Obviously the source of that non-linear logic is human choices and behavior. Which struck me as a good metaphor for the key difference between Physical and Metaphysical questions. Where material evidence is available, the answers are computable, based on physical laws. — Gnomon

How does this insight apply to the three body problem of Newtonian physics? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem

Just going from two to three masses in interaction and … whoops! Do the masses suddenly come alive in some wilful fashion, explaining their nonlinear behaviour?

If you're saying the US is particularly subject to the influence of war profiteers, you may be right. Still, they can't start wars all by themselves (usually). — frank

I’d like to see the analysis for military expenditure when your mission is to be the peace keeper rather than the war winner. A huge investment in a global standing army, navy and airforce - by the one client in the best position to pay the bill.

Making that the default US mission was surely more profitable for the US defence industry than promoting any particular wars?

Although the industry wins both ways. The game is rigged in favour of the house. :grin:

The question is:
- Whether they were going to use it to land cargo planes, and the answer to that question is obviously no. — Tzeentch

Only “obvious” to you for some reason. I wonder what that reason is?

Meanwhile back in the real world where one would want to apply logic in navigating conflicting views, the central question remains. What is the military value of taking some random airfield and ringing it with troop protection?

As a feint, does that seem the wisest investment of that particular force? Please answer showing this was the obvious option above every other that was available in the Kyiv region that morning.

Then why does every media report find the airbridge story to be plausible? No one rules out the talk of establishing an early airbridge as “impossible” due to AA defences, just risky and likely another miscalculation like pretty much every other aspect of the Russian invasion.

So we continue to have the mystery of why secure a working airbridge in a forward area when there was never a desire to actually use it?

If you don’t realise how dumb your unsupported claim sounds, there are only two things that can explain your persistent refusal to answer that question directly.

Russia is correct in stating that France, the US, U.K and others basically use human rights as toilet papers when it comes to the wars they participate in, — Manuel

I think that is an exaggeration. The counterfactual is that without some international checks and balances, like the Geneva Convention, their behaviour would be much worse.

And then there is the line between pragmatic and disciplined violence versus barbaric and indisplined.

Western violence is extreme - the democratic doctrine of total war - but it is also organised to be maximally effective. Torture and revenge are seen as wasteful and corrosive of achieving war aims.

Russian violence has never been as well organised. And the ill discipline shows.

None of them should ignore human rights, yet all of them do. — Manuel

I would ask the question of who really believes in human rights. It is a nice to have. And even - as I argue - important to the highly successful enlightenment model of human social organisation. But it is still a pragmatic and context dependent choice back in the messy real world.

An effective global system has to recognise pragmatism even if its bosses want to stand up making ringing moralistic speeches at the UN.

And yet, Saudi Arabia, Europe and the US are also at fault here, as you mention. And others too, China, India. Nobody comes clean here, though the moment of the war is tragic. — Manuel

Yep. To the degree the war could be foreseen, it should have been avoided. The issues involved were irrelevant in the larger scheme of things.

And now that there is war, where is the action to at least limit damage to the climate? Should Germany be financially bailed out because it at least was trying to lead a green transition even though it had neither good sun or wind resources, and it’s chemical industry depends on gas as its feed.

I mean it is fantasy. But what if wars had to be carbon neutral as a planetary bottom line? That could be quite funny. Imagine greenwashing the carbon footprint of an Abrams tank or any jet fighter.

And then nuclear war might come out differently as well. I’m sure there would be arguments about the geoengineering fringe benefits of filling the sky with dust clouds.

I joke. But only to show how much larger the perspective on the rights and wrongs of this particular war should be. And if folk can’t be honest about what is happening on the ground in Ukraine - all the whataboutism meant to deflect from serious analysis - then there is no hope of useful debate about the big picture geopolitics.

AT THE SAME TIME this war is happening, Afghanistan is starving to death due to the US not releasing the money they owe to the country. This is equally a crime, happening now and nobody is mentioning it. — Manuel

I wasn’t aware they “owed money”. I will have to google up some sources.

But I’m not defending state control of the news cycle. Believe me, I’ve spent my whole life dealing with that as a working journalist in a number of countries.

Ukraine is an example where the US and Ukraine are doing all they can at the official level to keep the media spotlight on the conflict. The use of social media has been exemplary. Those videos of drones dropping grenades on trenches and down hatches. The perfect narrative of the plucky underdog.

So Russia has the covert social media disinformation covered, and US/Ukraine have the overt gripping narrative - the gamer’s perspective. The later is the truth you can see with your own eyes. But as you say, it all amounts to information autocracy and a failure of true democratic ideals.

We live in a shitty copy of our dreams, no argument. And yet, as a journalist, I know there is still freedom to investigate in the Western system. It just takes a considerable effort.

Now here is something intriguing, or perhaps it is just a matter of accretions of meaning in different contexts ... you seem to be saying that self-consciousness is a barrier to self-awareness. Now I'm wondering what that could mean? — unenlightened

Self consciousness is the language-scaffolded skill of applying a socially constructed lens to one’s own behaviour and existence as a creature.

And when we enter a social situation, we are aware we are among other such self-scrutinising selves who will also be scrutinising us as selves.

This will cause the appropriate degree of physiological arousal, as the brain being a prediction engine must gear the body up for the action it must prepare for.

The “self conscious” is a label for those who habitual react with activation of their fight or flight response - a potentially overwhelming anxiety at being trapped by scrutinising judgement. A fear of being exposed to a room of critics.

Others more confident or extrovert may feel some very different physiological reaction. Aha, a chance to put my “self” on show for all to appreciate!

The problem with philosophers bowing to the final authority of Pragmatic Empirical Science, is that If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like Physics. — Gnomon

All this complaining is a bit rich when it is you who invokes the physical concepts of information theory and quantum theory is every post I’ve seen from you.

You shouldn’t be surprised if people helpfully try to explain, well you don’t seem to exactly get what the concepts entail. Either as physics or metaphysics.

As I said, we have no access to a geometric world and hence no physical access to one. — noAxioms

So there is a world where geometry exist and another where physics exists?

There is no material access but there is a relation?

but I wasn't talking about the concept. I was talking about the triangle, — noAxioms

You mean you were talking about the mathematician’s concept and not the physicalist’s concept?

I know you think in semiotics, but when pondering the fundamentals of the the universe, one must be able to step outside that philosophy unless you want to suggest that the semiotics are fundamental, which is a form of idealism. — noAxioms

Well Peirce called it objective idealism. And I like it because it is indeed epistemology become ontology. Pansemiosis would be the position that the Cosmos develops into being as a rational structure. The logic of structure itself causes the Universe to come to have a necessary existence.

Your philosophy seemingly bars your from discussing anything except the symbols, preventing discussion of the referent. Your inability to do this doesn't mean I have such an inability. — noAxioms

It ain’t about talking. It is about acting in the world as a community of mind. It I say draw a “triangle”, I doubt I will find myself protesting, but you’ve drawn a circle. Or a canoe. Or anything else.

I don't find distinction between something existing and not existing (being actual or not being actual), so I find any statement of something existing to be meaningless. — noAxioms

So you say. But that is an eliminative assertion which you betray every time you in practice sit down without looking backwards to check the “chair” is still “there”.

Where’s the contradiction? The cruise missiles were supposed to have done a large part of the job even before the paratrooper first wave. The second wave would have wanted to follow as fast as possible, not wait a few weeks.

Again, why have paratroopers ring a cargo airfield unless you planned to use that airfield pretty soon. You think it would have been held long by the assault force? And for what purpose?

I realise it is pointless stating the obvious all the time. You have your talking points and can’t deviate from the script. I’m finding it quite amusing,

I can confidently say that there was awareness and attention to the road and traffic, because without it there would have been a crash almost immediately. — unenlightened

The lack of working memory formation tells you there wasn’t full attention of the kind needed to underwrite aperception of the perception. Like a dream, it was a flow of experience being forgotten as fast as it happened. No imagery was being retained in a way that would allow introspection.

My theme for the thread has been to distinguish (particularly verbal) thought from awareness. This is naturally rather hard to do in words, and inclined to provoke resistance and incomprehension from thinking verbal minds that dominate philosophy. — unenlightened

Very true. And the kicker is that forming sentences relies on a lot of unconscious habit. Note how that just before a sentence forms, you have the general gist of what you want to say. You are orientated and ready to go with an utterance.

When you are using your inner voice to create an internal monologue or regulating narrative, this means you don’t actually have to hear yourself saying the full sentence. You just have to get as far as being about to say it for that nascent thought to already have sufficient effect. So even the essential role of the inner voice bubbles along at almost unverbalised levels as one half formed speech act is overtaken by the next to keep things zipping along.

That isn't speculation. You don't seem to be aware of what SEAD is, — Tzeentch

Jeez. You really don’t do good at argument. Russian aviation soon discovered just how bad they were at SEAD and had to stop sacrificing planes. But I guess you will say the early phase of them taking unacceptable losses was just a “feint” and not another miscalculation. :grin:

SEAD strikes to facilitate landing large, slow-moving cargo planes on the frontline?

What scale of suppression do you have in mind? A nuclear strike on Ukraine?

You understand that even MANPADS, IR AA or unguided AAA batteries would be having a turkey shoot? — Tzeentch

Just produce evidence to back your speculation.

And you're suggesting to land 18-20 of them under fire while loaded up with battalions worth of men and material. — Tzeentch

No one suggested that. So strawman. Step 1 was suppress air defence and secure the runway and its surrounds. Step 2 was fly in the troops and gear when it was reasonably safe. Or given Russian competence, just take a chance or two.

Again, the counterfactual is that no one in any of the reporting raised this as something making the Russian plan impossible. But I’m sure you will construct some further conspiracy story on that.

And for the record, you can continue linking articles that state experts supposedly said things - those have zero value. — Tzeentch

You can’t even link to a single media report. Surely Russian media might help you there?

By stating what is absolutely obvious to anyone whose conception of war isn't based on newspaper articles? — Tzeentch

My choice is between understanding what I can glean from named public sources or believing some random internet “military expert” pushing apologist talking points. The decision isn’t hard. And you keep making it easier.

Published sources agree that US intelligence warned there would be an assault on Antonov airport to establish an air bridge. US intel proved itself good enough that is would have warned in the decapitation plan was a feint.

The Russians would of course have to have suppressed the Ukraine air defences before the transport planes could land. The Ilyushins have flares and electronic countermeasures, showing they are intended to have some chance of landing in defended forward areas. But the Russian assault started with a missile bombardment meant to help neutralise the AA.

The problem was that the same US advance warning allowed the Ukrainians to shift everything before the softening bombardment and the Russians were left blasting empty fields.

Things went to shit for the Russians rapidly after that. Hostomel was a key target because there was a decapitation plan. It was not a feint. But the paratroopers couldn’t gain control and the Ukraine air defences were intact and so landing the Ilyushins would have indeed been suicidal and so was aborted.

This is publicly available history now. But keep up with your bogus military analysis for which have failed to provide a shred of credible support.

As Russia launched its invasion, the U.S. gave Ukrainian forces detailed intelligence about exactly when and where Russian missiles and bombs were intended to strike, prompting Ukraine to move air defenses and aircraft out of harm’s way, current and former U.S. officials told NBC News.

That near real-time intelligence-sharing also paved the way for Ukraine to shoot down a Russian transport plane carrying hundreds of troops in the early days of the war, the officials say, helping repel a Russian assault on a key airport near Kyiv.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-intel-helped-ukraine-protect-air-defenses-shoot-russian-plane-carry-rcna26015

The aircraft is equipped with a defensive aids suite, comprising radar warning, jammers, infrared flare cartridges, chaff dispenser and two guns with a fire-control radar. Aerial bombs or radio beacons are suspended from external bomb racks on detachable pylons.

https://charter.capavia.com.tr/en/ilyushin-il-76/

experts say there is one place, more than anywhere else, where Putin’s vision of a lightning strike victory ran aground: Antonov Airport.

This sprawling cargo airport and military base 15 miles northwest of downtown Kyiv was supposed to be the principal staging ground and logistics hub for a battle-defining Russian thrust into the heart of the capital.

The Ukrainian government was supposed to fall and President Volodymyr Zelensky was supposed to be killed, captured or forced into exile. Experts said that Putin probably planned to install a puppet leader.

“They needed to get into the middle of Kyiv as quickly as possible and raise the Russian flag over a government building,” said John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army major who now chairs urban war studies at the Madison Policy Forum think tank in New York. “At that point you’ve won the war. Yes, you may start the greatest insurgency in history. But you’ve won the war.”

He said capturing the airport was “critical” to the Russian strategy. Antonov has a long runway, ideal for flying in supplies and troops on heavy transport planes.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-04-10/battered-ukraine-air-field-was-key-to-russian-plan-to-take-the-capital-the-airport-fell-but-resistance-continued

It is a polygon, thus it exists as a member of the set of polygons, among other things. It’s why I brought up the prime number thing in the OP. 221 is not prime because there exist factors (13 & 17) that divide it. The triangle exists in the same sense as that usage of the word. — noAxioms

I was going to leave it there but then thought worth dealing with this from the epistemological angle that speaks to the need for ontological commitments in anyone's view.

My epistemology is semiotic and pragmatist. Peircean. And so what I would point out is how "triangle" is a word that functions as a sign – a symbol – that anchors a modelling relation between mind and world.

If I say "triangle", you will be put in mind of some suitable way to act. You will come at the world equipped with a certain communal habit of interpretation.

Is this a triangle....



Is this a triangle....



Is this a triangle....



Is this a triangle....



So the point is that the word is a sign by which we navigate reality via some habit of interpretation. We have a working sense of what it would mean for nature to be triangular in form in a materially instantiated fashion.

The meaning of the word "triangle" is the sum of all the possible ways we could stretch and yet not break the sense of what is essential. And essential in the sense of being a particular kind of formal constraint imposed on material being.

So in language, a sign is what we use to coordinate our behaviour. We are a community of speakers who learn the same habits of interpretation and so standardise our behaviour in regards to the worlds in which we must exist.

Maths then takes speech to the next level in terms of semiotic abstraction. The signs become even simpler. A triangle can be represented as three connected points. You mention three corners. More exactly, it is three edges with three vertexes.

Yet still, the drawing of a triangle – its icon – is just a much a sign as the word "triangle". As a community of thinkers, it is meant to put us in mind of a certain standard way of imposing form on the material world. It coordinates our actions. The sum of what the mathematical symbol means is the sum of all the specific set of acts it makes possible – in the sense of stretching and yet not breaking the "essential" meaning.

So this should make it clearer what I mean about breathing fire into equations. An equation is just some set of squiggles on a page. But as a habit of interpretance, we can read it to impose formal order on material disorder. We can share a mental attitude as to how to organise our environments.

What breathes fire is the fact that there are minds making use of some set of symbols to make change in the world. The triangle doesn't exist in its sign – a word or a picture or an equation. It exists as a modelling relation between a self and its world.

The symbol is a bit of technology or mechanism to anchor the two sides of the relation. And a triangle then exists to the degree that it makes to act "triangularly" in the world.

So you seem to be saying that a sign like "triangle" just exists, floating free of any ontological ground. Semiotics says a triangle is a sign that constrains action in some habitual or lawful way.

Any action is potentially possible in a material sense. But a structure of constraint then acts to restrict it in a concrete fashion in the formal sense.

And it is this fact – the embedding of the sign in a system of meaning – that allows an equation to be animated. Engineers can really do something with an equation that "knows the mind of God", or however Hawking put it.

I’m talking about the triangle itself. It is not very particular. I’ve only specified that it is a triangle. — noAxioms

So a triangle as something free of all possible ontological commitments?

That is itself another ontological commitment even if you believe you have safely placed yourself beyond ontological questions.

I mean I can’t stop you picking such a position. There just ain’t nothing to engage on if that is the case.

You declare equations need no animating fire and that’s it. We can all go home. Nothing to see here, folks.

Considering the enormous harms of continued war, anyone not playing out their Star Wars fantasies would need an extremely good reason to justify continued war. — Isaac

This is correct. Which is why we have to be clear about what we are fighting for.

I believe we ought to be fighting for a global order that accepts some set of basic human rights and which thus provides a productive framework within which sovereign states can freely compete.

The prevailing world structure was far from wonderful, but it made things like collecting crates of gold teeth beyond the pale. It accepts war as justified, but wants some sane rules around such contests.

This is a global compromise, but it is the best that can be hoped for. And of course the rules were largely written with a large dollop of US self interest after WW2. But who else was in a position to push some kind of understanding through?

The main problem with the US version of a global framework was it was all about fossil fuels and free trade. A new kind of competition to see whose national system could create the largest per capita ecological footprint. It wasn’t actually a sustainable vision under which to unite humanity.

So the big picture view of Ukraine - the true realist position - would factor in both Putin’s erosion of the old US global staus quo and some new world order that does a good job recognising the state of the world as it is fast becoming.

Human rights start to tumble down the list or priorities as our atrocities reach global ecological levels.

At this level of political realism, Ukraine is just a massive distraction. Putin must take full blame not just for the human atrocities he is responsible for, but also the disruption to the fragile world order and its willingness to battle climate change, or at least create some kind of equality in the suffering we’ve got coming.

The US also deserves all the criticism for its part in climate inaction. Big oil is a historical crime given that green tech - especially for America - was a viable option.

So sure, geopolitical realism demands that we make these cost-benefit calculations. Human suffering is coming in ways that makes crates of gold teeth chickenfeed.

When I see so much needless destruction of social and economic infrastructure, forgive me but I think about the ecological footprint involved in any rebuilding.

But the question here has been about Putin and his intentions. Are they large or small? Do they point the planet towards new solutions or drag us backwards in terms of a pragmatic global system of order?

The best commentary I have heard paints Putin as the head of a crime mob who has become stuck in escalation mode by his miscalculations. Partly Ukraine is just about staying domestically popular. But also, he actually does seem to have a personal and irrational hatred of the West’s imposition of a global rules framework, so would be happy to smash it.

Putin may not actually have planned to go further than smash the emergence of such order right on his own doorstep. Maybe Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, could all be left as no kind of real threat to the Russian kleptocratic, fossil fuel, crime syndicate at all.

Yet Ukraine does get to have a say in what its people believe. And the whole planet should find Putin worth stopping - but in the context of the degree to which he threatens the world order that we need to construct, rather than the degree that it protects the world order that underpinned a fossil fuel consumption based model of humanity these past 70 years.

Such a calculation is of course impossibly utopian. But that is what a philosophical discussion should be for.

Meanwhile stop with the bullshit about feints and Russian competence. Stop with the whataboutism when I don’t see anyone claiming the US doesn't act self interestedly. Anyone who has studied modern history knows that setting up a global free trade environment was as self serving for the US as it was altruistic.

And that is fine. The question now is who is going to lead the world towards its next as-altruistic-as-possible rules-base framework?

China put up its hand at one stage, Now we have Xi. But these are the interesting discussions to be had. Not repetitions of “Mearsheimer says Putin’s grievances are legitimate and pushing Ukraine to surrender is even in its own best interest.”

I love this almost poetic description and the timings, how are they arrived at? — Amity

The most vivid research is from reaction time studies in sports psychology. You film folk as they have to react to the bad bounce of a cricket ball. This shows that it takes 200 milliseconds to “see and respond” that you mispredicted but found time to correct. The simplest reactions, like hearing the starter’s pistol in a race takes about 100ms. That is how they can make rules around false starts.

So that gives you concrete timings for habits. And then there are a variety of psychological tests for showing that attentive awareness takes 500ms or more. You have phenomena like the attentional blink that shows it takes that long to switch attention from one event to another,

There is plenty of lab evidence. But it is not a standardly taught way of understanding the brain. Cognition is treated like a branch of computer science and so thinks of the brain in a very disembodied fashion.

For us humans, it is all about the biological embodiment, and only secondarily about the abstracted or disembodied point of view that is our social programming.

Why do you think building robots that can move fluidly is so hard, yet building a computer chess program is so easy? It is not tripping over your own feet that requires true genius in the real world.

But who is upstairs if it is not the homunculus in chief? — unenlightened

The homunculus exists if you treat the brain as being about Cartesian representation - the neural display of information. But a predictive and enactive approach to brain processing says the brain forward models its inputs so as to be able to cancel all that arriving information away

It is an anti-representation theory. Your model of the world works if the end result is that you managed to make nothing unexpected happen. The goal of the brain is not to be aware in an attentive sense.

So the homunculus in chief is the sense of self that arises from being in full control of the flow of reality. The world is unfolding as you already imagined it in terms of your wants and needs. Life is easy. You don’t even have to pay attention or remember.

The future is being cancelled from mind as fast as it can happen. You are driving through busy dangerous traffic and you can’t even really remember the tune you were listening to on the radio as you vaguely daydreamed about this or that.

You are the boss of the situation. Until you mow down the elderly cyclist.

So it isn’t about a mental representation of the world that “someone” then has to react to. That someone is already driving the car through their routine life as mindlessly as they can get away with. It doesn’t even matter that they day dream as there is no neurobiological reason to be having grand and important thoughts.

It is purely a social construction that a person’s state of mind should be any different. If you are a good Catholic, you would need to be feeling guilty about something at other. If you are one of life’s busy entrepreneurs, you would have to be maximising your productivity by consuming another Tony Robbins podcast.

Society demands the existence of an eternally attentive homunculus as the brain’s command module. That is the technology it means to insert in us to make us properly socially regulated beings. So no wonder that is the standard folk psychology model of consciousness. We should just expect to find that little vigilant person who misses nothing and is responsible for everything.

Whether we flub a tennis forehand, or mow down a cyclist, it is all the same. The social expectation is that we were always attentive, and own every act as something carefully planned and thought out, even if we are in fact quite naturally creatures of habit.

You are telling me all I need to know about your expertise and intentions here. :up:

But I don't think it's awareness of awareness as such. — unenlightened

To be prosaic, it is just noticing and fixing a sensory-motor pattern in memory so you can recognise or execute it again.

The brain works on prediction. To find the same thing again, you have to have to have developed a memory that could recognise it. It is then noticing it for the first time which is the tricky bit.

That is why sports coaching is all about suggesting cues to notice. Start your deadlift by pushing the ground away with your feet.

When we say that awareness doesn't require further witness, how would you say that attention interacts with our subconscious unraveling of experience? Do we have the ability to reason and thus change our habits through attention and doesn't there need to some kind of an awareness of the self during this process? — Universal Student

Sure. We can act out of habit or we can act via attention. And indeed, every act is a balance of both in fact. The way the brain is wired means that arriving sense data will be allowed to trigger the simple emission of learnt habits to the degree is slots right into a state of prediction. That takes a fifth of a second or less. Then where something is unexpected or requires reorientation, then the brain squashes the habitual response to kick it upstairs for a full attentive response. That takes about half a second to arrive at a new state of intention and readiness.

So to change a habit, we have to get into the habit of interrupting it as it about to happen and instead replace it with some different attentional plan. We have to catch ourselves and remind ourselves not to snap at our partner, or whatever, until this just becomes the new desired routine.

Self awareness thus would have to start in getting used to noticing how we have been interacting. Or indeed, pay attention to the rationalisations that likely have always supported our habitual responses. We might have victim thinking or other habits ingrained since childhood.

So the brain is designed to reduce as much of action to an unthinking flow as possible. It’s like learning to drive a car as an automatic activity. You want to free your attention to deal with genuine novelty. Then to change a habit, you must bring attention back to what you are doing automatically. And because your habits move at a faster pace, they can be slippery buggers.

f we attack the other person and thus gain our object back, that biological urge has been completed and there would be no further need for exploration or inquiry. One would simply continue on because that method works to satisfy those basic needs. — Universal Student

You are talking about thought at the level of training a toddler. Telling kids that it is not polite to snatch. The basic standards of social interaction start with simply training some impulse control and self regulation in kids.

But if we are talking about doing better as adults, then there is a whole complex web of thoughts about rights and wrongs we must learn to navigate. Whether or not to snatch something back could be an impulse that needs to be negotiated in any kind of social context. Are we playing rugby or is it a policeman who had just grabbed something off us.

And who said they never intended to use it? Maybe they did. — Tzeentch

Airports are important military targets, either for own use or denying them to the enemy. If a military force occupies an area of land, I would expect them to secure every single airport, regardless of their immediate intentions or use by the enemy. — Tzeentch

So there is a reasonable conclusion that this risky mission was warranted to secure an airbridge as part of a lightning attack and you can’t come up with reasons for why this would instead be the optimal move as part of a mere feint.

Who does such logic about Russian intentions serve? :chin:

Does that sound like the kind of environment you'd be airlifting in battalions worth of troops with cargo planes? — Tzeentch

So your theory is Russia helicoptered its crack troops to secure a cargo airfield that was a top priority despite being well aware it would be impossible to land their cargo planes there.

Does that sound sane to you? Wasn’t there anything else they could have used those limited resources for in pursuit of their limited war aims?

Is it normal military tactics to stuff around taking hold of an enemy transport hub that you never intend to use?

Even if you - as the military strategist here - were asked to construct a feint on Kyiv with this exact force available to you, would this have been your cunning plan? It this the top option?

Come on, be honest. What’s the bleeding point of ringing an unwanted airfield with precious paratroopers when you have a whole country of other more intelligent choices?

:yawn:

How would your argument apply to Hitler? Was appeasement a success?

I think we're seeing an interesting common theme arise; anything the Russians do is speculated, often without any objective basis, to have been a lot more ambitious than their actual results, and thus can be framed as a failure. — Tzeentch

You make it sound like this hasn’t been the universal response of all informed military experts watching events unfold.

Now the whole of the West may be pretending to be surprised by Russian ineptitude. Is this what you are wanting us to believe?

What would be the motive for this massive disinformation campaign that is apparently backed by endless factual evidence of incompetence and miscalculation by a regime eroded from the inside by its gangster economics?

Not "would have made" - Ukrainian AA makes it impossible. — Tzeentch

And yet 30 helicopters made the initial assault. How was that possible? Were they supersonic or stealth or something?

The Russians also fired off 160 missiles to try and suppress the air defences.

But Ukrainian troop had recaptured enough of the airport to put the runway out action within 12 hours.

So you haven’t really made a slam dunk case as yet. :smile:

Buzzkill. :rofl:

You’ve said the same thing a hundred times. :smile:

I'm presently serving and have a degree in military strategy — Tzeentch

I look forward to evidence that you can source your views in response to the published reports then. It should be really easy.

And...? — Isaac

No, you are quite right. This is indeed how one wages a war to liberate and denazify a country. What was I thinking!

Phew, thank goodness we've finally found some unbiased sources without any ulterior motives to worry about. — Isaac

Do I have to join every dot for you apologists? If Ukraine AA would have made an airbridge impossible, then someone might have mentioned it. Military expertise would not have been lacking in the reported discussions.

Now the question is, since you seem to lack military expertise, — Tzeentch

It’s nice to know we have someone here with such obvious military expertise as yourself to guide us. Now back to what sources have said and not what some random internet dude wants to claim as an excuse for Russian military incompetence.

In the time leading up to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) obtained detailed information about Russian attack plans. CIA director William J. Burns travelled to Ukraine in January 2022, and informed the Ukrainian leadership that Russia intended to capture Antonov Airport for an airbridge, which would allow Russian forces to quickly move into Kyiv to "decapitate the government".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport

Before dawn on Thursday, February 24, military helicopters flew in low over Ukraine’s northern frozen fields towards Hostomel Airport, a testing facility for the Antonov cargo airline on Kyiv’s outskirts.

The aircraft deposited Russian paratroopers, wearing orange and black armbands, who took control of the airport. The Russians were so confident, that they allowed a CNN television crew to film them guarding the airport’s perimeter.

Eighteen giant Ilyushin Il-76 cargo planes were flying from Russia towards the airport, carrying more soldiers or weapons and ammunition, according to Christo Grozev, a European journalist who runs Bellingcat, an online media outlet.

The Ukrainians counterattacked, and, they claimed, shot down several helicopters. By Friday, the second day of the war, the airport was under Russian control, although too badly damaged to receive soldiers by plane. The location of the Ilyushins and their cargo was unclear. The fight might have forced them back to Russia.

“We surmise the airlifted force was designed to help spearhead the Russian attack on Kyiv,” an American think tank, the Atlantic Council, said this week. “The Ukrainian defence of the airfield on February 24 slowed the advance on Kyiv, possibly preventing a rapid capture of the capital.”

The underlying problem appears to be the Russian military bureaucracy and civilian leadership’s willingness to devise and accept an unrealistic and risky invasion plan.

https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/why-russia-s-military-strategy-is-failing-20220304-p5a1ov

Thanks. I think I impressed myself. :cool:

I don't see self-awareness as a technology at all. — T Clark

That isn’t disparaging. It is to say it is is another level of semiotic regulation. And we can aspire to professional standards and evidence backed practice. It isn’t something mystic that can only be acquired in encounter groups or exotic eastern practices.

For me, the Tao and self-awareness are states where we are released from the communal lens and our social mask. — T Clark

But is that attaining self awareness or shedding it? I’m talking about finding a better way to integrate with a community of minds rather than just escaping its constraints. Our challenge is how to find a balance in that regard, not particularly about finding a way to disappear into some sublime sense of self.

A capable person can chose to lead or follow, assert or surrender. It is the rationality of making those choices - and not taking either choice personally - that is the skill.

my intellect is not separate from my body, my emotions, my perceptions, all my experiences. — T Clark

Again, holism is the oneness of the many, and the multiplicity that forges its oneness. Parts and wholes are that which are both differentiated and integrated. So it is not an opposition but a synergy in the systems view.

He was an engineer and he saw labor management processes as an engineering problem. He used to make lists and draw flow diagrams of how worker/management interactions should work. He tried to apply what he had gotten from his sources in what seemed to me to be a rigid, mechanical way. — T Clark

Sounds like you think he achieved something nevertheless. But DuPont. How easy would it be to create genuine community values in an industrial corporation?

Hah. I was lucky to have parents with a positive psychology approach. So even joining the Boy Cubs, I was immediately aware of its coercive and cultish aspects. I didn’t last long. As soon as they tried to make me boss others around as a troop leader, I was off.

Likewise at 10, I joined another friend in his judo classes given by a white zen Buddhist monk. I was fascinated as an observer of human eccentricities, but could never have been a convert. Especially not sat in the tropical sun in lotus position, supposedly meditating as I could hear the mosquitoes circling lazily down towards exposed flesh.

For me, self-awareness is not an intellectual or rational exercise, at least it's not only that. — T Clark

See my post above…

Over the years I've become much more aware of my emotional and physical experiences. The way my body feels. Intuition about how other people feel. I'm probably weakest in my perceptual awareness. I tend to overlook a lot. I'm not very observant of the outside world. — T Clark

It’s interesting to hear you describe that. And I understand as a lot of my reading to research these issues is case studies of this kind of thing. Oliver Sacks style reports.

Indeed I went through this myself right at the start when I began investigating the “machinery of thought” and trying to introspect. It was shocking how much I just wasn’t in the habit of seeing because I didn’t yet have the theoretical constructs to recognise it as it happened.

Now it is a learnt skill and I can do it without much thought and effort. It is part of what I have made predictable about my “self”.

But breaking it up like that is artificial. There's really only one awareness, at least for me. It all fits together and it's not rational at all at bottom. It's just a sense of the world and how it fits together and how I fit into it. — T Clark

I disagree. If you have integrated your various forms of experience under the one running sense of self, then that has to be a learnt rationalisation now practiced to the degree it is a fluid habit.

But it doesn’t matter how you frame the change. Obviously for you it is important that it has come together in a useful way.

And that is why I tout positive psychology. Generally it is a tool to articulate your own unconscious thinking - externalise it in a way that can be rationally critiqued and then reframed in a fashion that feels more pragmatically true to the life you must actually live.

If your parents always wanted to you to be a good straight Catholic, or some other such “self”, how do you kick out the old you and find the new you?

You have to change the framework rationally - linguistically - as it was all your old habitual self-talk that was keeping you locked in the previous place,

And if you had never developed the habit of noticing certain kinds of sensations or feelings, then again you would still have to talk out a plan of what a change in attentional habits would be like to start to then live like that.

Witness all the obtuse and self-serving wankers who embrace self-development and awareness workshops in the New Age movement. If you're working on it, you are probably moving away from it. Tao. — Tom Storm

Self awareness is a cause of much mental ill health in modern society as people find it isolating and socially crippling. Drink and drugs are needed to blot it out.

The truth that the Tao captures is that we should aim for flow. What people enjoy is being in a state of “unconscious” habit and skill - engrossed in some useful activity.

And that is the equilibrium state that brains are designed for. To exist in the moment rather than to stand back from the moment.

Self awareness is socially constructed technology to get members of a society to filter their actions through a communal lens. It is the way we police our impulses and feelings. It is where we negotiate a social agenda from behind social mask.

That is what then makes us human. It goes with the territory. But that then is why it is so important to really understand what is going on and not fall for romanticised propaganda.

Does Western go-go society value flow? Does it value craftsmanship and true community?

That is why we recognising wokism as another damaging step in Western political technology. It is as bad as neoliberalism or any other social movement that requires us to police our minds in ways that are not necessarily in our best interest.

New Age cults even exploit positive psychology. I attended a Landmark Forum weekend as an observer to see what was actually going on. The social tech being delivered was in itself laudable and transformative. But that was the introductory course. Where it turns dodgy is the multilevel marketing of further videos, texts and “deeper work” than follows.

So self awareness is tech we can learn, a skill we can master. But you have to start with how neurobiology evolved to function. The general goal of the brain as a prediction machine is a state of skilled and unthinking flow.

And then when it comes to the socially constructed aspect of selfhood, you would want to understand the implications of what you are taking on board. There are choices. But few ever realise this is the game. They just go for what’s on the shelf as the expected purchase. And if not that, they shop in the gluten free or organic aisle instead.

I wonder who was scheduled to land at Antonov airport if it had been secured. — Paine

Debrief article says…

By some accounts, Russia had intended to land 18-20 Ilyushin IL-76 transport planes at the Hostomel airfield invasion’s opening hours. An aerial convoy this size could have potentially brought two entire battalion tactical groups (BTGs) worth of troops and equipment to the capital’s doorstep within the first hours of the invasion.

In a perfect scenario, Russia likely envisioned that five distinct east and west axes of advance, plus airborne forces at Hostomel, would already be on the outskirts of Kyiv by February 25.

Article is all about the riot police who also got sent as part of the Kyiv “feint”. What a cock up (unless you believe the interpretation that Moscow planned for the crowd control that would be needed as regime change was under way).

https://thedebrief.org/know-no-mercy-the-russian-cops-who-tried-to-storm-kyiv-by-themselves/

Yes, Putin is a war criminal, has committed AWFUL crimes in a war - to which I add, who has not? — Manuel

Crate of gold teeth left behind by fleeing Russian torturers…



https://worldnationnews.com/gold-teeth-the-terrifying-discovery-that-shows-the-horrors-of-the-russian-occupation-in-ukraine/

But then what about this, and that and the other….always what about…

Just because you don't get it doesn't mean there's nothing to get. I feel the same way you do about poetry about jazz. I don't get it. It doesn't move me. — T Clark

Sure. I accept that art can move us. But being moved in a physical or emotional sense is not the same as being moved in an intellectual and rational sense. It is not about being “a community of inquirers” in the pragmatic sense I specified.

And I even acknowledged that poetry originally had that pragmatic function in pre-literate tradition. It fixed social knowledge in easy to remember, attractive to listen to, rhythmic form. Oratory has its own rules of delivery because that is what works when truths and history must be delivered by declamation around the tribal campfire.

So go poetry. But my tastes were shaped by the modern information idiom of clear and sparkling prose.

I like that in my fiction as much as my faction. Cinematic writing. And of course fiction as an art form is also meant to shape us as social beings. It is entertainment, but expresses a social purpose.

My objection is focused on PoMo and its pivot to “expressing feelings, asserting values”. And the ugly constipated writing it too often employs.

Always there is the plaintive bleat. “But what about poetics?” It amounts to a demand to be allowed to hide half-baked thought in the garb of obscure locution and teasing paradox.

PoMo demands that meaning can never be allowed to settle securely in some form of words. And poetry is the art form that gives social legitimacy to that abdication of philosophical duty.

Yeah no, you can't, unless you are living under a rock or you are Russia's useful idiot. This is what surrender looks like: — SophistiCat

One picture that cuts through a lot of the BS. :up: