gwern comments on A Parable of Elites and Takeoffs - Less Wrong

23 Post author: gwern 30 June 2014 11:04PM

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Comment author: gwern 07 July 2014 10:16:24PM 0 points [-]

Willingness to incur losses is a vital part of diplomacy. The fact that this can facilitate bad things doesn't change that. It's like responding to the claim that a rifle is a vital part of deer hunting by saying "Not if you shoot your foot rather the deer".

Indeed. If you suck as much at shooting a rifle as the USA sucks at diplomacy in the Middle East, you should leave it at home.

The inspection regime was part of the sanctions imposed against Iraq.

The sanctions did not require the USA invasion which has been so disastrous.

There were people predicting bad consequences, and there were people predicting good consequences. Looking at hindsight doesn't make it predictable.

If it was such a good idea, why did it take the patriotic fervor of 9/11 and a case about WMDs based on lies and exaggerations to convince the USA to invade Iraq? Because it was a predictably bad idea which a lot of people were skeptical of.

It's a bit odd to go from reasoning that it was predictable based on hindsight, to rejecting the idea that Saddam reasoned correctly based on hindsight. I didn't say that Saddam definitely wasn't reasoning correctly, only that it is hard to argue that position. Unlike a lottery winner, this wasn't a random event. Clearly, if Saddam thought it was definitely a bluff, he was completely wrong. So you would have to argue that Saddam recognized that it likely was not a bluff, but he assigned such a high confidence to it being a bluff that calling it was worth the risk of death, and that level of confidence was well-justified.

I don't know what to say to this but to repeat myself: he was reasoning correctly about the consequences of it not being a bluff, and whether a rational self-interested USA would want to do it. To call this wrong is itself a post hoc argument from hindsight that he should have foreseen that the USA was irrational and self-sabotaging and acted accordingly, and voluntarily topple his regime & empower Iran solely on the odds of that.

The very fact that it was not a bluff is quite strong evidence that thinking it was not a bluff was wrong.

And is this 'quite strong evidence' neutralized by recent events in Syria? What's the proper reference class here?

Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 08 July 2014 06:29:11AM *  -1 points [-]

The sanctions did not require the USA invasion which has been so disastrous.

Saddam didn't seem to be amenable to complying with them without serious action.

If it was such a good idea, why did it take the patriotic fervor of 9/11 and a case about WMDs based on lies and exaggerations to convince the USA to invade Iraq? Because it was a predictably bad idea which a lot of people were skeptical of.

I'm hardly denying that there were concerns.

I don't know what to say to this but to repeat myself: he was reasoning correctly about the consequences of it not being a bluff, and whether a rational self-interested USA would want to do it.

I don't know what definition of "rationality" you are using, that it is correct to trust one's life to others following it.

To call this wrong is itself a post hoc argument from hindsight that he should have foreseen that the USA was irrational and self-sabotaging and acted accordingly, and voluntarily topple his regime & empower Iran solely on the odds of that.

It's hindsight only in the most broad sense, and all empirical knowledge is based on hindsight in the most broad sense. And the literal reading of that sentence is that "Saddam" is the subject of "topple his regime". Who is saying that Saddam should have toppled his own regime?

And is this 'quite strong evidence' neutralized by recent events in Syria? What's the proper reference class here?

"Recent events in Syria"? You'll have to be more specific. And you seem to be trying to slide from a discussion of the case itself to discussion of whether the case is the proper reference class.

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