Hi everyone.
I've already posted a couple of pieces - probably should have visited this page first, especially before posting my last piece. Well, such is life.
I headed over to LessWrong because I was/am a bit burned out by the high-octane conversations that go on online. I've disagreed with some things I've read here, but never wanted to beat my head - or someone else's - against a wall. So, I'm here to learn. I like the sequences have picked up some good points already - especially about replacing the symbol with the substance.
Question - what's ...
I was wondering why it got downvoted so much. Did you mean the post over at my blog, or this post here? I'm really not sure what's so inflammatory about this post - I was just trying to explain an idea.
Yes, as a matter of fact. He often travelled in Kurdistan, had Kurdish "comrades" as he called them, and championed Jalal Talabani.
I should have made it clear - when I was referring to the articles on the Hitch, they were usually from respectable news organizations such as The Guardian or Salon - and so on.
In case it wasn't clear (reviewing the article) I was quoting Conservapedia as an example of this kind of bad arguing, bad reasoning.
Could be two different uses of the word rationality. There are certainly those who call themselves "reality based" or whatever and therefore assume that everything they assert is rational and scientific. But if you invest yourself in "doing rationality" rather than "being rational" you might do better.
Could you expand on that? I'm not sure I follow...
Thanks - you're quite right. That is the study I was thinking of, and 79% is still horrifyingly high - sorry for getting that wrong, and thanks for the correction!
Just to take your last point, my response is that this is both a strawman and an argument from intimidation. Take this:
"you make the claim Hitler's sole motivation was killing Jews"
Did I? Where? I said that Hitler's motivation was his fanatical racism and that the desire to murder the Jews was a large part of that - was, in fact, an inextricable part of that. His racism wasn't the result of the war, it was the cause of the war. As you admit towards the end.
"You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal...
You don't... but others do. Dinesh D'Souza has written a book detailing the "root causes" argument, but with a twist - the quotations and other evidence he amasses are from a socially conservative perspective. That is, he makes exactly the same, fully backed up "root causes" argument, but differs on the root causes in question.
Again, I am trying to make the point that what you find obvious isn't at all what others find obvious. People change radically across time and space.
"No doubt they disapprove of many aspects of the American lifestyle, but mostly they are interested in signalling to their fellow Muslims the purity of their opposition to US power in the middle east."
But why do they object to US power? They object, in their own words, to US power because it dilutes the purity of Islam. They are not struggling for national liberation, but for theocracy. Their explicit goal is the establishment of a vast theocractic empire - the attack on America was a part of that, to rally the faithful to their cause. Ta...
May I make an assumption? I'm guessing you're American - it's that phrase about "right wing Christianity". The problem is that America doesn't have anything like real Christian fanaticism. It has some people who are upset about gay marriage and evolution and that's it.
Europeans, on the other hand, have had the real thing in living memory. We're not talking about "the Moral Majority" here, but the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or the Falange. This is the real thing, real fanaticism, and what you learn is that true faith, true belief does indeed inspire war.
This is what I mean when I say you cannot assume that other people think the way you do.
One line disproof: There have been a grand total of zero terrorist attacks on the United States from Vietnam, easily the most destructive and wicked war the US has ever waged - if people whose kids are still being born with birth defects don't decide to fly planes into buildings, I think it is safe to say that something else is going on.
Again, this ignores the stated intentions and demands of Al Qaeda, to recreate the lost caliphate and enforce the most fanatical Islamic rule within it, a global Taliban style rule. It also ignores things like Al Qaeda's stated support for the genocide in East Timor or Darfur.
On the other hand, you get exactly that impression by reading... what the actual Nazis said, all the way to the top, and the experiences of people living through that period. During the height of the second world war, they insisted on using scarce resources like trains and troops to keep up the Jew killing - they were willing to risk their own war aims to complete this task.
You keep citing these books but you don't give any evidence from them.
The entire program was to saturate society with racial hatred and frenzy. Children in school were terrified b...
If you start an eastward invasion in June, you end up in Russia in Winter. Which is what happened. Which is why Hitler's generals were against it. It's not difficult to work out - Napoleon did the same thing.
See above - Hitler's armies didn't invade Russia until winter.
There's no problem there whatsoever - Hitler always intended to march against Russia, not least to wipe out or enslave the Slavs. The pact just allowed him some breathing space.
That's a common misunderstanding. Barbarossa begins in June, but the push into Russia proper does not happen until the winter. Which is what was predictable if you start such an invasion in June.
This is all said long before Hitler was even a lunatic fringe candidate, though I repeat myself. Was Hitler always obsessed with race and Jew-hatred? Yep. Did his actions seem in accord with this? Amazingly so.
Take your comment on the USSR - why did Hitler insist on breaking the pact and invading Russian in winter? The answer is that he regarded Communism as "Judeo-Bolshevism", a Jewish plot against the Aryan race. Again, why did Nazism never take in the East when people began by welcoming the Wehrmacht's advance? Because in Nazi racia...
"Bin Laden himself may or may not have theocratic aims" - May or may not?
"My point was that without the political grievances, he just becomes some fanatic spouting rhetoric. With political grievances, he has supporters and recruits." Once again, this assumes that his supporters and recruits think in a way that follows yours. I have to just say [citation needed]. Let's take one example: 99% of Afghans think that the punishment for apostasy should be death. The assumption that there is not a large support for theocracy is unwarrante...
Aiyaiyai - I take twenty four hours break and I am knee deep in responses! My answer is simple: there is an explicit call for genocide laid out in a book called Mein Kampf, as well as an explicit racial theory that holds that Aryans are becoming polluted through interbreeding - that unless drastic action is taken, the Aryan will vanish from the world. This book, and similar incitements and theories, long predate Hitler even being a lunatic fringe candidate.
Ah, sorry, it was a little unclear and we were talking past each other there.
"From your perspective the point is to make the dhimmi feel subdued, but I don't think you have shown that's the point in that particular passage."
I could cite source after source of Islamic jihad scholars who explain that this is the purpose of the jizya and the surrounding institutions of degradation and subordination that make up dhimmitude - but this comment is, sadly, not large enough to hold it. So if I might suggest you take a look into the doctrines and history of dhimmitude and see how it was used.
Good discussion, but sadly I need to be travelling now, and hope to continue at a later date.
That comment rather illustrates the mistake I mean. Take that last point about neo-Nazis, it is exactly like what Orwell said, that there are people who do not understand that others can be motivated by racial frenzy. Some of Hitler's early backers were simple crooks who thought they were using him for relatively prosaic political ends, but Hitler had his own ends that he pushed through with some force.
Similarly you say that when bin Laden condemns American decadence or depravity from an Islamic perspective, that's just propaganda to advance a politica...
I never said bin Laden shows "moral deprivation", I said he had a morality that had nothing in common with that of the West. Again, in his list of demands, the first thing, the very first, is a call to submit to Islam, next to abolish usury, homosexuality etc., next to admit that the US is "a nation without principles and manner", and then, and only then, to stop supporting Israel in Palestine, or India's claim to Kashmir.
The jizya isn't just a tax, it is an integral part of the system of subordination and degradation of the dhimmi. ...
Sorry if this wasn't clear, but the whole document is called "Why We Are Fighting You". And I think that you have missed the following line at the end:
"If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation"
"All these conditions". Not some. Not just Palestine or support for autocrats in the middle east. All these conditions, and in writing the first one as the submission to Islam, bin Laden is in tune with centuries of similar thinkers.
I was quoting from a book called "The A...
" War was not so costly in human lives and suffering when it was about a tribe raiding another with arrows and bows." I simply cannot agree. If you make the adjustment for per capita deaths, then the kill rates of primitve tribes are far higher than that of modern armies. The Mongols only had ponies and bows and arrows, and look at what they did. When Tamerlane lead an Islamic jihad of the Indian subcontinent, he may well have killed 5% of then existing humanity.
Could it be the high barrier to entry? I'm not an expert, but I have the impression that the biomedical field is regulated up the wazoo. I've been thinking about what it'd take to get a basic company off the ground, and the main trouble that occurs to me is the regulation upon regulation that is required to do anything with human cells - let alone medical procedures!
That is... pretty impressive.
First post for me here, but I've been following this technology for the last ten years. This is an interesting idea, well worth following up on. I would have to say that the best thought here is that, if others aren't doing it, to do it yourself. I'm stealing this idea for my idea for a company, if you don't move on't first. Sound good?
Thanks, that is good advice. Honestly hadn't thought of that - oh well. Errare humanum est and all that...