'd count them seperately though. I'm not rolling all the numbers together.
I want a number for my own dead.
I want a number for enemy dead.
I want a number of civilians I killed.
I want a number of civilians the enemy killed.
And you might as well throw out some estimates of how many 'excessive deaths" happened MINUS the above numbers. Though I warn you that I"m going to take that stat with fucking bags of rock salt.
Why? What does it even matter? If I go through the trouble of generating those numbers are you going to think differently if they achieve some threshhold?
As to your statement that you're not moralizing. Okay. Any attempt to morally judge US actions in this thread going forward is going to pointed at and I'm going to ask why you're doing it.
Moralizing and making moral judgments are different things.
As to the US not directly fighting the Russians and Chinese in vietname. Debatable. Absent Russian and Chinese support the Vietcong would not have been a credible resistance. There was a vibrant supply network. And there was also intelligence provided to them by the Russians and all sorts of other stuff. All of which ignores the point that we were directly fighting the Chinese in Korea and we didn't nuke them. What is more, in Korea we also engaged Russian pilots with some frequency and that didn't lead to nuclear war either.
With the exception of the claims of engaging with Russian pilots (which I hadn't heard of before) none of those things count as direct fighting.
No one wants a nuclear war... nukes are vastly over rated for their utility in diplomacy. Do you find the French to be formidable military powers? They have nukes. And no one cares.
Depends on the objectives the groups is trying to achieve.
This implies that people I deem enemy are done arbitrarily and unreasonably and without due consideration. That's not an argument I've seen you even attempt to make. And here you are presuming. Rejected.
It's done with more bias and prejudice than you realize. In the Middle East the US regularly supports theocratic dictators but overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government. It's not random but alternate interests play a large role.
And as to your statement that I don't consider collateral damage, this is obviously a very very stupid strawman because I made it clear repeatedly that my people have invested our blood and treasure into avoiding collateral damage. Name any other country in history that has taken the same pains to limit collateral damage.
You're essentially claiming that because you put due diligence into avoiding killing civilians during a military operation or drone strike that you don't have moral culpability for their deaths. But you're not adequately considering those civilian deaths as a factor before starting the conflict.
And as to your statement that I don't consider collateral damage, this is obviously a very very stupid strawman because I made it clear repeatedly that my people have invested our blood and treasure into avoiding collateral damage. Name any other country in history that has taken the same pains to limit collateral damage.
Try.
You instantly fail. And from this you presume I don't care?
It's a weird request since no developed country in recent history has been involved in as many conflicts.
But I'd say all the countries that are counselling the US to not go to war are giving greater care for limiting collateral damage, they're making that request even though they don't bear any of the costs for going to war themselves.
To the contrary, you know I care which is why you're trying to pull my heart strings on the issue. You know damn fucking well I care. I simply reject yo
No, it isn't the lowest number... it is the number of people we killed.
Your number includes people the Taliban killed and people that neither side killed.
I'm not accepting it. And if I see that number cited again in this discussion I'm going to ignore it.
I reject it.
It's the number of additional people that died because of the conflict. If there was no conflict they wouldn't have died.
In fact you just eliminated your argument against autonomous weapons as well. Because if in choosing your course of action you aren't willing to consider people who were killed by the other side they you're not going to consider your own soldiers killed by the enemy. You can't count all the secondary benefits of US military actions without counting the costs!!
As to your argument about unintended consequences, you're attempting to moralize the issue. Moralizing requires intent.
Moralizing requires me to actually moralize. Show me where I moralized.
Will we go to WW3 over Latvia? Funny question. Will Russia? Why do people think nukes are going to fly in a proxy war? Did the US nuke Russia or China in vietnam? We didn't nuke China during the Korean war even though some of our generals REALLY wanted to.
You weren't directly fighting China or Russia in vietnam.
No... there's no WW3 response in Latvia... either from the US or Russia. Russia has said that if pressed by superior conventional forces they reserve the option to use tactical nuclear weapons to break enemy formations. While the US takes the threat seriously, we also have made it known that if he does that it will be an escalation of hostilities that will be met with proportional responses. We have lot of conventional explosives that rival small nukes.
And then they escalate back and you have a Nuclear holocaust. It's not guaranteed nor even most most likely outcome which is part of the problem because Putin thinks he can win a limited Nuclear exchange against a small European nation without drawing a major response.
As to me sounding like an extremist... define what that means. baseless insult are of no value. I could as easily respond that you sound like a space hamster from Neptune who is plotting to steal our peanuts and fresh broccoli.
You're claiming that anyone whom you deem an enemy should die and you're unwilling to consider the cost of collateral damage such actions may incur.
To me that's extreme unnecessarily damaging actions to achieve an objective, ie an extremist.
Your position is an ad hominem. You say because you are X you are wrong. Rejected.
Backwards.
Ad hominem would be if I said your positions were wrong because you were an extremist, what I said is your positions are extremist and you now sound like an extremist.
As to direct conflict causalities being an over simplification... its what we did. What happens when you do what we did in some rube goldberg butterfly effect statistic is not something we have any control over so I'm not going to feel responsible for it.
You did it because it's easy to measure and it's the lowest number.
And the fact that a war could severely destabilize a county is the most predictable consequence ever, the party starting the war absolutely bears responsibility. It's the most basic "you broke it you bought it".
Moral judgement require intent. So you're citing a lot of deaths of people we didn't kill, didn't intend to kill, were killed by our enemies, etc and I think you're doing that just because you want a big number to play pathos games with me on.
The whole crux of the argument is over unintended consequences!
I don't find it to be intellectually honest. Use a number that more closely approximates what we ACTUALLY did not what happened to people we didn't kill but rather who we actually killed.
You don't think the US bears any moral culpability for people who die because they attack a country and cause mass instability and you should only count directly intended casualties.
Yet at the same time you're claiming the US is justified in launching conflicts because they're imposing Western hegemony. And why is Western hegemony good? Because it imposes a particular brand of stability.
And you're accusing me of being intellectually dishonest?
As to nato expansion not necessarily being the right move... and what is? What I find the most annoying about this argument is that you're not owning any course of action. You're basically just undermining and gainsaying things. Which is fine if you're going somewhere. But if you're just shitting all over people without offering an alternative then I don't find the argument to be compelling.
Back the creation of a pact of ex-Warsaw nations minus Russia.
They don't look like a Western expansion so Russia is less paranoid, and as a group they can make believable claims that they will go to war against Russia to defend eachother (is the US going to start WWIII to defend Latvia?).
You do not want us to take more causalities. I say this because I do not want my people to die and because I do not want my people to hate. You have no respect for the life of my people or our souls. But... consider what we will become if we are full of blinding rage? We are not a stupid people. We are not poor. We are not foolish. Get us mad enough and we could rape the world.
Getting us that mad is not in your interest. You think we are unreasonable now? Think again. If the terrorist shit doesn't stop we're going to be frothing. Our rage will turn into black hatred... and then we'll kill. Not to make peace. Not to end war... to kill and destroy.
You honestly sound like an extremist, I would not trust you with autonomous weapons because I feel you'd use them without restraint trying to force change via military threat.
Plain crap. You know not what you are talking about. I've spent years there working as an aid worker and you assessment of the situation on the ground is laughable in its naivete. The reason it is hard to develop a country is because the governments are kleptocracies in almost every case. You analysis is typical lefty conspiracy thinking.
There are countries in Africa where all the citizens belong to the same tribe. And still there are problems.
I mean come on where do you get your information? The Onion?
In your experience why are the government kleptocracies? (not a rhetorical/combatitive question, I'm genuinely curious about your perspective)
I don't how many times I have to make it clear to you that i'm not going to talk about iraq because its a fucking whine and I don't find it useful on the issue of general US foreign policy or geopolitics.
I wasn't talking about Iraq!!
Yes I mentioned it at the end of my last post but the vast majority was about other topics.
Your 250k number was mostly talking about Iraq so far as I know and the methodology on that number is a fucking joke as well. But you know what... I'm not talking about it.
Hmm, what did I say again?
"Afghanistan there's possibly in the range of 250K deaths, and a lot of the country is still under Taliban rule."
So that number is specifically about Afghanistan, your own source that contradicted you was about Afghanistan, the only time I said Iraq was in explaining that I'd already talked about a similar number for that war.
As to excessive deaths... I don't find this to be a useful statistic because it conflates all deaths into one number. Its more complicated than that and I don't appreciate over simplifications.
But taking only direct conflict casualties is a massive oversimplification.
How can you possibly imagine that destabilizing a country doesn't cause excess deaths? How can you ignore that cost when launching a war?
As to NATO expansions, look at what happened to countries under Russia's sway versus our own? I have very little sympathy for the Russians whining about people leaving their sphere of influence. It isn't merely the US and Russia to consider but the people caught between. The Eastern Europeans HATE the Russians. Consider what Poland etc could be today if they had not suffered under Soviet domination? The Russians can frankly go fuck themselves on the issue with a rake. Their management of their terroritory has been incompetent for generations. Look at Russia itself. The country should be extremely rich. Vast natural resources, an impressive industrial base, a generally well educated population, and they're geographically positioned between the biggest markets in the world.
All that is completely true.
But it doesn't mean that a NATO expansion was the right move. If you try to wave a magic wand and make the world a better place you run a very serious risk of making it worse.
As to your desire for Americans to die in wars... No. You can die. Your children can die. Your people can die. I am not sacrificing my people. If you want to sacrifice yours that is your own business. Some cultures worship death and desire it for themselves and everyone. My society desires life. We want to live. I will not send my people to war with inferior weapons because people like you feel it is unfair for us to have such an overwhelming advantage. War isn't about fairness. War is about killing the enemy. Crushing him. Bring him low, looking into his eyes, and watching him break. That is war. And robotic weapons service that function. If you feel that countries without our technological sophistication shouldn't engage in war with us... I agree. Doing so is idiotic on their part. It isn't a fair fight. They can't win. So they just shouldn't. Takes two to tango.
So you love life yet you really want your enemies to die.
Autonomous weapons are kind of like nukes, nice for your side but terrifying for the other side.
When the Western hegemony drops BILLIONS will die. Billions. Civilizations will be snuffed out in days to months. As the global trade networks collapse the global economy will collapse and any country that isn't self sufficient for food will starve. England for example... they rely on food imports. To blockade England is to defeat it... for if she does not surrender she shall starve. And England isn't alone in that. many countries rely on the global trade networks to survive. Just to EAT.
This just sounds like Fox news paranoia, I
quote tags would be so much easier to read.
""No I didn't, I was doing it in the context of the Iraq war where they're understood to be excess deaths.""
excess deaths?
First, we're not talking about Iraq. I told you that.
I wasn't talking about Iraq, I was referring back to a previous statement I'd used that happened to include Iraq.
Second, we're talking about Afghanistan.
Third, "excess deaths" what does that mean?
Exactly what it sounds like, the additional deaths that occurred because of the conflict.
Fourth, your cited kill number did not include context, it did not separate out people that would have died if there were no war, the actual causality figures are actually highly estimated and no one really knows what they are, you conflated people killed by the enemy with people killed by the US, you conflated soldier deaths with civilians, deaths caused by famine or disease were conflated with deaths from weapons, etc etc etc.
It's approximate, which is why there are large ranges given in the estimates (I've actually chosen conservative ones), but wars can certainly cause famine and disease and those deaths matter.
Anyway, we've come to the part of the discussion where I have to start looking things up.
In regards to the Afghan war, wikipedia puts the number at:
26 thousand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Alright lets look at that source:
During the war in Afghanistan (2001–present), over 26,000 civilian deaths due to war-related violence have been documented;[1]
Hey! It's right there in the first sentence! That's actually a pretty good sentence.
29,900 civilians have been wounded.[1] Over 91,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are recorded to have been killed in the conflict, and the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may include an additional 360,000 people.[1] These numbers do not include those who have died in Pakistan.
So your source gives a bigger number than I do!
Counter the USSR's attempt to conquer europe and the world actually.
We did what we could to make the Russians feel comfortable.
The NATO expansion was a tough call, I might have actually done the same, but it would have been very threatening to Russia.
Look how the US reacted to potential communist states in South America. How do you think the US would have felt if they joined the Warsaw pact, if Canada started discussing it?
The opposition to the anti ICBM technology was also taken as bad faith. Why does Russia want the US to stop developing it unless Russia wants to intimidate the first world with nuclear weapons?
Because it changes the equation from MAD, where no one will fire their nukes, to the prospect of a winnable nuclear exchange. And that tech won't stay with the US, it will spread to places like India and Pakistan.
You don't know what the internal dialog is... you just know what is in the media. Furthermore, when has the US ever talked about invading a country like it was no big deal?
Really?
Granted that was a bombing campaign not an invasion, but anyone who was paying attention heard the neocons itching for an Iran invasion to follow up Iraq and the rumour is that it was only the higher ups in the Pentagon that managed to talk them down.
That's how EVERY country in the middle east got its current territory. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, etc. Not one of them got it any other way.
I don't know about others but Iran's borders have been stable for a very long time, and I think the others were fairly stat
So at the end of the day: if these populations wish to enter the first world, the first step to take is to assert their ownership of the land they occupy on the continent, decide on their own borders
Bad borders are bad, but trying to redraw borders? That can be much, much worse.
One of the big rules in Africa (and pretty much everywhere) is you don't change national borders because that introduces massive stakes and is a recipe for wars and rebellion since every group decides they want their own country comprising of every bit of land they think their group is entitled to.
or (like other countries in the first world), abandon tribal identity so they progress on to greater things like indoor plumbing and medical research.
That's the solution but I think it's far from simple. Look at the US, there are two parties sharing a white Christian base and the political system has been deadlocked and dysfunctional for half a decade.
What do you think would happen if half the country was Protestant and the other half Muslim, or New Jersey was 50+% Italian descent, Michigan 50+% Nigerian, Texas 50+% Mexican, etc. Getting people to cooperate in a political system is not simple.
I'm sure that some people will still blame "colonialism", although that hasn't even been an issue for generations now.
Even then, we've seen many other regions, like most of Europe, China, Japan, South Korea and even Vietnam, go from total devastation due to war to modern societies capable of producing such research, over roughly the same period of time. Why isn't Africa progressing when so many other nations, often with much fewer resources and far less support, and coming from a much worse situation, managed to turn things around?
Colonialism is still a huge issue because the colonial borders are still in place, the borders were designed to keep them weak by putting rival tribes in the same country.
In Europe and Asia a government can get reasonable levels of support across most of the country because they figure they're all on the same side, so you get investment in the future and a generally functional society.
But in Africa it's really hard to develop a country when a government can never get real support outside of their ethnic group, everyone ends up playing a zero-sum game and you end up with corruption and violence. All that's going to fix it is a lot of time until African's start thinking of themselves as primarily members of their country and not of a tribe.
You're implying that we just killed a quarter million people with no context, reason, and that we did so intentionally.
No I didn't, I was doing it in the context of the Iraq war where they're understood to be excess deaths.
You're also attributing all deaths to our actions when the responsibility has to be spread around to include the taliban, various terrorist sponsors, and natural forces like famine etc that kill people without any direct human volition.
I glibly dismiss the question because it isn't intellectually valid.
If you want to talk about death tolls in war zones we can do that. But laying all the death's at our feet like we intentionally killed all those people, had no reason to in, and we are solely responsible is invalid.
It's a standard methodology. Over the period X deaths would normally be expected instead Y occur, Z=X-Y is roughly the number of excess deaths attributable to your actions. You're not as nearly guilty as someone who pulled the trigger but in a debate of whether an act contributed to the greater good the fact remains that Z lives were lost due to that act is completely relevant.
Wrong, we tried to actually rehabilitate Russia. We would not have funded their space program or made so many diplomatic gestures if we wanted to treat them like an enemy.
There was even serious talk about inviting them into NATO.
As to surrounding them with enemies... all we wanted to do was secure the self determination of past victims of their aggression. Our intention was not to threaten Russia but to give other nations a chance at freedom, modernity, and prosperity.
NATO was an alliance formed to counter Russia, it's easy to see why inviting former Warsaw pact members into NATO would be viewed as a hostile act.
So your suggestion when NATO members invoke our aid to deal with a relevant operation in their territory and put diplomatic pressure on the US to provide logistical and tactical support... we should do nothing?
It's not just the conflict itself but the internal dialogue. You don't think other countries are listening when presidential candidates talk about invading other countries like it's no big deal?
As to the legitimacy of Israel... it is no less legitimate than any other power in the middle east.
I didn't say it was illegitimate, I said that its creation was a legitimate target for criticism as a very ugly form of colonialism (lets treat the land owned by these brown people like they're not even there and let some white Europeans settle it). And their current settlement policy is so indefensible I don't know that I've actually seen anyone ever defend it.
What nation do you hail from?
Canada
As to innocent people getting killed in a war... that is not unique to the drone strike.
As to collateral damage ratios... we spend more money and effort avoiding collateral damage than any other power in world history.
In WWII the axis powers inflicted a 3-1 civilian-military death ratio, and that includes the holocaust.
The 10-1 ratios in drone strikes that I cited, which are the only decent estimate I could find, are not something to brag about.
And even if they were lower than usual they're only acceptable if the acts themselves are necessary, I find it dubious that these actors in other countries are particularly legitimate terrorist threats.
What is also plain to me is that our heart strings are being played upon here. You say what you think will effect us emotionally and psychologically.
Were I a soulless monster you would not be telling me these things. You cite civilian causalities because you know it effects me and you know I care.
See, I am aware of myself. I don't cite this becuase I don't care but because I make a point of stepping outside myself a
""Afghanistan there's possibly in the range of 250K deaths, and a lot of the country is still under Taliban rule.""
I'm not seeing a problem.
Seriously? A quarter million dead people and you don't see a problem? I'm going to hope that's just short hand for "oh it's terrible but it's worth the cost for the part of the country that's more free than before".
This presupposes that the Russian empire would not seek to restore past territory at some point in the future.
There's other ways to protect against that, principally not treating Russia like an enemy to contained.
The assumption was that it was safe to treat Russia like a potential enemy and surround then with NATO forces because they wouldn't dare thwart American power. Clearly that was not the case, Putin turned hostile, and Ukraine is now paying the price.
That war was predominantly desired by the Europeans and not the Americans. Our assistance was invoked by the French etc because they lack the logistics to project power even so far as north africa without our support.
I'm not sure what you're laying at our feet here. What did you want the US to do?
Possibly not get involved.
I admit it's not easy to see an atrocities and simply let it progress, I was partially in favour of a Libya intervention and I'd probably decide the same way over again, but helping is a lot harder than dropping some bombs so the "good guys" win and it's hard to see what the destabilization might do.
Read the rhetoric coming out of people that are highly critical of US middle east policy and it often gets anti Semitic. When it comes from middle easterners it is guaranteed to get anti Semitic but shockingly you'll see that out of French and English people as well. Its kind of sad.
There's definitely antisemitism, though it's ironic that you're mentioning it after that response to 250k dead Afghanis.
But there's also a lot of very legitimate criticism of how the Israeli state came to exist and how it's acted over the last 40 years, especially with regards to the settlements, that has nothing to do with antisemitism.
As to your experience... I'll refer you to your line about people not understanding their own misdeeds. You don't really know why you're saying things sometimes. You don't see the layers of influence and supposition in it all.
Possibly, but so far I'm doubtful you have better insight into my motivations on this subject.
As to drone strikes... its a weapon and a tool. No more capable of creating a terrorist than a pistol shot to the back of someone's head. They're not going away. Get use to them.
As to the notion that killing one terrorist leads to 5 more. Not in our experience. They tend to come from places that have no family connection to the person being killed. The reason person X becomes a terrorist is almost never because we killed his friend or his brother or something. Typically they're radicalized somewhere and they would have come or done something no matter what because they were radicalized.
I'm not talking about the dead terrorists, I'm talking about all the innocent civilians getting killed around them.
Would you find it acceptable to kill ten Americans to kill one terrorist? There's a very clear message that the lives of those Muslims don't really matter, it's not hard to see how that message would create a lot more Muslim terrorists.
With so much moving to mobile devices and applications I wonder about the state of open source on those platforms and how developers can make a living while writing open source mobile apps.
The ads and sales that most mobile apps use to generate revenue aren't really an option for open source apps. Does that mean developers have to rely on a donations or are there other ways they can fund their work?
Ok weird thing, I thought I had sent the AC post but that was actually just some random AC. I got an email for your reply, it just brought up the thread, I saw your response to the AC and thought it was your response to me (I assumed I'd be logged out and posted AC).
Either way since you took time to respond to the AC I'll respond a bit on their behalf :)
As to gaining our "way" by using military force... first that doesn't go against our principles or we'd have talked to the Imperial Japanese and Nazis instead of bombing them into submission.
Actually you did mostly talk to them. The US came very late to both world wars. (though you did pretty much all the fighting against the Japanese).
But with Iran you engaged in the talk and it worked, you get a less hostile Iran with a lower chance of Nukes, the alternative was likely a Middle Eastern North Korea.
Furthermore, our "way" needs to be defined because there is this implication that we have some sort of secret or exclusive agenda that only profits us when really it is in support of the entire first world as defined by the original paradigm... aka our allies. This would include the entire EU, our middle eastern allies, our asian allies, our african allies, and our American allies. Our way is in the service of that interest which likely includes you. I don't know what country you're from but it is probably a first world country.
Canada, and I don't claim it's a secret agenda, it's just an observation that the US is a very bossy and aggressive country and diplomacy looks a lot like a demands for capitulation.
As to putting a gun against someone's head being anti democratic... our democracy didn't happen because we asked the British nicely to let us form a republic. We violently rebelled. This notion you're pushing that violence is inherently bad is simplistic and erroneous.
And being a Canadian we asked politely and got our freedom without any bloodshed :)
I'm not interested in talking about Iraq. Its a fucking whine at this point.
Sure, toss out Iraq.
Afghanistan there's possibly in the range of 250K deaths, and a lot of the country is still under Taliban rule.
The mid-2000 NATO expansion pissed off the Russians and is likely responsible for Putin's invasions of Georgia and Ukraine.
The Libya intervention brought about a civil war.
The US overthrew the moderate democratic rulers in Iran to install a dictator (which led to the Iranian revolution).
The US supported dictators over South America, supplied rebel groups and taught them how to torture.
The US is currently supporting dictators in the Middle East.
As to various nations not being happy with the US... the vast majority of that is either unhappiness that we stopped them from raping their neighbors or a mixture of envy/shame at someone being more powerful and a generous dose of ignorance as to how vital that power has been to the global status quo that everyone takes for granted.
Except in South America and the Middle East where the US supported the people who raped their neighbours
And his bias against the US was based on the belief that the US attacked Serbia for no reason in the Kosovo war and that his people were absolutely not genociding the Albanians.
The lesson there is people are blind to their own misdeeds.
Most of the anti US stuff boils down to something like that. And the thing is that the US gets that attitude no matter what we do. We go to war. People say they hate us. We don't go to war... and literally the same people say they hate us because we're not going to war.
Generally not in my experience. They want the US to be more cooperative and less dictorial with its influence. Drone strikes are a good example, you kill one terrorist and create five others.
As to the effectiveness of war... I disagree. War is extremely effective. Can politicians fuck it up after the military wins? Sure. Name something politicians can't fuck up? If you undermine the military victory by pulling forces out and abandoning the area after winning then... yeah... your victory isn't going to mean much because you've ceded all won territory by default to any other competing power which is likely to be the inevitable remnant of your enemy.
Beating armies is easy, the problem is when you have a population who doesn't really like you and doesn't share your objectives.
if the US had dropped the two atomic bombs on imperial japan and then just left... no occupation... no rewriting their constitution... no carefully sculpting their political environment for generations... then they could have just reverted immediately back to the imperial Japanese mindset.
Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. The fact Japan was very homogeneous helped.
And your citation of Vietnam or whatever else... you're ignoring that we won the battles and had the ability to dictate the nature of the societies but we ceded that by abandoning the area. Which was a political decision based on domestic political considerations and not a military decision.
You're assuming you had the ability to create the society, Vietnam isn't Japan and the Vietnamese may not have cooperated.
Ummm, ok?