I'm not asking for a plausible motive, I'm asking you which of the two claims is the most parsimonious. Your theory still smells of special pleading, whereas simply saying "The Russians, who already are essentially waging war with Ukraine, have launched another kind of attack."
Why is it so fucking hard to imagine a belligerent in a conflict would use a cyberattack as part of an overall strategy to undermine their opponent? It's far more straightforward and likely that various versions of "The US attacked a friendly power to frame Russia and look good", which is the essence of your claim.
Surely you must see the stupidity of your claim, the complexity, and frankly, the pure lack of necessity. Why are people so keen to let the Russians off the hook at every opportunity, and find some bizarre and tortured logic to blame the US?
How many of them have these things? Go on, give me a percentage of people living in economic poverty who have these items. Surely you must have an actual statistic, right? I mean, you wouldn't just be making it up for effect, right?
You understand the concept of Occam's RAzor, right?
Which explanation is more parsimonious?
1. Russia waged a damaging cyberattack on Ukraine, a country it is already effectively at war with and which it has already annexed territory from. 2. The CIA waged a cyberattack on Ukraine, a country the United States is friendly, even allied with, causing Ukraine businesses considerable damage, to make the Russians look bad.
I want you to tell me which explanation is the more parsimonious.
The Obama Administration alluded to consequences at the time. A good many anti-Obama and pro-Russia types (there seem an unusual amount of both on here) seem to forget that everyone knew for months BEFORE the election that the Russians were trying to screw over the US election, and since then we've seen them do it in other Western countries.
I simply do not understand the willingness of some to condemn the United States and act like cheerleaders for Russia. Russia has been the West's enemy for decades, and even during the brief periods of reasonably good relations over the last few centuries, neither side has ever particularly trusted the other.
Because Russia would never try to screw around with the computers of a country that it has a) effectively invaded and b) already annexed a piece of its territory. Oh no, to suggest that is somehow to betray "political motivation."
Cyberwarfare isn't conventional warfare. It's not like you can run out of electrons. Russia has a group of hackers, and writing malware is a part of their job. When you think about how much it costs to keep the rebels armed and maintain an ununiformed Russia force in rebel areas of Ukraine, a cyberattack is so much bloody cheaper.
As to your explanation for your bizarre conspiracy theory, that really doesn't answer the question at all. You've come up with a very convoluted conspiracy whose only defense seems to be "I don't trust the three letter agencies." Well, I don't trust them either, but I trust conspiracy theories that fail Occam's Razor.
Russia has everything to gain by destabilizing Ukraine, whether that be militarily, or via fucking up their computers. Welcome to the face of modern warfare.
You are aware, I trust, that Ukraine and Russia are effectively at war, right? Why this need for convoluted conspiracy theories when the most parsimonious explanation is that Russia waged a cyberattack on Ukraine? Maybe Russia didn't give a flying fuck whether anyone could eventually decrypt the data or not, if hte point is just to cause damage. It's like asking "Why didn't they send in the Army Corp of Engineers to rebuild the bridge they just bombed to oblivion?" answer being, they just wanted to bomb the bridge to oblivion.
So I'm wrong and infantile, as you make clear, but don't explain how I'm wrong.
Trump rolled over losses, a perfectly legitimate way to reduce future taxes. In fact I never saw anything wrong with it and questioned why people were up in arms, since rolling over losses is something a great many people do at different income levels.
By the same token, if a company buys a company that is likely to incur losses going forward, why yes, that company may be able to take advantage of the losses. That to is a perfectly legitimate way to reduce taxes. So, in other words, if it is okay for Trump to take advantage of tax avoidance measures, then it's legitimate for Amazon to do the same, and if Trump has a problem with that, well guess what, he's the POTUS, so he can use his bully pulpit to demand Congress get rid of these tax reduction measures that he now apparently finds so very offensive.
Yes, and if Amazon did buy the Washington Post to take advantage of any losses, that's perfectly legitimate as well, not that that is actually what appears to be happening.
It took 14 months for Watergate to lead to Nixon's resignation. Why is it you think that this particular investigation should have such a shorter timeline?
The tax information we do have on Trump indicates that he has taken advantage of rolling over losses to reduce taxes, so, in reality, even if Amazon were doing what Trump said, Trump's done the same damned thing.
Just another bizarre outburst from the Tweeter-in-Chief
I think in some cases there's a streak of contrarianism. Contrarianism has its place, but only if it is matched with some actual ability to critique the model. Even among the skeptics who do have some ability to critique the science, like Spencer and Curry, you'll note that their so-called critiques end up in rather odd places like the Wall Street Journal, and they never seem to publish any of their devastating critiques where it actually counts; in primary and peer reviewed literature. In general, in any scientific discipline, researchers who avoid peer review for their more astonishing or hyperbolic claims are immediately suspect.
I think there are those who deny simply because they don't want to see their way of life change. I think these people probably know the reality, but cognitive dissonance allows them to function at a level whereby they can deny AGW, even as they know it's true. Others, I think, simply don't like that AGW's best solutions are going to require some sort of market intervention, so they're ideologically opposed. These are the people I often post the response "Do you really think the universe gives a damn about your political or economic views?" These ideological skeptics probably are a sub-category of the first group.
Then there are the likes of the Koch Brothers, powerful men who know damned well what's happening, but don't give a shit, and want to make as much money as they can while they can. Everyone knows fossil fuels' time is coming to an end. Oil prices are not rebounding, in part because the shale oil industry is basically in "pump out as much as you can while you can" mode, because they know perfectly well if that oil isn't pumped out of the ground in the next 10-20 years, it may never be pumped out of the ground. Better to make a marginal profit now, even if it means prices continue to crash. So these are the really nefarious people, the people who really don't give a shit what damage they do, just so long as they pad their pockets, so far them even the more sensible solution, which is some sort of carbon tax, directly interferes with profits, and thus must be attacked.
I see no evidence of your claim at all. I'm no fan of Trudeau, but the accusation seems as utterly absurd as claims by Liberals and the left that Harper was some sort of evangelical tyrant. Grow up. You can be against a politician's policies without resorting to infantile hyperbole.
Well, I'm up in Canada, so maybe it's different south of the border, but up here I've had meetings with Assistant Deputy Ministers, which are about two steps down from the political office-holder (the Cabinet Minister). I've had my disagreements with them, and certainly have felt they've made some decisions that I thought were, shall we say, less than optimal, but I've never seen evidence of them being bad or selfish people.
I can't say the same for some cabinet ministers (what Americans would call Secretaries), mind you. I've never directly interacted with anyone at the political level, but there have been or two whose actions I've seen that have lead to believe that if they're not outright sociopaths, then at least they're quite callous and bullying. There's an old joke in the Westminster tradition that the best cabinet minister is the cabinet minister who understands that it's not his job to micromanage his department. I have seen cabinet ministers who very much believed they had the knowledge and capability to do just that, and like a crappy CEO in a private setting, they can leave ruin and poor morale in their wake. Many years ago I saw one Ministry see an exodus of everyone from frontline public sector workers up to higher level civil servants start getting out, and that always suggests a department with very poor leadership.
That being said, I don't think even most politicians are sociopaths. I think they can get woefully out of touch with their constituents, and the problem here in Canada, as I'm sure it is in the US, is that voters will tend to vote based on team jersey in many cases rather than on anyone's record, so the same bad actors seem to be able to hang on to their jobs for a rather long time.
I'll be honest, I'm sure it's a character flaw on my part, but if the damned thing is near me, I'm going to end up using it, and as disabling Airplane Mode is pretty trivial, it would prove no barrier. The best solution for me is simply to avoid temptation entirely. I'll go into the office or somewhere else quiet, and leave the phone at home. If it isn't there, it can't tempt me.
More shitty moderation. How is this trolling. The parent tried to assert that he and his family's expertise in IT and engineering gives him some special ability to assess a fairly complex and interrelated set of scientific disciplines. The Salem Hypothesis, specifically, deals with the tendency of engineers to conflate their training and skill set with science, and more specifically this applies to the propensity for people who claim to be scientists who reject biological evolution to actually be engineers. I don't think it's a stretch to extend the Salem Hypothesis to other people who try to make fallacious appeals to their own authority to attack scientific theories inevitably being engineers.
I've had a lot of interactions with bureaucrats and the like, and generally, no, I don't see much sign of sociopathy. There's certainly a kind of antipathy that creeps into a public service, and of course momentum means that things will tend to go in the same direction regardless of what the people at the top want.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not asking for a plausible motive, I'm asking you which of the two claims is the most parsimonious. Your theory still smells of special pleading, whereas simply saying "The Russians, who already are essentially waging war with Ukraine, have launched another kind of attack."
Why is it so fucking hard to imagine a belligerent in a conflict would use a cyberattack as part of an overall strategy to undermine their opponent? It's far more straightforward and likely that various versions of "The US attacked a friendly power to frame Russia and look good", which is the essence of your claim.
Surely you must see the stupidity of your claim, the complexity, and frankly, the pure lack of necessity. Why are people so keen to let the Russians off the hook at every opportunity, and find some bizarre and tortured logic to blame the US?
Indeed, equity!=debt
That didn't answer my question
How many of them have these things? Go on, give me a percentage of people living in economic poverty who have these items. Surely you must have an actual statistic, right? I mean, you wouldn't just be making it up for effect, right?
Yes, Europe has it so rough, with better health outcomes, and even better infant mortality rates, for chrissakes.
I doubt Uber has $7 that isn't money it owes to the banks and investors.
You understand the concept of Occam's RAzor, right?
Which explanation is more parsimonious?
1. Russia waged a damaging cyberattack on Ukraine, a country it is already effectively at war with and which it has already annexed territory from.
2. The CIA waged a cyberattack on Ukraine, a country the United States is friendly, even allied with, causing Ukraine businesses considerable damage, to make the Russians look bad.
I want you to tell me which explanation is the more parsimonious.
The Obama Administration alluded to consequences at the time. A good many anti-Obama and pro-Russia types (there seem an unusual amount of both on here) seem to forget that everyone knew for months BEFORE the election that the Russians were trying to screw over the US election, and since then we've seen them do it in other Western countries.
I simply do not understand the willingness of some to condemn the United States and act like cheerleaders for Russia. Russia has been the West's enemy for decades, and even during the brief periods of reasonably good relations over the last few centuries, neither side has ever particularly trusted the other.
Because Russia would never try to screw around with the computers of a country that it has a) effectively invaded and b) already annexed a piece of its territory. Oh no, to suggest that is somehow to betray "political motivation."
How was the attack poor? Sure, they didn't make any money, but they fucked up a lot of Ukraine businesses. Mission accomplished, I'd say.
Meant to say:
"Well, I don't trust them either, but I trust conspiracy theories that fail Occam's Razor *EVEN LESS*."
Cyberwarfare isn't conventional warfare. It's not like you can run out of electrons. Russia has a group of hackers, and writing malware is a part of their job. When you think about how much it costs to keep the rebels armed and maintain an ununiformed Russia force in rebel areas of Ukraine, a cyberattack is so much bloody cheaper.
As to your explanation for your bizarre conspiracy theory, that really doesn't answer the question at all. You've come up with a very convoluted conspiracy whose only defense seems to be "I don't trust the three letter agencies." Well, I don't trust them either, but I trust conspiracy theories that fail Occam's Razor.
Russia has everything to gain by destabilizing Ukraine, whether that be militarily, or via fucking up their computers. Welcome to the face of modern warfare.
You are aware, I trust, that Ukraine and Russia are effectively at war, right? Why this need for convoluted conspiracy theories when the most parsimonious explanation is that Russia waged a cyberattack on Ukraine? Maybe Russia didn't give a flying fuck whether anyone could eventually decrypt the data or not, if hte point is just to cause damage. It's like asking "Why didn't they send in the Army Corp of Engineers to rebuild the bridge they just bombed to oblivion?" answer being, they just wanted to bomb the bridge to oblivion.
There's a smoking gun, mate. Whether there's sufficient proof to tie it directly to Trump is something that we'll have to wait and see.
You know, Nixon's supporters were saying the same fucking thing, right up until he got into Airforce One and flew off to California.
So I'm wrong and infantile, as you make clear, but don't explain how I'm wrong.
Trump rolled over losses, a perfectly legitimate way to reduce future taxes. In fact I never saw anything wrong with it and questioned why people were up in arms, since rolling over losses is something a great many people do at different income levels.
By the same token, if a company buys a company that is likely to incur losses going forward, why yes, that company may be able to take advantage of the losses. That to is a perfectly legitimate way to reduce taxes. So, in other words, if it is okay for Trump to take advantage of tax avoidance measures, then it's legitimate for Amazon to do the same, and if Trump has a problem with that, well guess what, he's the POTUS, so he can use his bully pulpit to demand Congress get rid of these tax reduction measures that he now apparently finds so very offensive.
Yes, and if Amazon did buy the Washington Post to take advantage of any losses, that's perfectly legitimate as well, not that that is actually what appears to be happening.
It took 14 months for Watergate to lead to Nixon's resignation. Why is it you think that this particular investigation should have such a shorter timeline?
The tax information we do have on Trump indicates that he has taken advantage of rolling over losses to reduce taxes, so, in reality, even if Amazon were doing what Trump said, Trump's done the same damned thing.
Just another bizarre outburst from the Tweeter-in-Chief
I think in some cases there's a streak of contrarianism. Contrarianism has its place, but only if it is matched with some actual ability to critique the model. Even among the skeptics who do have some ability to critique the science, like Spencer and Curry, you'll note that their so-called critiques end up in rather odd places like the Wall Street Journal, and they never seem to publish any of their devastating critiques where it actually counts; in primary and peer reviewed literature. In general, in any scientific discipline, researchers who avoid peer review for their more astonishing or hyperbolic claims are immediately suspect.
I think there are those who deny simply because they don't want to see their way of life change. I think these people probably know the reality, but cognitive dissonance allows them to function at a level whereby they can deny AGW, even as they know it's true. Others, I think, simply don't like that AGW's best solutions are going to require some sort of market intervention, so they're ideologically opposed. These are the people I often post the response "Do you really think the universe gives a damn about your political or economic views?" These ideological skeptics probably are a sub-category of the first group.
Then there are the likes of the Koch Brothers, powerful men who know damned well what's happening, but don't give a shit, and want to make as much money as they can while they can. Everyone knows fossil fuels' time is coming to an end. Oil prices are not rebounding, in part because the shale oil industry is basically in "pump out as much as you can while you can" mode, because they know perfectly well if that oil isn't pumped out of the ground in the next 10-20 years, it may never be pumped out of the ground. Better to make a marginal profit now, even if it means prices continue to crash. So these are the really nefarious people, the people who really don't give a shit what damage they do, just so long as they pad their pockets, so far them even the more sensible solution, which is some sort of carbon tax, directly interferes with profits, and thus must be attacked.
I see no evidence of your claim at all. I'm no fan of Trudeau, but the accusation seems as utterly absurd as claims by Liberals and the left that Harper was some sort of evangelical tyrant. Grow up. You can be against a politician's policies without resorting to infantile hyperbole.
Well, I'm up in Canada, so maybe it's different south of the border, but up here I've had meetings with Assistant Deputy Ministers, which are about two steps down from the political office-holder (the Cabinet Minister). I've had my disagreements with them, and certainly have felt they've made some decisions that I thought were, shall we say, less than optimal, but I've never seen evidence of them being bad or selfish people.
I can't say the same for some cabinet ministers (what Americans would call Secretaries), mind you. I've never directly interacted with anyone at the political level, but there have been or two whose actions I've seen that have lead to believe that if they're not outright sociopaths, then at least they're quite callous and bullying. There's an old joke in the Westminster tradition that the best cabinet minister is the cabinet minister who understands that it's not his job to micromanage his department. I have seen cabinet ministers who very much believed they had the knowledge and capability to do just that, and like a crappy CEO in a private setting, they can leave ruin and poor morale in their wake. Many years ago I saw one Ministry see an exodus of everyone from frontline public sector workers up to higher level civil servants start getting out, and that always suggests a department with very poor leadership.
That being said, I don't think even most politicians are sociopaths. I think they can get woefully out of touch with their constituents, and the problem here in Canada, as I'm sure it is in the US, is that voters will tend to vote based on team jersey in many cases rather than on anyone's record, so the same bad actors seem to be able to hang on to their jobs for a rather long time.
I'll be honest, I'm sure it's a character flaw on my part, but if the damned thing is near me, I'm going to end up using it, and as disabling Airplane Mode is pretty trivial, it would prove no barrier. The best solution for me is simply to avoid temptation entirely. I'll go into the office or somewhere else quiet, and leave the phone at home. If it isn't there, it can't tempt me.
More shitty moderation. How is this trolling. The parent tried to assert that he and his family's expertise in IT and engineering gives him some special ability to assess a fairly complex and interrelated set of scientific disciplines. The Salem Hypothesis, specifically, deals with the tendency of engineers to conflate their training and skill set with science, and more specifically this applies to the propensity for people who claim to be scientists who reject biological evolution to actually be engineers. I don't think it's a stretch to extend the Salem Hypothesis to other people who try to make fallacious appeals to their own authority to attack scientific theories inevitably being engineers.
I've had a lot of interactions with bureaucrats and the like, and generally, no, I don't see much sign of sociopathy. There's certainly a kind of antipathy that creeps into a public service, and of course momentum means that things will tend to go in the same direction regardless of what the people at the top want.
A good example of the Salem Hypothesis in action.