It all seems very arbitrary. It’s not unlike the soul concept. — NOS4A2

It's arbitrary that communication is part of what makes a person? Hardly.

You could ask your mother. You could watch any human birth. Look at sonograms and infer from there. But the fact is all homo sapiens were fetuses. You are a homo sapien. Therefor you were a fetus. — NOS4A2

Yeah yeah, no-one is in doubt about the biology. But "I" wasn't around, was I? The thinking process that experiences itself as a continuously existing actor. The "I think, therefore I am" of Descartes. That "I".

How could that have been around at conception?

Are those who do not respond not persons? — NOS4A2

If they don't respond, you need some kind of other evidence that they're thinking.

Are persons and subjects living human beings or are they not? — NOS4A2

I think at least some other species need to be considered. Some primate and whale species, for example.

Point proven. I’ll put you down as the first person I’ve ever met who believes they were never a fetus. Unfortunately the reasoning fully contradicts the evidence. — NOS4A2

What evidence? You never gave me any.

It is very complicated because you have no thing nor structure nor any formation to point to that can proven to be connected to your body, and that can be labelled with such a pronoun, other than the things, structures, and formations already in there. — NOS4A2

I don't really understand what you're talking about here. "Such a pronoun"? Which one? Is the question whether my mind is connected to my body?

I don’t know what an “actual person” is. What I do know is that a human being forms, and that morality ought to concern human beings. — NOS4A2

An actual person is an actual person. Someone you can meet and talk to, and who responds.

Morality ought to concern persons, subjects. I don't see how their species would be relevant.

Biology and anthropology. What is your basis? — NOS4A2

Both biology and anthropology are descriptive. How do you get from that to a moral judgement?

And I already gave you my basis:

Why do we respect people's rights to life and liberty? Because we recognise ourselves in them. We recognise that every individual is valuable in themselves and we can never replace one with another, so the only reasonable rule is to protect all as much as possible. — Echarmion

Everyone knows, actually. It is an irrefutable fact that you were a fetus. — NOS4A2

"Everyone knows" is not an argument. I gave you the reasoning, I trust you're capable of understanding it.

But there you have it. You are not your cells nor your DNA. Then what are you? A soul? — NOS4A2

That's one way of putting it. Though I'm an embodied soul, whose existence is measurable. "Soul" often implies something esoteric, but I don't mean to imply that anything mystic is going on. Merely that "I" am formed from a connection of a body, some kind of cognitive process and memories.

A clump of cells would not be me even if it shared my DNA. If you made an exact copy of me, that copy would cease to be me the moment it added it's own experiences.

I don't think any of this is very complicated in principle.

It refers to the earliest stages of every human being that ever existed. There is no biological evidence that a soul or “actual person” forms at any point during the lifecycle. That’s your assumption. — NOS4A2

So, if no actual person forms, then how does morality come into it at all?

Not a coin flip. I pointed out that most parents feel the force of this principle, and the evidence is that an unfathomable amount of parents do indeed carry and care for human beings in the earliest stages of development, up until and including incubating them in their own bodies. — NOS4A2

So, argumentum ad populum?

You do recognize that you were once a fetus, I assume. At no point in your life were you theoretical after conception. That’s utter nonsense, I’m afraid. — NOS4A2

I don't know whether I was ever a fetus. I have no memories of existing prior to birth (as I understand most people do not), and I don't know any other way to establish whether I existed at some point.

"I" am neither my cells nor my DNA. Nor am I a causal chain.

That is to say, one must be willing to 'deal with' a possible pregnancy in a moral way if one engages in sexual activity. — Chet Hawkins

I agree with her that there is clearly an immoral pattern of irresponsible behavior there. So, liars and the uncaring need to be called to task for such things. — Chet Hawkins

I'm missing a step in your argument here. I can agree with the first statement, but to get to the second you'd have to establish a duty, in principle, to carry a pregnancy to term.

Using birth is arbitrary in the sense that it doesn't really match up to the moral situation precisely. There are arguments to be made for using this particular point (I made some in this thread), but you could make other arguments for e.g. some percentage likelihood of survival in case of a premature birth.

The point I wanted to make was that we should be honest about how we know something is a someone, a person. It's by comparison with ourselves. By trying to figure out whether they think in a way we recognise as intelligence.

There's going to be a point after conception when we can recognise a child as an intelligent being. Beyond that, we don't really have any reason to give a collection of biochemical processes special standing because they involve human DNA, do we?

But one of the challenges the pro-choice advocate faces is explaining the dividing line between killable and not-killable. When and how does that transition take place? — frank

I mean everyone recognises a dividing line between subjects, which have moral standing and objects, which do not.

There is not strictly any empirical basis for even differentiating between living organisms and "dead" matter. Biology is just a specific kind of chemistry.

The simple fact is that we judge the moral value of beings - their value in and of themselves - based on their similarity to ourselves. What else could we do? We only have access to our own consciousness, we are only aware of ourselves as an actor. So that's the starting point we have. We could ruminate on the possible consicousness of blades of grass or even rocks but we'd not get anywhere.

Why is a fetus not a person? Well it cannot walk, it cannot talk, it does not recognise itself in a mirror, it does not display many behaviours in which we recognise ourselves. We know it could become a person in the future, which is the reason we are concerned. But saying it has a right to live because it has human DNA isn't really any less arbirtray than saying a child has a right to live after birth, but not before.

Why would anyone need to assume that? — NOS4A2

What else would a "human being in it's earlierst development" refer to?

It cannot refer to the actual person that eventually forms after birth, as that person doesn't exist. So it could only refer to their "soul", which somehow already represents the person.

I start at the principle “a human being in its earliest development deserves a chance to live”. Given the helplessness of a human being in his early development, such a principle seems to me imperative. Any subsequent moral judgements proceed from this one. — NOS4A2

In which case your entire argument is begging the question. Why would "a human being in it's earlierst development" deserve the chance to live? It's not at all trivial that future people somehow have the right to exist. Where does their moral standing come from?

Exactly. Why do you care or not? You either believe human beings in their earliest development deserves a chance to live, to be protected, or you do not. — NOS4A2

Really? That is how your morality works? Just a coinflip where you either happen to believe something or don't?

Again your non-religious morality sounds awfully like a religion. Why do we respect people's rights to life and liberty? Because we recognise ourselves in them. We recognise that every individual is valuable in themselves and we can never replace one with another, so the only reasonable rule is to protect all as much as possible.

The problem is, this reasoning doesn't apply to "theoretical people". Individuals are valuable for what they are, not what they might be.

Abortion rights is often posited as a mark of an enlightened society, when in fact infanticide, child sacrifice, and acts of these sorts is a stone age and barbaric practice. — NOS4A2

This is just more poisoning of the well.

right-to-life principles, for instance that a human being in its earliest development deserves a chance to live. — NOS4A2

That's begging the question though. The whole problem is that you have to assume that human beings are around as disembodied souls waiting to exist for that argument to make sense.

And that is definitely a religious position.

We know that an individual human lifecycle begins at conception, since it cannot begin anywhere else, and any scalpel through the spine or intentional deprivation of essential nutrients after this point is to kill an individual human being. — NOS4A2

This is a kind of intellectual sleight of hand. You're starting with a biological description (using descriptive concepts such as "lifecycle") and you want us to conclude from your phrasing ("to kill an individual human being") a moral judgement. But you haven't justified the judgement on it's own terms.

That’s why the evasions about whether the fetus has feelings or if it is biologically inhuman serve only to cast doubt on the humanity of this being in its earliest stages, to dehumanize it, making the abnegation of any right-to-life principle an easier pill to swallow for those who wish to see it eviscerated with sheers. If you extend this depravity to a different point along the human life continuum, you can see the same arguments used to justify genocide and murder. — NOS4A2

So if it's not about feelings or anything else biological, what is it about? Why do we care? What's the humanist principle for?

I don’t think any of this means we should prohibit abortion. Infanticide is a historical fact. Females often kill or abandon their offspring throughout the animal kingdom. Perhaps we should make humane options available. But it is surely nothing to be proud of. — NOS4A2

That's poisoning the well. You're falsely insinuating that your opposition is "proud of" abortion.

Because you were unable to deal with the obvious fact that Russia was extremely very likely to prevail in Ukraine if there was an escalation — boethius

Why would I be unable to deal with that? Yes most everyone assumed that Russia would easily prevail over Ukraine if it committed serious resources (at least initially). But it turned out that Ukraine had more teeth than most anyone assumed.

Your first bad faith propaganda strategy was to just keep denying that the US did anything escalatory between the paper being written and the larger war in 2022 — boethius

That's a strawman. I asked you specifically how the US escalated in Ukraine. You never were able to answer those questions.

as the authors make clear that Russian may escalate anyways — boethius

No they don't.

Now, I understand that your aim was to engage in stupid quibbling that the US didn't arm Ukraine "even more" between 2019 and 2022, and simply ignore the US being more vocal about Ukraine joining NATO (one other major escalatory action the authors describe) — boethius

I pointed out the facts to you already, you ignored them. At this point I'm just going to call this an intentional lie.

Rest assured it is quite easy to demonstrate that the US policy decisions between 2019 and 2022 are exactly the kind of escalatory action the authors describe — boethius

Of course, you're just not going to do this very easy demonstration. Because you're lying.

Therefore, the purpose of provoking the war — boethius

Russia invaded.

Why would this happen? How exactly would Russian troops be flattened in Ukraine? — boethius

The two biggest airforces on the planet, plus the European air forces?

Even if we ignore the fact that nuclear use would make NATO conventional war on Ukraine less, rather than more, likely — boethius

That's the thing you don't get about nuclear deterrence. Once you actually use a nuclear weapon, you've shot your bolt. There's no escalation ladder from there. Either you'll immediately cause a general nuclear exchange or you're going to cause a situation where any additional threats you make will cause a nuclear attack on your country.

The reason is that once you use one nuke, you're announcing to the entire world that nuclear weapons are now fair game. At that point noone can afford to allow you to get off a second shot.

That's why there was never a limited nuclear war during the cold war. There's just no way to control the situation if you press the button once.

NATO would have the exact same problem, just a lot worse, that the Russian airforce had in 2022 and 2023 (and still has in 2024, just less) in that surface to air missiles (A2/AD bubbles in the modern parlance) are highly effective against airplanes and not many are needed to deny access to an airspace.

Stealth is not some magical invisible technology and Russians have had decades to develop systems to defeat US stealth systems. — boethius

I think that the airforces which have been designed to penetrate such defensive systems will not be quite so easy to shrug off.

Then there's the problem that the Russians in Ukraine are in basements and bunkers and dugouts and spread out and you still need to actually find them to be able to drop bombs on.

In other words, even if we pretended Russian anti-air assets had zero effectiveness (which would not be the case), air supremacy doesn't win wars anyways: right now Israel can drop US bombs at will on Lebanon and Gaza and that has not delivered victory. — boethius

In this case though, there would already be an army on the ground.

If your response to a NATO base getting nuked is conventional, Russia can just nuke more things. — boethius

That'd be suicide, as I pointed out above.

And in all of these strikes and counter-strikes a general nuclear exchange would be on a knifes edge as each side would be paranoid of the other side launching first. Planes and missiles flying everywhere are not going to reduce tensions.

At the end of the day, Europe, and the US for that matter, knows that the US is less committed to the conflict than is Russia and that the US has no interest in even a major risk of a general nuclear exchange with Russia. Even if European leaders were willing to have nuclear strikes on their territory for the sake of defending "Ukrainian sovereignty", which honestly many Europeans seems dumb enough to actually want, they know that the US doesn't actually want that: that Ukraine as a useful proxy force to accomplish some objectives for a time and at no point is the US going to "risk anything" for Ukraine.

Therefore, if the US did escalate to the point of Russia using a nuclear weapon to reestablish deterrence both the US and the Europeans know that the US has no rational response. — boethius

You've got this backwards though. It is precisely because the US and the west are less committed to the conflict that no rational Russian government would ever use nuclear weapons in this conflict.

You keep saying that the west is content to see Ukraine lose. And although you keep stretching the evidence far beyond what it actually supports, there is an element of truth in this. The west faces no existential risk over the outcome of the Ukraine war and so it's determination to support Ukraine remains limited.

If Russia were to use a nuclear weapon, especially if they were to use it directly against NATO, it would create an existential risk. At that point the West would be forced to strain every sinew to eliminate the government responsible for the attack.

It is a very, very bad idea.

In this scenario, the situation, at the end of the day, would be US and NATO (mostly the UK) firing missiles at Russian critical infrastructure, an attack Russia needs to respond to, with nuclear weapons if that is the only option. Therefore, the solution would be for the US and NATO to stop attacking Russia to end the nuclear war. The only other option would be to simply continue the nuclear war; Russia would be in the same position of needing to resort to nuclear weapons to reestablish deterrence and therefore the only actual alternative to the US stopping the cycle of escalation would be to simply escalate to a nuclear war.

Actually attacking Russia is no longer deterrence it is simply straight-up attacking Russia resulting in Russia needing to respond to reestablish deterrence. — boethius

But you run into the classic problem: both sides understand the logic of the situation. Both sides know that whoever stops the cycle of escalation loses. And whoever escalates into a general nuclear exchange also loses. The only winning move is not to play.

Which is why at the end of the day US elites do follow the RAND paper basic framework of "calibrating" the intensity of the conflict to avoid unwanted escalation; the intensity of violence needing to calibration to achieve that is Russia prevailing in Ukraine without systemic risk to Russian critical infrastructure.

The Russians can tolerate NATO weapons being used in Ukraine because at the end of the day they choose to be there, Russian critical infrastructure is not impacted, and defeating those weapons and prevailing in Ukraine has some advantages (from the Russian imperial perspective). — boethius

The point though is that Russia is already achieving that effect with just threats. No-one is even considering a large scale strike at russian critical infrastructure using western weapons. It is the strange logic of deterrence that using a weapon is less effective than threatening it's use.

As mentioned above, if you are attacking the other sides critical infrastructure (what the Ukrainians want permission to do with NATO missiles) — boethius

No, Ukraine wants permission to attack specific military targets (airbases, air defences, supply dumps).

The difference in the situation being that Iran has no nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis the US. — boethius

That's one difference. There are many others as well. It's not just that Iran has no nukes. It doesn't have all that much economic or political capital to throw around either. Plus Iran's main ally is Russia while China has other priorities.

The conversation is just dumb — boethius

Oh I agree wholeheartedly.

To take the Paris example — boethius

From my perspective what's happening here is that you're showing me a guide to the city of Bordeaux and telling me it's a guide to the city of Paris. When I point out that the guide is about Bordeaux and not Paris, you keep pointing out all the places where the guide talks about how to get to Bordeaux from Paris, or where it compares locations in the two cities.

That's the end of that discussion as far as I'm concerned.

1. Ukraine is in the collapse phase on the losing end of a war of attrition, which was entirely foreseeable. — boethius

Sure, the collapse phase that's been going on for months now. One wonders why the Russians don't just take over all of Ukraine.

2. Striking infrastructure and civilian populations deep inside Russia is essentially the only military move or point of leverage Ukraine has left. — boethius

No it's not, but since you don't actually know anything about the military situation it's not surprising that you're just making stuff up.

Notice how at no point does the West have any problem with Israel "escalating" with Western weapons to the point of levelling entire apartment blocks filled with civilians.

Why? Because the West wants Israel to "win" and therefore do whatever is necessary to "win" (I put win in quotes as Western leaders may not have a clear idea of what a winning end-state would be, but whatever seems like winning and Israel wants to do is fully supported). — boethius

You have the start of an interesting discussion here, but rather than actually engaging with the different strategic and political contexts of the conflicts, you're content to just assume it must somehow be "what the west wants".

Why maintain the asymmetry that Russia can disable Ukrainian infrastructure across the entire country but Ukraine can't do likewise to Russia is to "calibrate" the conflict at a "somewhat higher level of intensity" without escalating too far (i.e. escalating to a point where Ukraine maybe winning on the battlefield).

As I've pointed out since the beginning of the conflict, the reason the West does not "escalate" to actually threatening Russia (in terms of battlefield loss in Ukraine or damaging Russian infrastructure on a mass scale) is nuclear weapons. — boethius

But, according to you, Ukraine cannot possibly win. So what you actually mean is that western leaders don't declare war on Russia and destroy it's military capacity.

And of course you know full well the reason they're unlikely to do that.

There's many problems with your conception of the conflict but perhaps the most important one is that you've never seriously considered what "winning" means for either side.

You've constructed for yourself a framework where the only way for Ukraine to win is an impossible scenario, yet you also consistently treat the western powers' unwillingness to pursue this impossible scenario as evidence of their duplicity.

It may surprise you but at the start of the war many here, and elsewhere, argued that Russian nuclear weapons were of essentially no meaning in the conflict and did not shape Western policy and shouldn't shape Western policy: i.e. I argued that Russian nuclear weapons does and obviously should deter Western escalation, while others argued it doesn't and it shouldn't ("we cannot let them get away with nuclear blackmail!" was the battle cry of this camp).

Nearly 2 years later and this is not the common sense position even in the Western mainstream media that nuclear weapons are indeed a significant deterrent to "winning". — boethius

The general views on russian nuclear threats has not changed. Most analysts and military professionals don't credit them, but popular opinion remains scared of them.

The reason western politicians don't ignore the popular worries even if they're not supported by professional analysts should be obvious.

Anyways my previous point about you not properly considering what "winning" could mean also applies here.

First, you literally just made the point that "It also demonstrates the bargaining power Russia's nuclear capabilities still represent" so obviously they are useful as leverage, and they are useful as leverage because they can be practically used in response to different actions (such as a large attack on Russian infrastructure). — boethius

They're useful for scaring people.

Russia is therefore making it clear that if the West were to organize such a major missile strike, intended to cause systemic damage to Russian infrastructure, that Russia will start nuking the NATO infrastructure that supports such missile supply and operation. — boethius

The idea of an infrastructure campaign against Russia in the same vein of Russia's attacks against Ukraine is not credible. The debate is not about weapons that can hit factories near Moscow or in the Urals but about weapons which can hit russian supply dumps.

And "Russia will start nuking NATO infrastructure" means global nuclear war and the destruction of Russia.

The basic problem, as I've elaborated on many times since the first phases of the war, is that the West would be unable to strike Russia with nuclear weapons in-kind without that escalating to a general nuclear exchange. — boethius

This is silly. If Russia starts attacking NATO bases with nukes that is the start of a general nuclear exchange. This is exactly how nuclear deterrent works: Both sides making clear that they'll respond to a nuclear attack in kind.

So, it is a lose-lose situation. If they organize a large scale missile strike on Russia and Russia then nukes a NATO base and the US does not respond with nuclear weapons, that would be definitely losing the exchange, and if the US does respond with nuclear weapons that would very likely lead to a general nuclear exchange which isn't exactly good for the US just right now. — boethius

If Russia nukes a NATO base Russia is at war with NATO. Even if a general nuclear exchange is somehow averted, at the very least any russian troops in Ukraine would be flattened by the combined NATO airforces and the russian leaders responsible would shortly after drop from a window.

Do you think that if Russia uses a nuke on NATO territory everyone will just shrug and do nothing?

Therefore, the threat of nuclear weapons effectively deters the West from causing any significant harm, or even risk of significant harm, to Russian state power in Ukraine or indeed in Russia. — boethius

You don't need a successful first strike scenario for nuclear weapons to be a threat. During the cold war, one of the pillars of nuclear deterrence was that no side could develop an effective missile defense system.

The deterrent effect from nuclear weapons isn't based on the fact that they make you win the war. It's based on the fact that they'll make your enemy lose.

And this is also the reason why the west doesn't "want Ukraine to win" as you understand it.

The US does not face similar escalation risks in the middle-east and therefore it is not effectively deterred and so places similar constraints on the use of Western arms by Israel. — boethius

Oh? Didn't you write earlier:

Why? Because the West wants Israel to "win" and therefore do whatever is necessary to "win" — boethius

Sure, fathers should have a say. There just isn't much room to include them in any legal frameworks.

A note more relevant to the actual situation:

Apparently Putin announced a few days ago that Russia is planning to change it's nuclear doctrine:
AP News: Putin lowers threshold of nuclear response

As various commentators have pointed out, the change is clearly intended to make the doctrine more vague. It's also pretty much a direct warning to not allow Ukraine to strike targets on Russian territory using western weapons.

This seems a fairly big step for Russia, which seems to indicate that they're really concerned about possible long range strikes. It also demonstrates the bargaining power Russia's nuclear capabilities still represent.

Ultimately I agree with the view that, no matter what Russia says their nuclear doctrine is, there is just nothing to be gained from using nuclear weapons over Ukraine. Nuclear weapons are a powerful threat to a country's population and infrastructure, but their direct military use is limited unless you intend to absolutely obliterate an area. Using nuclear weapons directly against Ukraine would create more problems than it solves. Using them against anyone else would just be plain stupid and amount to suicide.

The paper is not discussing things in some sort of hypothetical vacuum but takes as it's starting point existing relations with Russia and analyses those existing policies as a basis to then consider different policy moves and the benefits and risks of those moves. — boethius

Yes, obviously. As I pointed out normally this is common sense that does not need pointing out. But since you are constantly twisting everyone's words around to fit into your preordained conclusions we're now at the point where you spend several paragraphs explaining something utterly trivial. No doubt under the impression that you're somehow proving a point.

It's simple: Yes any evaluation of possible future policies includes, as it's baseline, the current policy. That does not mean that an analysis of future policies is also simultaneously an analysis of the current policy. The two are related, they're not the same thing.

However, it also considers the benefits and risks of the existing policies, such as the Donbas war already imposing a cost on Russia and that Russia may anyways decide to preempt US actions and counter escalate. — boethius

It doesn't. There is no chapter in the paper analysing the contemporary situation, nor does the paper state anywhere what the risks and benefits of the current policy are.

You can argue that those risks and benefits can be inferred from what the paper discusses. But yo say that "the paper is analysing the current policy" is and remains wrong.

2. Then you can't deal with the direct citations of the paper analyzing the existing US foreign policy of the time (of which I only provided a couple of examples, which is sufficient to disprove your claim the paper doesn't do so) — boethius

I have no idea what the text looks like in your mind, but the text that I read has no "direct citations analysing the existing US policy".

There is a difference between "talking about" something and "analysing" it. My best guess is you simply assume that just referencing the current US policy counts as an analysis.

Notice they are basing their work on "current policy debates" which, if you can read English, is another way of saying "analysis of existing US policy", which is what current policy debates are about. — boethius

This is just false. "Current policy debates" does not refer just to "debates about the current policy". It's more broad and would include both debates about current policies as well as debates about possible future policies.

Which is a demonstration of doing what they say they will do "drawing on these expert opinions on current policy debates" in literally citing these experts they are drawing on (i.e. analyzing the existing policy as a starting point). — boethius

You realise that the footnote does not reference some expert analysis of US policy, but simply a news report about Putin's statement?

Then you're obviously not really following events and are just wasting time and space. — boethius

Or your very idiosyncratic perception of events is simply not the same as other people's.

When the Western media believed Ukraine was "winning" the conversation (in the Western media) was very different than it was now. The faction in Ukraine that wanted to war and for which Minsk was just to buy time to prepare for the inevitable war seemed completely validated by the West and the Western cheerleaders for the war essentially presented these people as geniuses, both diplomatic and militarily. — boethius

I can't think of a specific example for what you're describing here, but even if, for the sake of argument, I assume that's true, what you're describing is media reacting to what seems to be great successes. Why would that not validate the hawks?

Now, I suppose you could argue that yes there was and are Nazis and yes the shelling of civilians was a regular feature of the Donbas war but it was actually moderate regular forces that were shelling civilians. If you're taking this position then I am happy to present the argument of why that is a terrible position to take and in contradiction with the available evidence. — boethius

Obviously neither of us knows every single soldier involved in the campaign. But I would very much like to see evidence that "Nazis" were in control of most or all Ukrainian artillery fire during the Donbas war.

You're literally accusing me of trying "fool" someone by stating the paper analyses existing US policy.

I then demonstrate that the paper quite clearly is analyzing existing US policy and its benefits and risks as well as considering different directions US policy could go. — boethius

The paper was not an analysis of existing US policy but an analysis of a series of future possibilities.

But obviously by analysing some future policy you're going to reference the current policy.

If I were to say something like "they aren't analysing US policy at all" that'd falsely imply that there's no connection between current and future policies. I didn't mean to imply that so I rejected your phrasing of my position.

Now in an ordinary conversation this would not need to be said, but here we are.

The paper describes all these policies as already provocative to Russia and potentially soliciting a Russian escalation (without even doing anything more), — boethius

I don't see how it does.

as well as withdrawing from INF. — boethius

The paper doesn't link Ukraine and the INF.

The US then does all those things and you want to just keep denying what the paper clearly says in plain English. — boethius

It didn't do "all these things". I've explained why I think that and you haven't responded to the specific points.

a major strategic victory that Russia would then need to consolidate, — boethius

Consolidate how?

ignoring disproportionate losses for Ukrainians (often by just repeating Ukrainian loss estimates for both sides) and the fact Russia would likely be more conservative with spending lives (giving Ukraine a temporary advantage in the area of willingness to sustain losses, which Russia could easily compensate in other areas such as air power, artillery and building a sophisticated defensive line, but did allow Ukraine to "compete" for a time those losses were indeed available to lose), — boethius

Oh, so you have access to classified military documents which allow you to judge - better than the very sophisticated OSINT projects monitoring the military developments - exact loss figures and military strength?

OK, so the highest priority is the right to refuse having your body interfered with, unless you're dependent on someone else's body? — Hallucinogen

I didn't say it was the highest priority. It's one common argument.

It seems to me that this situation doesn't change after the fetus/baby is born. It takes quite a long time for babies and children to no longer be dependent on other people. So I think your criteria would make it permissible to abort children who have been born. If being being attached to the mother's body is a key aspect of "using" her body, then I don't see why this is morally relevant. Does your criteria mean that, for example if a firefighter who is securely strapped onto something and who is preventing me from falling to my death by holding on to me, that it's morally permissible for him to let go, even though there's no danger to him? — Hallucinogen

Bodily autonomy is specific to things that affect the physical substance of your body. Else every action would fall under bodily autonomy. The justification for the principle is that the integrity of your body is the basic requirement for your freedom as well as the most private sphere of your existence.

Which evidence are you referring to? — Hallucinogen

What we know from developmental psychology. Children only start to engage in social interactions after a few months. Before 3 months, infants do not respond to the behaviour of others, such as following another person's gaze. It can take up to two years for children to recognise themselves in a mirror.

This seems to suggest that children don't start out with full self awareness.

But a baby won't survive on its own outside the womb. It's still dependent on society. — Hallucinogen

Right, but so is most everyone. At least with birth, a child can be cared for by anyone regardless of biological relation. So, their dependency exits from the realm of biology and enters the realm of society.

I think this is a poor argument in some ways. If someone chooses to become pregnant, and/or sees their pregnancy through to a certain point, then changes their minds ... well, is the unborn child to blame for the mother's poor management of the situation. — I like sushi

I don't think bodily autonomy is about blame. Indeed what's special about bodily autonomy is that one can invoke it no matter how good the counterarguments. Even a perfectly innocent child is not entitled to a blood transfusion from you, even if that transfusion causes you only a bit of inconvenience while being a matter of life and death to the child.

Of course, I am looking at a specific scenario here and questioning exactly how far along a pregnancy is before the woman decides to abort. I do not see how the 'body autonomy' argument would hold up here because the woman made a prior choice and commitment and so should be held to account to some degree (varying on a case-to-case basis).

As a more concrete analogy if I commit to paying monthly installments for something over a period of time and willingly and knowingly sign up to this commitment, then simply having a change of mind/heart after I have only made 60% of the installments, and expecting everyone to be okay with this (if I have the fund available) is frankly a little ridiculous. — I like sushi

I can see where you're coming from, but my issue is that there's noone to make a commitment to. Pregnancy is not an agreement with the unborn child.

In some sense, I can see this kind of position being put forward to argue against abortions after a certain period of time. The obvious problem is then deciding on where to draw the line. I truly believe there is a line to be drawn and that, to some degree, it necessarily has to be arbitrary in-part but certainly not fully (ie. backed up by latest scientific understanding).

In the UK I believe it is 22 weeks. I am sure there are situations where abortions are allowed after this period depending on the circumstances. — I like sushi

I don't have strong feelings about selecting some cut off point (provided it still allows a reasonable window of time to actually make a decision).

In principle though I wonder why we should not trust the parents to make that decision themselves.

I hate this argument. I would think that a mother who thinks like that about her unborn baby is likely to think like that about baby/child and that will not be a good thing for either child or eventual adult. Perhaps one might one posit a radical change of heart. But in fact it amounts to occupying the opposition's ground and turning it against them. It high-lights how inappropriate it is to think of a foetus as a small person as opposed to a future person. — Ludwig V

I do agree it's a bit of a weird (and perhaps stark) legalistic fiction. But it does highlight an important consideration with bodily autonomy: We generally recognise that there is a hard border where no amount of "greater good", not even family ties, can overcome a person's wishes.

This point (while valid to a large degree) is fully though the point of view of someone already living in this world. It's one argument to say that more humans limit the quality of life of existing humans, and a whole other to say that because of this it's good to prevent new people being born. It's not that they have a say (as they don't), it's that we can still (obviously) measure the pros and cons of the unborn being aborted versus continuing normally.

Currently we have a lot of social and political issues limiting reform at this level, or just making them not worth it. That's why this argument in particular is more about the practical philosophy of limiting abortions and not a moral call to do so now.

Obviously I'm not calling for all abortions to be banned. I just think that in the future, we would do well to adhere to a policy of not aborting when not completely necessary (presuming a future that has improved upon the world today, which might be a stretch, but is also the only way I can see a future at all). — Igitur

If we're considering purely hypothetical scenarios, then a world where noone ever finds themselves in a situation where they consider abortion does seem preferable.

I merely wanted to point out that, even if you are opposed to abortion on moral grounds, it's hard to argue that banning abortion in the present improves the situation for anyone. It's hard to see how taking the decision away from those most involved - the parents - is an effective strategy.

A lot of this discussion is morally based, but there is, I think, another side to it. Practically, as a species, it makes little to no sense to allow any abortions (obviously there are special cases). — Igitur

Given that you state in your next paragraph:

banned abortion also means additional suffering for many individuals who had no choice in the matter, and so at least some limited abortion must exist. — Igitur

It seems like you do see the practical reason. Indeed all the hard evidence we have seems to suggest that access to legal and safe abortions has significant positive effects.

I can understand the moral position of someone who thinks that abortion is murder. But, as a practical matter, I don't think it's reasonable to claim that no access to abortion would make the world a better place. Who benefits from such a policy? The unborn? But then why do "potential" people have a say at all?

From that standpoint, maybe not even viewing a fetus as a person who can be murdered but as an individual with a potential to live, it seems like the worst kind of crime to purposefully prevent that individual the chance of a life. — Igitur

I find this a strange contention. The "chance of life" is not attached to any moral subject. Causal chains don't have rights, do they?

Why is the bodily autonomy of the baby irrelevant? They're just as much a human individual as the mother is. — Hallucinogen

The common argument here is that bodily autonomy is a defensive right - you have the right to refuse interference with your body, but you don't have a right to a specific treatment. And in case of a pregnancy, the fetus/baby is "using" the body of the mother, hence her bodily autonomy takes precedence.

At which developmental stage does a foetus become conscious, and what reasoning have you used to arrived at that conclusion? — Hallucinogen

Evidence seems to suggest humans become conscious, in the sense of being aware of themselves and their own awareness, only some time after birth. Plausibly, it may only develop alongside the ability to interact with the environment.

If the answer is yes to either of those, then I'm going to ask you why you think that a foetus going from inside a womb to outside the womb makes the difference between it being morally permissible to kill it to killing it not being morally permissible. — Hallucinogen

Well one argument is that only once a baby is actually born that it can really separate from the mother and be it's own person. Both physically and mentally. I don't think anyone claims something magic happens at the point of birth but matter-of-factly a new human being needs to acquire certain basic capabilities in order to become an individual, and being born and capable of surviving outside the womb is certainly a prerequisite.

I don't think any system of moral philosophy can have a completely internal and consistent definition of who is a subject to which the system applies. Some interpretation of facts is always going to be necessary. This applies to chimpanzees or Dolphins but also to human babies or humans with severe brain damage. At some point you're going to have to "eyeball" the solution.

The West had no problem reporting this interpretation and portraying the Minsk agreements as a brilliant move by Ukraine and the West to prepare for an amazing job in the bigger war that was ongoing and understood to be essentially already won by Ukraine at the time. — boethius

I don't remember anything of the sort.

support to Nazis to shell civilians — boethius

You're switching back to full on propaganda here.

I am responding to your statement that the authors aren't analyzing US policy at the time at all. — boethius

Deciding what your interlocutor is saying sure makes arguing easier.

They consider the possibility of expanding that policy to inflict even greater costs and recommend not doing that. — boethius

Great, so we finally agree. Now, as I asked before, can you point out how the US expanded their policy?

In other words, the authors get it exactly right: inviting escalation (which includes not even doing anything yet) — boethius

Nowhere does it say that not changing the policy would also invite escalation.

The US, since the paper was written, supplied arms to Ukraine, eschewed negotiations, reiterated Ukraine would join NATO — boethius

When and how did they "expand" these forms of support? When the paper was published, the US was already directly supplying small arms up to Javelin ATGMs. They only started supplying heavier arms after the invasion.

The only other change was to use the presidential drawdown authority to supply arms to Ukraine, but this only happened in mid 2021 with russian troops massed on the border.

US stance on Ukrainian NATO membership didn't change anywhere between 2014 and 2022.

provoke a "somewhat higher level of intensity" in the fighting (aka. a giant war). — boethius

It's interesting that you're drawing attention to just how silly your equivocation here is.

are actions that would very likely provoke a larger war between Ukraine and Russia, a war that Ukraine would almost certainly lose at great cost to Ukrainians. — boethius

You're using "A war" here to stand in for anything from an escalation of the Donbas war to a full invasion aiming to completely conquer Ukraine. Those are simply not comparable scenarios.

No where do I state the likely consequences (such as the likely consequences of different policy decisions that the RAND paper explains) are somehow "certain", — boethius

Actually you're doing exactly that, and all the time. In this very post you have repeatedly talked about the outcome of the war with complete certainty.

Experts put significant effort into explaining "doing this will result in that" and then US Policy makers go and do this and the that results. The argument that somehow they thought something else would happen is just dumb. — boethius

If that is the case then why did the experts not outright say "Russia is going to commit to total war to conquer Ukraine"? If according to you, that is what they predicted, and they put "significant effort" into making sure it's understood, then surely they'd just have said it.

If US policy makers actually thought Ukraine could prevail and actually wanted that to happen then they would not drip feed weapons systems — boethius

Again there can be different goals at the same time.

Escalate to what? Obviously Ukraine actually winning. — boethius

Do you think pouring all of the West's weapon systems would have no negative consequences at all? Don't you think countries like China might take a rather dim view of it? Or, indeed, the populations of the western countries.

Which is why I have no hesitation to really believe that Zelensky really did want to prevent the war from breaking out in doing things like trying to control the Nazis, but other factions in Ukraine prevailed (such as those very Nazis just straight-up telling Zelensky they wouldn't do what he says), and I'd have no problem believing many elites in Europe didn't want this war either but didn't prevail against US proxy politicians in Europe as well as US pressure and direct actions (such as stating Ukraine would join NATO, those 12 or so CIA bases in Ukraine, direct arms supply to Ukraine and so on). — boethius

See, this makes me very angry.

Russia invaded.

Russia invaded!

Noone else made that decision. No. One. Else.

All these people that died? They'd be alive if Russia just didn't invade. They didn't have to. Not a single Ukrainian or NATO soldier would have set a single foot on russian soil had Russia not invaded.

It was not necessary. The russian leadership is directly and unequivocally responsible for every single life lost in this war. And you don't even mention them with one single word.

Not made up, I'll go repost the Western media's own investigations into this issue if you really want me to. — boethius

These investigations, as you know, do not support the claim you made.

The policy is super duper clearly provoke a larger war between Russia and Ukraine and therefore in total consistency with that policy the Nazis are supported as they not only do the most provocative things like shell civilians but are also a provocation by just being their wholesome Nazi selves. — boethius

Just repeating the claim doesn't make it true. You claim a specific policy: "to arm the most extreme Nazi groups in Ukraine"

That is your claim, or better your lie. Because it's obvious you won't actually be able to defend it with facts.

Again, I can repost the West's own reporting on these Nazis and their effect on the Ukrainian political process. — boethius

The effect they reported was nothing like what you claim here. You're using a bog standard troll tactic where you'll post a "source", wildly misrepresent - or perhaps just outright lie about - what it says and then forever pretend that you proved your point.

You did not prove your point. You repeatedly ignored all the counterarguments.

The reinterpretation of what she said as somehow to support a ceasefire through strength, is memory holing the whole episode. — boethius

Why are you so convinced that you alone have correctly understood what she was referring to?

The paper is an analysis of existing US policy: — boethius

I'm genuinely confused whether you just don't understand English grammar or whether you're just doubling down to avoid admitting that you overstated your case.

"Would" implies a conditional. Doing A would lead to B. Not (currently) doing A leads to B.

Point of all this being: US policy makers knew what their policy was leading to and that the cost to Ukraine to be used as a tool to extend Russia would be enormous. — boethius

Do you genuinely believe US policy makers are so good that they can predict future events with perfect accuracy? Noone, except perhaps the Russian planners, "knew" what would happen in 2022 years in advance.

the policy of drip feed of weapons systems to Ukraine is simply irrefutable evidence that the policy isn't and never was for Ukraine to "win" (otherwise you'd pour in everything they could use from day 1) but simply to calibrate the conflict at a "somewhat higher level of intensity" to inflict costs on Russia and, even more importantly than that, profit immensely in terms of arms and gas. — boethius

Real world policies of states are not monoliths. The goals you're listing are not mutually exclusive.

without even need to get into the US policy clearly to arm the most extreme Nazi groups in Ukraine — boethius

A policy you made up.

fascist boots on the ground to deal with any Ukrainian resistance to the policy to march to war with a far more powerful neighbour which would obviously harm the country immensely and get a great many Ukrainians killed. — boethius

An interesting fantasy but don't you think the fascist boots crossing the border from Russia are a much more effective motivation?

One wonders how it is that the authorities in this instance are immune to misinformation and false beliefs. Presumably some official will peruse misinformation just as anyone else, and therefor are at the very same risk of forming false beliefs as the rest of us, so it makes little sense to give some and not everyone the power to judge the veracity of information on their own accord. And given that falsity and false beliefs have been with us since the beginning, one wonders of its increasing criminalization as of late. Perhaps worse, our betters have never been that adept at disseminating the truth, historically producing its opposite on an industrial scale. — NOS4A2

I think the problem here is that you're focusing on the content, the false or misleading statement, when the actual reason to worry about misinformation is the media environment.

It's no surprise that you approach the topic from the angle of the content, since unfortunately a lot of the reporting on the topic does the same thing - focusing on the content as the problem.

But the real problem with misinformation, what's "new" about it, is that it's become easier and more profitable to sell false information to people. Tailored media "feeds" (a rather appropriate term) create incentives that are very different from those of a traditional print or broadcast medium.

There have always been peddlers of misinformation, for various reasons, be it purely commercial (e.g. the traditional yellow press) or political. However, these could not be targeted, other than by subscription services, which meant that a publication needed to either have mass appeal or some other distribution channel to overcome the barrier of entry into a subscription.

Mass appeal acts like a filter for misinformation just in the way you like to think of more speech combatting false information: when exposed to a wide audience, it's likely that it's spotted and this will generally make the publication less favoured. So in a traditional medium there's an incentive to keep your reporting reasonably grounded in a shared understanding of the facts.

But today misinformation can be effectively targeted. It can thus influence a person's views without needing to be internally consistent for any other recipient. People can stitch together their views from disparate pieces which will overlap in some areas yet wildly disagree in others. The effect of this is quite visible in modern populist movements from COVID to climate change.

So it's not that misinformation has suddenly become more dangerous in and of itself or that people require a paternalistic guardian. It's that the truth has trouble surviving the modern media environment, and if there's no-one to help it do so we risk our societies atomising into various bubbles. We're already pretty far along that path and it's symptoms are quite visible: political gridlock, an increase in politically motivated violence, intolerance of differing views.

According to hard determinism, everything in the universe, including human behavior, follows a chain of cause and effect. If this is true, then our sense of free will is merely an illusion. — Cadet John Kervensley

I have always thought that the use of the term illusion presupposes a conclusion that's not supported by the premises. An illusion is specifically a phenomenon which appears to be one thing but is really another. But the premise of determinism does not supply the "other". Under determinism, effect follows cause, but this doesn't explain what a decision is. Determinism cannot replace will just as will cannot replace determinism.

They believe that while our actions may be influenced by external forces, we still possess a degree of freedom within those constraints. — Cadet John Kervensley

This is far from the only compatibilist stance. As I outlined above, it's not obvious why freedom and determinism must conflict given that very few people would assume that "freedom" describes a metaphysical principle which would entirely replace determinism.

Though I may be free to steal someone’s car I must live with consequence of this decision which is the removal of my freedom/liberty upon being caught and found guilty of this crime. — kindred

That's not the consequence, that's a punishment. A consequence would be that you live in a world where people may take your stuff.

I’m truly free when I’m not bound by the causality of actions leading to a choice, in this respect I have free will, as long as I can make acausal choices or decisions. — kindred

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. When is a decision "causal" and when is it not?

My main issue with the argument of no free will would be the fact that if you believed in that you would have to argue that murderers and other heinous crimes are justified because the perpetrator simply had no choice, he HAD to kill those people, its not his fault. — Samlw

Is that really a necessary conclusion though? Responsibility, guilt, justification are not ontological categories but ultimately human judgements. Free will is not logically necessary for these categories to function, it's just how they're mostly used.

Throughout writing this, I have argued to myself that you could punch someone in the face at any point in the day if you wanted to, but you don't because you don't want to. Maybe that's because you aren't aggressive or you are scared of the repercussions, it could be anything, but maybe that "not wanting" to do something even though you could do it at any point, takes away part of that free will. But even then with that thought it would still argue that free will is real, it just gets hindered. — Samlw

"Freedom" needs a definition. It's not something which can simply be measured empirically. That definition needs to account for reasons, for a decision without reasons is contradictory. Freedom should be distinguishable from randomness. If that's the case, then it would seem that freedom must refer to a specific kind of reasons.

You would sacrifice all of humanity because you personally believe not even one person should ever be forced to sacrifice their life? — ToothyMaw

I think most people would sacrifice a person if the stakes were that high. However, the wisdom of the general rule that noone should be sacrificed for the greater good is also pretty intuitive.

The problem, from a deontological perspective anyways, is whether you can formulate a general rule or maxim that can account for particularly dire circumstances without undermining the force of the command for all other circumstances. In other words is it possible to draw an abstract and general line between the exceptions and the rule.

A consequentialist does not directly have this problem, the consequentialist does need to decide though how to integrate concerns about moral hazard and respect for the individual into their calculation.

I'm aware of some regulatory approaches (e.g. by the EU), but they're very general and concerned mostly with data protection, which does not sound like what you're looking for.

It sounds to me like you're looking for something like guidelines for AI "alignment", that is how to get AI to follow instructions faithfully and act according to human interests while doing so.

I think you'd need a fair bit of technical background to get something useful done in that area. There seem to be currently two sides to the debate, one side that thinks alignment will work more or less just like normal tuning of an AI model (e.g. AI Optimism). They're therefore advocating mostly practical research to refine current techniques.

The other side thinks that a capable AI will try to become as powerful as possible as a general goal ("Instrumental convergence") and hence think there's a lot of theoretical work to be done to figure out how the AI could do that. I only know about some forums which lean heavily into this, e.g. less wrong and effective altruism. Lots of debate there though I can't really assess the quality.

Does anybody have any experience with drafting an AI Code of Conduct? — Benkei

Like a code of conduct for how and when AI systems can be employed?

A simple example of this is a judge in a courtroom given a decision. There he is not influenced by his personal beliefs and values but rather gets beliefs from external sources. — QuirkyZen

I think a judge's beliefs about a case are entirely personal beliefs. Indeed it's the judges task to do the judging. A judge must be personally convinced of their decision.

A judge makes a personal effort to be neutral by making sure they only consider factors which are within their purview. It's not that the beliefs are not personal, it's that they're formed by adhering to specific methodology.

Making decisions based on your personal beliefs and values is not always bad. Sometimes the decisions made according to your personal beliefs can be better than the decisions made if you were neutral. — QuirkyZen

What metric are you using here to assess how "good" a decision is?

What are beliefs and whether ones beliefs are correct or not is a different topic — QuirkyZen

Well I think you're going to have to elaborate because as it stands it's hard to figure out what you're talking about. You seem to be using "belief" to refer to (moral? religious?) value judgements. But obviously some value judgements are always required when making any decision, so you must be referring to some specific kind of belief?

This was and is US policy. — boethius

You have already quoted the parts of the paper that make clear that it is analysing a course of action where the US intensifies it's efforts. I'm not sure who you're trying to fool by now acting like the paper was an analysis of the existing US policy. Yourself?

You seem to be literally trying to memory hole the entire start of the war in which NATO was the main justification. — boethius

I have repeatedly argued in this thread that NATO is a secondary concern to Russia and that there was no objective reason for the russian government to worry about Ukrainian NATO membership either in 2014 or in 2022.

The authors are clear: counter escalation by Russia (such as what we see) is damaging to US interests. — boethius

But Russia losing it's entire peacetime army and having to engage in several years of grinding war of attrition with huge military expenditures is damaging to russian interests. A scenario which the paper did not forecast on account of it seeming utterly absurd in 2019.

As I explain above, you continue and increase — boethius

Trying to sneak that in here even though you already admitted that you can't actually point to any increase.

And it's all documented in honestly surprising detail (such as Merkel just telling us the Minsk agreements were done in bad faith) so you need to practice your memory holing somewhere else because I see no reason to toss pretty clear and vivid memories that have supporting documentation down the memory hole. — boethius

This honestly just sounds like you're insane. As in mentally ill. This is the actual quote by Merkel:

"The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It also used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine,"

Quoted from russian news agency TASS by the way.

Does it say "we did it in bad faith"? No. Does it say "we did it to prepare for war"? No. Does it say "we were actually planning to break the agreement right from the start? Hell no.

So just what is wrong with your reading comprehension that you read into it all these things which are not actually there?

that a ragtag group of Nazis could take on the Russian army with sheer grit and tough guy tattoos. — boethius

Russia has lost its entire peacetime army roughly twice already. Ukraine is currently fighting not the army that invaded in 2022, not the army that came after it, but the one after that.

Did anyone in 2022 and before expect that Russia would loose so much equipment in Ukraine that it would significantly deplete it's gargantuan inheritance of soviet weapons?

I think the ragtag group of Nazis has done quite enough damage, and the war isn't over.

But interestingly US already suspended the treaty in February 2019 and the RAND paper is printed in 2019, so it's almost like this paper was written, someone read it, and the US withdrew from the INF treaty. — boethius

Yes, one could imagine that, but the Wikipedia page which you yourself quoted does also say that Trump had already announced his plan to withdraw in 2018. The Rand report was published in April 2019 by the way. But obviously an unpublished version may have been around long before then.

Ok so you got nothing. I guess you're right about this being a total waste of time.

I'll still be calling out falsehoods when I spot then though.

The RAND paper describes what will likely lead to "higher intensity conflict":

1. Supplying arms
2. Keep saying Ukraine will join NATO — boethius

It doesn't say that. You quoted it yourself, it said the US could become more vocal and increase lethal aid. How, specifically, has the US done either?

Which RAND predicts is exactly what has happened. — boethius

Yeah this is nonsense and everyone but you will understand that, so I won't bother engaging with this further.

The authors are clearly describing a process of Russia conquering parts of Ukraine in high intensity conflict that causes serious strain: — boethius

Yeah no.

The authors recommend seeking a diplomatic solution to the Donbas conflict in which lethal aid could be one point of leverage to do so but only makes sense in a larger diplomatic strategy. — boethius

And, since according to you the US has done exactly what's outlined in the paper, that's what they did, right?

The reason is not thinkable is because we know Western leaders are duplicitous, corrupt, ineffectual, and have no moral foundation — boethius

Any analysis that starts from such premises can only end up with nonsense.

The result would actually be exactly what Russia has been asking for: a new security architecture in Europe that reduces tensions overall in the long term. — boethius

And you wonder why people think you're a paid russian propagandist... Western leaders are all corrupt and eeeevil, but Russia really only wanted the best for everyone.

Why this is completely unacceptable to the people that actually rule us is that the long term effects are more peace, less arms profiteering, less buying up all the Ukrainian land (that's still Ukrainian) on the cheap, and actually rehabilitating Russia as a player in the Western political system. — boethius

More importantly, it's completely unacceptable to the people that vote, because they are actually afraid of a nuclear war with Russia. We can blame the people for their short-sightedness, but ignoring the very obvious balance of popular opinion is silly.

For, in our system, separatism is completely legitimate — boethius

It's not. Separatism is very clearly not recognised by international law.

I use our language to explain the authors meaning. Of course, the authors don't know exactly what escalation will look like, how big it may get; they don't get into that analysis because they view any escalation as bad for US policy. — boethius

You seem to be forgetting that the authors couldn't have been talking about a war in the future.

But thanks for your pointless quibbles that clearly demonstrate you are a a complete idiot. — boethius

From you, I consider this a big praise.

Simply because the US provokes a larger war to extend Russia and Russia know the US is provoking a larger war to extend Russia does not imply that therefore Russia should not do exactly what the US is provoking.

The same RAND analysis that explains what would the US would need to do to provoke an escalation by Russia explains exactly why Russia would do that: it would be a setback for US policy and a win for Russia. — boethius

More utterly insane bullshit. So now it's not Russia that obviously invades against it's own interests, but the US that obviously acts against its own interests by provoking Russia. I guess it fits with your whole "all western leaders are corrupt evil idiots" delusion.

Putin made clear that we either come to a a deal, a new security architecture in Europe, or he'll invade Ukraine — boethius

Putin made completely absurd demands that obviously weren't going to be granted. This was Austria issuing an ultimatum to Serbia.

Yes I have, I quoted RAND saying what would escalate the conflict: further arms to Ukraine and simply unilaterally declaring Ukraine will join NATO even if that won't happen soon due to ally objections, I then stated that's exactly what the US did. — boethius

And I'll call this a bold faced lie unless you can actually point to specific actions.

Second, I literally just explained how I'm the only one who's actually explained how to "protect Ukrainian sovereignty" with Western power and why that would have likely worked, avoided all the death and destruction in Ukraine that has happened since, and that I would have been completely in favour of that. — boethius

Everyone can claim to have been in favour of past actions that cannot now be taken.

But for the record, I don't believe you're intentionally making propaganda for Russia, I think you're just very far gone from reality.

However, because our leaders are exceptionally arrogant and stupid, simply came out and said they made the agreement in bad faith, never intended to abide by it and planned from the start not to, but instead prepare for the exactly the war that would result due to reneging on commitments. — boethius

Yeah, you've apparently hallucinated a lot of stuff that was never said. Yeah western leaders said that they agreed to the Minsk agreements to gain time, which is neither bad faith nor particularly surprising. They said none of the rest.

Where's your proof? — boethius

You can read Wikipedia or any other news source you care about. I won't educate you about things that are part of the public record.

We have proof of Western leaders own words they didn't abide by the agreement and never intended to — boethius

No we don't.

These agreements came into being with Ukraine and the West already violating them by already actively planning and continuing actions that breach them. — boethius

Absolute bullshit.

Now, feel free to provide actual evidence — boethius

How about you start?

1. It is morally impermissible to perform an action that is in-itself bad;
2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something bad—even for the sake of something good;
3. Harming someone is, in-itself, bad. — Bob Ross

I think what we can conclude from this is that self defense cannot be justified without accounting for intent.

This, to me, is less a problem with the principle of self defense and more another argument for why intent is crucial in any moral philosophy.

On the contrary, in the 1v5 trolley case we don’t have an analogous situation when a person pulls the lever as the means to saving the five: unlike shooting someone in self-defense, the bad effect is not a part of the directional flow of the end being aimed at. — Bob Ross

I'm not sure I buy this distinction. It seems to me you're trying to reintroduce intentionality through the back door here, by ascribing the intention to the "directional flow". But casual chains do not inherently have goals. The goal stems from the intention of actors. From a purely casual perspective, changing the lever in the trolley scenario causes harm to the one specific person. This harm did not previously exist as part of the causal chain.

Rand discusses exactly the measures that would likely lead to "escalation" by Russia: — boethius

And did any of that actually happen?

Which a full-blown large scale war I'm pretty sure qualifies as "somewhat higher level of intensity". — boethius

No, it doesn't, since what we're seeing is an entirely different category of conflict. The paper clearly does not describe a full blown war by Russia, since the writers did not expect Russia would take such a step. If they did want to predict that, they'd have stated it directly.

This is all generally a serious setback for U.S. Policy. — boethius

You're not reading that properly. It says that a disadvantageous peace settlement of the Donbas conflict would be a setback to US policy. But we're no longer in that stage of the conflict anyways.

Notice nowhere in this document nor any other similar US policy analysis document you'll find anything describing how Ukraine can actually "win" or discussing US direct intervention to "save the day" if the likely outcome of expanding the war occurs.

Why you may ask? — boethius

Because putting boots on the ground in Ukraine would be so widely unpopular that no government could afford it.

The only question this brings up is why does the US not follow the Rand advise and "calibrate" support to avoid a larger war that Russia would win and thus embarrass the US. — boethius

You haven't actually described any of the actions the US took to escalate the conflict so this is an empty claim.

This document in 2019 an answers the question of how to start a larger war in Ukraine, also why that's bad for both Ukraine and US long term interests. — boethius

It doesn't, and you can't start a war that's already ongoing.

Well, this exact war we are considering accomplishes those two things. — boethius

A war which does not exist. You're talking about a theoretical scenario which did not end up happening.

What you'll do is have the military war game things out (just not publicly as with this Rand paper) and what those war games will reveal is that Russia has no means of simply overrunning all of Ukraine. The initial invasion will run out of steam, then more will need to be mobilized as Russias standing army in 2022 was simply not that big, with the addition of the problem of pacifying conquered regions and so on. They don't know what Russia will do exactly but what they do know is that Russia is very unlikely to win in direct military terms in any short period of time. They'd also know on the off chance they're wrong and Russia does simply overrun Ukraine then that doesn't really embarrass the US as we all knew "Russia would win in 3 days" anyways, and then Russia is anyways the big meany and sanctions can continue and gas sold to Europe and so on. — boethius

So why the hell did Russia invade?

So, what we can glean from the US establishments own documents is that they knew exactly how Russia would respond to their actions described in their publicly available document dedicated to finding ways to harm Russia, and then Russia did respond in exactly that way in response to those actions. — boethius

What actions did the US take? And the result is not remotely described in the document. The document does not describe a full blown invasion by Russia.

If you can look at all this publicly available info and come up with quibbles about Ukraine's status as a US proxy to advance US interests at the expense of Ukraine, then you're engaging in what is obvious propaganda to advance US interests at the expense of Ukraine. — boethius

Yeah you're making sweeping claims and then accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being a propagandists. Weren't you the one complaining about being called a propagandist? Pot, meet kettle.

As for Russia's actions, they are a signatory and so also guarantor of the Minsk agreements, both Ukraine and Western leaders have publicly admitted those accords were done in bad faith with no intention of following them — boethius

This is a lie. If you don't want to be accused of being a russian propagandist, maybe don't lie.

indeed Ukraine didn't follow them as was the plan and so therefore Russia is entirely justified in forcing Ukraine to abide by the accords, such as respect the people of the Donbas and stop shelling them. — boethius

This is complete nonsense. Russia did not abide by the terms either. Not only is your conclusion that Russia would be justified to escalate the war in order to enforce Minsk complete nonsense, it's also factually wrong.

An important question we should be asking is why the US is insisting on escalating the war in ways that do nothing to improve Ukraine's position on the battlefield, and are similarly unlikely to hurt Russia in any meaningful way. — Tzeentch

We can't really answer this if you're not telling us what you're actually talking about.

It’s a framing because that’s what you, and others, are constantly doing. You just did it above, and you know it. — Mikie

Calling the war a "US proxy war" implies that the US and not Russia is primarily responsible for the Russian decision to invade. Do you disagree with that?

I think it’s an unfortunate move by Russia— even stupid in a political and strategic sense. But they do seem to be winning, and now have a lot of leverage. I don’t necessarily like that, but that seems to be the case so far. — Mikie

How do you define "winning" for Russia though? In terms of territory?

I see 573 pages has done no good. We’re apparently still at “If you disagree with me you think Putin is good.” Pity. — Mikie

This is convenient framing that you, like some other posters, like to proscribe for us.

Just like the convenient framing that excludes Russian or Ukrainian decisions from the equation and reduces everything to the US as the great Satan and the Ukrainians as the hapless victims.

That framing is leading you to exclude the russian war dead, who on an individual level certainly also include many victims, from your consideration. I think this is a notable omissions from someone who purportedly is worried about the human cost of the fighting.

This war is also a russian tragedy. How do you propose to understand it if you're not even seeing that side of the equation?

So you'd agree countries are not literally forced to start an offensive war? That whatever government does actually order it's soldiers to cross the border and start shooting did in fact decide to do this?

I wonder why noone ever expresses their sadness for all the young Russian men who have to die in Ukraine (and now also Kursk I guess) because their leadership embarked on a destructive war.

If they had just not done it, they'd all be fine. It's very strange to me that the position of the anti-war left us simultaneously that war is terrible but also apparently that war is inevitable.

This firewall needs to be in place so that he can hide "free will ," as he understood it, in the noumenal realm, while maintaining the phenomenal world is rigidly deterministic (see the end of the Prolegomena). — Count Timothy von Icarus

The "firewall" properly goes back to Hume though, Kant's innovation was to introduce synthetic a-priori truths.

or that it is impossible to apply the findings of neuroscience, genetics, etc. to anything outside that which lies inside phenomenal awareness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is difficult to get around the conceptual wall around phenomena. Of course, it's just as difficult to explain why one should care in the first place. Whether you're a metaphysical realist or just adopting realism as a practical consideration only makes a difference in some very specific circumstances.

Really whenever one asks a metaphysical question, one should first consider the question "why do I want to know".

If the question is "what is truth" - well, why do you want to know?

Against the background of the news about the transfer of Iranian short-range ballistic missiles into the hands of Muscovites, it can be stated that the axis of evil is more monolithic, decisive and united than the soft Western world. The axis of evil is thinking about preserving its long-term ruling regimes, sick-headed pro-government elites, and stockpiles of weapons to protect it all from the outside world. The Western world is thinking about the next election and pluralism of opinion in its liberal paradise, where far-left, far-right, followers of ISIS, fanatics of Palestine, supporters of Israel, greens, liberals, businessmen and homeless people, drug addicts and Baptists peacefully coexist on the same street, and respect each other. The axis of evil will ultimately defeat the civilized world. Because those who are strong are those who ship stocks of deadly weapons to their allies, and are not afraid of the mythical "escalation", when a full-scale war has been going on for the third year. Strong are those who dictate their terms and act, rather than making promises based on sociological surveys. — neomac

This is reminiscent of the old sentiment about the weakness of democracy in a fight with authoritarianism, isn't it?

I think the reality is more complicated. Democracies are often clumsy and inefficient, but the plurality of views they offer also makes them more resilient. History has not been kind to autoritarian regimes that assumed that a democratic state would just fold because it's people and government would lack the will to fight.

With regards to aid for Ukraine especially, one aspect that seems underrepresented in the discussion is that there might be more going on internationally than we are directly aware of. The narrative is usually that western governments limit aid and restrict weapon use in order to not anger domestic constituencies. And that is certainly the case. But it might also be the case that a number of important international actors wouldn't be too happy to see the west throw it's entire armaments capacity in behind Ukraine. Chief among them China.

It seems plausible that China is threatening western nations with much more significant support for Russia because China does not care to hand the West a clean "win" in Ukraine.

To which my response is that coercion is not free choice and the West bribing Ukrainian elites as well as bold faced lying to the Ukrainian people is called coercion. Likewise, forcibly drafting people and forcing them to front is also coercion and not "Ukrainians want to fight". — boethius

I feel the need again to point out that Russia invaded and that it didn't have to do that. Ukraine was not coerced into fighting Russia by the west. It was coerced into fighting Russia by Russia.

And if we're talking about legitimate interests and security concerns, the big question becomes why invade in the first place? These discussions always revolve around how the west wronged Russia, how Russia was right to feel threatened etc. However, so far I have not seen someone actually sketch the victory scenario for Russia. If we're trying to figure out what we could offer Russia to achieve peace rather than another ceasefire, we have to answer the question of how the invasion could have advanced the legitimate concerns of Russia.