ChristianKl comments on Rationality Quotes April 2014 - LessWrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 April 2014 05:25PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 14 April 2014 04:23:51PM 1 point [-]

I think the majority of the population believes that there are valid reasons to start a war. R2P etc.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 14 April 2014 04:30:46PM 3 points [-]

I was talking about war,not wars. Everybody would wish away war if they could. Many people think THIS war need to be fought.

Comment author: Jiro 15 April 2014 02:42:57AM 1 point [-]

I wouldn't wish away war unless I also wished away the things we need to go to war for, in which case you could as easily say that I would wish away cancer treatments or firefighters.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 15 April 2014 11:52:07AM 1 point [-]

People go to war because of war, because they have been attacked. That would get wished away as part of the deal.

Or they go to war less honorable reasons like grabbing resources, or making forcible converts to a religion.

Can't see anything I'd want to keep.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 16 April 2014 01:44:55AM 4 points [-]

People go to war because of war, because they have been attacked.

Or because they are being mistreated by others in ways that don't qualify as war.

Comment author: Nornagest 15 April 2014 09:47:05PM *  2 points [-]

Inter-state war is by far the least common type of warfare in the modern era, although the proxy wars growing out of the Cold War muddy the waters some. Civil and ethnic warfare is much more common, and I don't think we can say that civil conflicts, at least, can always be described in terms of straightforward aggression and defense against aggression.

(Truthfully I wouldn't say that for inter-state wars either, not all of them, but they're a lot easier to spin that way.)

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 19 April 2014 11:38:22AM *  -1 points [-]

I was using wish away to mean magically get rid of. Unmagically getting rid of it requires unmagically fixing a lot of other things, which is why it hasn't happened.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 21 April 2014 03:32:31AM 0 points [-]

Magically getting rig of it strikes me as one of those wishes that will backfire horribly in one of several ways depending on exactly how the wisher defines "war".

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 April 2014 02:14:03AM 1 point [-]

Depends. For starters are you counting revolutions and civil wars as "wars"?

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 14 April 2014 04:34:03PM 0 points [-]

The point being that you can't infer that everyone believes in X in a society where X exists. They may dislike it but be unable to do anything about it.

Comment author: ChristianKl 14 April 2014 09:29:43PM 1 point [-]

The point being that you can't infer that everyone believes in X in a society where X exists. They may dislike it but be unable to do anything about it.

I'm not making that argument. There polling out there that tells you what people like or dislike. I think that responsibility to protect (R2P) is accepted by a lot of people as a valid reason for military intervention.