= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
thomblake comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (334)
This is ironic. I wrote:
Then you wrote:
This happens to pixel-perfectly demonstrate my point about ethical blindness. Reread my quote again, then your quote, then mine, then yours again. Notice anything wrong? Anything missing?
You see, you omitted one pretty important group: everyone America calls "enemy combatants". If you think all of them are bad people and deserve to die, then you obviously don't get it. Repeat after me: America Starts Aggressive Wars. Then say it again because it's true and truth won't suffer from repetition. Say it as many times as you need to make it sink in, then come back and we will resume this discussion.
Also, this is definitely not the place to debate this, and you have to know a lot of people won't agree with you, so stop with the flamebait.
You don't even have to go as far as "America Starts Aggressive Wars" -- "Under the right conditions, America is capable of starting aggressive wars, and is more likely to do so if the cost of doing so is lowered."
Look, I get the "Politics is the Mind Killer" mantra, and I agree that it would be fruitless to start a debate about something like abortion here -- it comes down to definitions and conventions about what is moral.
But when something is actually, demonstrably, true, refusing to look at and examine the truth because it is painful to do so is not compelling. It doesn't even trigger most of the reasons in "politics is the mindkiller" -- both major U.S. Political parties are just fine with most of the examples. The only two teams that can credibly be put in opposition here are "U.S.A." and "Everyone else".
It is worth noting that to complete the argument someone needs to show that America starting aggressive wars is bad. The people starting such wars, it turns out, have their reasons.
[half-ironic] Yep. Some countries are just in desperate need a good ol' fashioned ass-kicking. [/half-ironic]
Why flamebait? I stated a very well-known fact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Power_Pack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Urgent_Fury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Just_Cause
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_sponsored_regime_change
ETA: to tell the truth, until I dug up that last Wikipedia page just now for purposes of argument, I still had no clear idea how much this happened. And give these people autonomous killer robots? In the name of developing Friendly Intelligence?
1) Politics is the mind killer, 2) Agree denotationally but not connotationally
Bay of Pigs? Really? How about nailing us on the Philippines while you're at it. :-)
It isn't like there aren't recent examples to choose from.
That's why. Folks will disagree that's something that the US does, and pointing to things the US might have done decades ago won't convince them. There's no way to even debate this point without going down a potentially mind-killing rabbit hole, and I find it hard to believe you weren't aware of this when you posted it.
In case you weren't aware of it: I live in the US, and I've talked to a number of ordinary folks and a number of scholarly folks about it, and I don't tend to encounter people who would grant that the US starts aggressive wars. You should be able to see why someone who thinks that would be angry and vocal about the accusation.
Ooh... I thought we were having a factual disagreement. I apologize. Maybe this won't work as flamebait here :-)