= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vaniver comments on Rationality Quotes Thread December 2015 - 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 (75)
That is a tendentious way of comparing the two: a cold, abstract "level of improvement" against the more concrete "dollars" and very concrete "dead people". It suggests the writer is predisposed to find that intervention is a bad idea.
But what is improvement, but resources then available to apply to better things, and live people living better lives?
And why the reference class "Western"?
Presumably, Wiblin is talking about Western bombing of ISIS in Syria. If one finds that Turkish interventions have been effective and American interventions haven't, say, then that's an argument that Americans shouldn't intervene now (but Turks should).
Choose your reference class, get the result you want. Is Turkey "Western" or not? It wants to join the EU (but hasn't been admitted yet). Russia is bombing Syria. Why exclude it from the class of foreign interventions? For that matter, I don't know what military actions, if any, Turkey has taken in Syria, but that would also be a foreign intervention.
Not to mention the the smallness of N in the proposed study and the elastic assessment.
I googled some of the phrases in the OP but only got hits to the OP. Is this even a quote?