I see you mentioned me, but same applies to you as to boethius: I don't read your posts, I don't care what you think, so don't jump up and down trying to catch my attention after I already told you to fuck off - it's undignified.

I made it clear to you more than once that you are not worth my time.

Didn't read any of that.


On a different topic:

In February, Putin met with Xi in Beijing. Now, Xi will meet Putin somewhere in Central Asia just a month before Xi is poised to cement his place as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. — magritte

Follow-up on that:

We understand your questions and concern about this. During today's meeting, we will of course explain our position, we will explain in detail our position on this issue, although we have talked about this before. — Putin to Xi

Putin in Samarkand is not a happy boy. China has "questions and concerns." So does India:

I know your stance on the conflict in Ukraine and the concerns you constantly express. We’ll do everything to end this as soon as possible. — Putin to Modi

Modi said that "today’s era is not one for war." Xi did not even mention Ukraine in his statement after the talks. I suppose that's as far as he is prepared to go in his support for Russia: not chastising it in public.

Just to put things into perspective:

Just to be clear, the bold, stocky guy seen at the beginning of each clip, is Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander of the armed forces.


"Failures indicate that success was never intended."

In February, Putin met with Xi in Beijing. Now, Xi will meet Putin somewhere in Central Asia just a month before Xi is poised to cement his place as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

Meaning what? — magritte

What's more significant is that Xi's first foreign trip since the pandemic began will be not to Russia but to Kazakhstan, and the first head of state he will meet in person will be Tokayev, not Putin. This can't be just a matter of convenience: such moves carry symbolism, not least in Chinese politics. He is putting Putin in his place (pardon the pun).

Still, couldn't they arrest the most negative milbloggers and send them to jail for 15 years? — Olivier5

Good question. I find this puzzling as well. Russian authoritarianism hasn't quite morphed into totalitarianism. I suppose the regime isn't ready to unleash Stalinist purges on its supporters.

Analysts are trying to guess Russia's response to the rout in the Kharkov region. Some fear the worst, reminding us (as @ssu has done in the past) that Russian military exercises often involve simulated nuclear attacks as a means to "deescalate." Until recently, it seems that Putin wasn't quite ready for that last step, although the crazy brinkmanship with the shelling of the largest nuclear plant in Europe came pretty close. But that was more characteristic of the Russian style than a direct escalation: acting stupidly dangerously while denying everything and blaming it on the other side.

The new form that escalation seems to be taking now is attacking Ukraine's critical civil infrastructure, especially its energy system. This is something that Russian war hawks have advocated for a long time. With the heating season coming, such attacks could become deadly. Earlier Ukrainian authorities have warned Donbass residents in cities that have been devastated by Russian bombardment that they had to evacuate or else face freezing temperatures with no light and heating. This could become the reality for Kharkiv and other cities even farther from the frontline.

The strikes on power and transformer stations in the recent days put the lie to the notion that the reason that Russia expends most of its "high-precision" munitions on civilian housing, schools and hospitals is because they are just that inaccurate, or else Russian military lacks up-to-date targeting data. That's not entirely false, but clearly, they can "do better" when they make an effort.

Khodarkovsky, the exiled former Russian oligarch, posted a supposedly leaked government document that refers to internal MOD data and gives the number of Russian dead at 48,759 as of August 24.

Khodarkovsky has connections and resources, and as far as I know, he has not been implicated in disinformation, but I am skeptical. Not only is the figure staggering by itself, it is very close to official Ukrainian military estimates, which one assumes are exaggerated, and much higher than recent US intelligence estimates (70-80k casualties, which probably means about 15-20k dead).

Since the context is compensation payments, this would include only confirmed (and officially admitted) dead, which means that the real number would be higher still. The number would not include those conscripted in the breakaway "republics," but it may include at least some of the dead mercenaries: it is said that the military gets them to sign official contracts to avoid complications.

One wonders why the Telgram platform isn't shut down or "policed". Maybe Putin too relies on them for info... :smirk: — Olivier5

They tried to block it a few years ago. Succeeded only in breaking some innocent sites, as Telegram actively evaded blocking. Eventually they gave up.

Putin explained the reasons for the "special military operation" to some schoolchildren yesterday, saying that an "anti-Russian enclave" is forming in Ukraine and is threatening Russia. An interesting choice of a word - enclave, but it makes sense in light of his oft-stated belief that Ukraine is an integral part of the "Russian world," whether they want it or not.

Ukrainian fighters say that generally they have enough manpower, although many volunteers from the TDF are not ready for combat. Sometimes entire detachments collapse and leave long stretches of the frontline undefended. Tanks are precious, and they send them out sparingly. Ammo for Soviet guns is running out. They get enough ammo for the new Western guns, but those are few and far between, and getting worn out from intensive use.

On the opposing side it's the other way around. Russians have a seemingly endless supply of tanks, guns and ammunition, but nowhere enough men to go with them. They are still losing a lot of armor, but they are not as careless and undisciplined as they were at the beginning of the invasion.

Yes, I saw that too. Igor Mangushev is a mercenary who is currently fighting in Ukraine. He is said to be the founder of the mercenary company Yenot (Raccoon). Yenot mercs were there right from the start of the invasion, before Wagner got involved.

On a related note, here is a recent opinion piece by Fiona Hill and Angela Stent in Foreign Affairs: The World Putin Wants:

Vladimir Putin is determined to shape the future to look like his version of the past. Russia’s president invaded Ukraine not because he felt threatened by NATO expansion or by Western “provocations.” He ordered his “special military operation” because he believes that it is Russia’s divine right to rule Ukraine, to wipe out the country’s national identity, and to integrate its people into a Greater Russia.

This merc clearly had the right idea:

We are not at war with people of blood and flesh. We are at war with an idea: with an idea of Ukraine as an anti-Russian state. There can be no peace. We must de-Ukrainize Ukraine. The Russian land of Malorossia must be returned back to Russia...

This is why the tragedy for the Ukrainian soldiers is that we are fighting with an idea, and we don't give a shit how many of them we have to kill and how we have to kill them... Since we are fighting with an idea, all who share this idea must be destroyed like this poor sucker."

Experts Debunk Viral Post Claiming 1,100 Scientists Say ‘There’s No Climate Emergency’

But despite its measured tone and its list of supporters with impressive-sounding titles like professor or doctor, the declaration isn’t what it appears to be, several career climatologists and disinformation experts told Inside Climate News.

Rather, they said, the post seems to be the latest iteration of a broader disinformation campaign that for decades has peddled a series of arguments long discredited by the scientific community at large. Furthermore, the experts told me, the vast majority of the declaration’s signatories have no experience in climate science at all, and the group behind the message—the Climate Intelligence Foundation, or CLINTEL—has well-documented ties to oil money and fossil fuel interest groups. — Inside Climate News

The first and the second paragraphs in your Kelly quote seem to offer different takes on "is." But there are still more moods and nuances. We can report, insist, offer, suppose, pretend, etc.

The problem you are talking about seems not specifically related to the verb "to be" but to any verb and any statement that is not formulated as uncertain. — Babbeus

Exactly, only we don't even need to expressly qualify statements as uncertain - we only do that occasionally for emphasis. Otherwise, language norms, context and tone do the job for us.

(Not all languages even employ "to be" the way English does. In Russian, for example, you would say something like "Floor - hard.")

Today marks half a year since the start of the invasion, and by coincidence (or not?), today is also Ukrainian Independence day. So, many specials and retrospectives in various media.

Big WoPo article: Battle for Kyiv: Ukrainian valor, Russian blunders combined to save the capital

According to several Ukrainian officials, on the day of the invasion they were contacted on Russia's behalf with an offer of surrender. (The Minister of Defence says he made a counter-offer to accept Russian surrender.)

The fundamental problem with “is” seems to be the person using that word seemingly speaks with a god-like authority — Art48

Not to any competent language user.

We forget just what have been the real military victories of Russia and Soviet Union after World War 2. The really successful large military operation was in 1968 the Occupation of Czechoslovakia. Such large attack that the Czech army didn't raise it's finger and not even the Czech people dared to fight with against the tanks as had the Hungarians in 1956. There wasn't any war, just a surrender, basically protests. — ssu

And before WW2 there were the three Baltic states that USSR occupied without a fight. The disastrous Winter War that preceded this didn't discourage the Soviets - and the gamble payed off. They installed puppet governments, which promptly held "elections," followed by a vote to become new Soviet Socialist Republics (with 90+% voting in favor).

So yeah, they've learned all the wrong lessons from history, if they learned at all.

I don't think people generally think of Putin as mad insane.
At least, outside of the usual (sociopathic) authoritarian strategizing/manipulation.
Anyway, so, what's the simplest coherent explanation? (Or a coherent simpler explanation?)
Attempting to push Russia up the food chain? — jorndoe

Insane - no. Isolated, poorly informed, surrounded by a small circle yes-men who tell him only what he wants to hear - much more likely.

Continuing the FSB theme, here are a couple of articles in a Russian investigative publication. The first is an OP by a journalist who has been covering Russian security services for many years, written in May (English version):

How Putin Decided to Go to War

Why was the war destined for failure from the very beginning, what sources of information did president Putin rely on before starting it, and why did nobody in the Federal Security Service [FSB] of the Russian Federation tell him the truth about the real situation in Ukraine

"As ridiculous as it sounds, the decision to go to war was made by the most uninformed person that could possibly have taken it. The president," my source sneers.

And a follow-up of sorts, published today and not yet translated:

Who controls Russian troops in Ukraine

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is out of favor with Vladimir Putin. The president confers directly with commanders charged with the conduct of the military operation.

The fact that the leadership is poorly informed is admitted even by the ex-Minister of State Security of the DPR, former commander of the Vostok brigade Alexander Khodakovsky. “One of the main problems with a closed system that took shape over decades and that is permeated by competing interest groups is an abject fear of being the bearer of bad news. Some highly placed generals who are capable of admitting certain issues in an intimate setting, when asked why they don't report them, reply: 'I'd be sacked if I did...'”

You are still on mute

This is a common tack among demagogues and propagandists: emphasize (or fabricate) uncertainty, throw up not one but many alternative narratives. Anything is possible, there's too much propaganda on both sides, we will never know the truth, it's all so confusing... When your position is weak, just upset the board.

You're on mute.

As I've repeated many times throughout this thread — boethius

I really don't know why you bother

Even the FSB personnel don't seem happy to go to Ukraine — ssu

Speaking of FSB, here is the next installment of WoPo's investigative articles on pre-war intelligence: FSB errors played crucial role in Russia's failed war plans in Ukraine

An agency whose domain includes internal security in Russia as well as espionage in the former Soviet states, the FSB has spent decades spying on Ukraine, attempting to co-opt its institutions, paying off officials and working to impede any perceived drift toward the West. No aspect of the FSB’s intelligence mission outside Russia was more important than burrowing into all levels of Ukrainian society.

And yet, the agency failed to incapacitate Ukraine’s government, foment any semblance of a pro-Russian groundswell or interrupt President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hold on power. Its analysts either did not fathom how forcefully Ukraine would respond, Ukrainian and Western officials said, or did understand but couldn’t or wouldn’t convey such sober assessments to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Commanders are in a pickle: officially they are not at war, and so peacetime laws apply. Which means that they can't force anyone to fight. Any contract serviceman can quit at any time and for any reason. At most, they can be prosecuted for insubordination, which is not a very serious charge.

Then again, laws-schmoes. At first, commanders were pressuring soldiers to stay, threatening all manner of (fictitious) legal consequences. Then they began detaining refuseniks in unofficial prisons, beating and starving them into submission. Or they just refuse to accept their resignations. According to some soldiers from the infamous 64th infantry brigade, some 700 of their ranks are trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to quit. Even those whose contracts have expired often cannot leave. Those few who manage to obtain a leave of absence and go back to Russia promise to come back, but of course, none do. It's like Catch-22, but even more absurd and tragic.

A big article in WoPo about US prewar intel: As Russia prepared to invade Ukraine, U.S. struggled to convince Zelensky, allies of threat (If you run into a paywall, try opening in incognito/private window, or turn off Javascript, or use something like the Reader View in Firefox.)

This account, in previously unreported detail, shines new light on the uphill climb to restore U.S. credibility, the attempt to balance secrecy around intelligence with the need to persuade others of its truth, and the challenge of determining how the world’s most powerful military alliance would help a less-than-perfect democracy on Russia’s border defy an attack without NATO firing a shot.

The first in a series of articles examining the road to war and the military campaign in Ukraine, it is drawn from in-depth interviews with more than three dozen senior U.S., Ukrainian, European and NATO officials about a global crisis whose end is yet to be determined. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and internal deliberations.

Finally! :up:

When the documentary is saying "sanctions are working", first think what sanctions working would really mean?

Would Russia really stop the fighting and accept a peace favorable to Ukraine? I think not, yet "sanctions working" obviously would have to do that. — ssu

If we are talking about sanctions as a tool to influence immediate decision-making, such as starting or escalating hostilities, then it is the threat of sanctions that sometimes works (and it does sometimes work). When deterrence fails, sanctions still have to be levied in order to maintain their future credibility, but they will almost never force a reversal. That is where we are now: sanctions, as you say, will not force Russia to stop its aggression and return the territory it has seized.

That said, success or failure can be hard to attribute for counterfactual events. You will know when sanctions fail. But, for example, if Putin did not order the attack when he did, would that be attributable to the threat of sanctions? How would we know? Even now we don't know for sure whether sanctions or the threat of further sanctions have deterred Russia from doing something it could have done (like deploying chemical weapons - not likely in any event, in my opinion, but just as an example).

Sanctions can have other effects than influencing decisions here and now. The most obvious effect of the present sanctions is in degrading Russia's war potential. That effect will be mostly delayed, but some of it is arguably felt even now. Russia has spent much of its high-precision munition stocks, and rebuilding will be challenging, partly due to sanctions. They are now reduced to lobbing dated anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles at ground structures, which is far from optimal. They also have a shortage of drones, NVGs, navigation, communication and other high-tech equipment - same problem here.

Other sanctions seem like pointless virtue-signalling, punishing people and organizations that have no power to influence events. It could be that even those sanctions will have an indirect effect by provoking disaffection, social tensions, brain drain (that last one is very evident), and thus gradually weakening the regime. This is a highly uncertain territory though, as the effect can be, and likely is, precisely the opposite.

:lol: I have a like/hate relationship with Dickens. After reading Copperfield some years ago I decided that I'd had enough of him for a while. I get the impression that he was a piece of work in real life.

:yikes:

I'm not sure if Russia has the LNG capacity to export all its gas through all its non-EU pipelines and arctic LNG plants — boethius

It doesn't. Russia's existing LNG capacity is a minor fraction of its pipeline capacity. Since Russia doesn't have mature LNG technology of its own and its foreign partners have pulled out of expansion projects, it won't be able to ramp up its LNG exports much further.

On the economic "sanctions"-front, I think that Russia has played it's cards very well. It simply is just such a large supplier of natural resources that the World cannot simply disregard it. The logical way for the West to counter this would be to try a push the price of oil and gas down by increasing production, but that would go against what has been set as goal to curb climate change. German energy policy of having relied to Russian energy with closing down nuclear plants and now having to open coal plants show how clueless the West actually is here. — ssu

If Europe goes through with its divestment from Russian energy, then Russia's game doesn't look so good in the medium term. Oil and gas are not like gold: moving them takes a lot of specialized infrastructure that simply does not exist today and won't come into existence any time soon. And Asia's appetite for Russian energy isn't bottomless either: they'll take what they can if the discount is big enough, but they have other supplies as well.

Besides, energy isn't everything, and the rest of Russian economy looks pretty dismal. It will survive, but it needs more than mere survival in order to continue to support long and bloody wars of aggression.

Yes. Although there was the Transnistrian war in 1990-1992, which was rather similar (as the war in Donbas 2014-2022). — ssu

The "Transnistrian war" was hardly a war: the scale and the forces involved were tiny compared to Donbas. There were, I think, a few old Soviet tanks that were rolled out at one point to intimidate the Moldovan forces - and that proved to be enough. There wasn't much will or ability to fight on the Moldovan side.

The bigger player here that is and hopefully will stay inactive is of course Belarus. There are Belarussian fighters fighting in the lines of Ukraine, questionable support for the current leadership (after the massive demonstrations put down with violence) and basically no reason for Belarus to attack it's southern neighbor. Hence it's likely that the current situation will prevail with Belarus giving Russian forces a ground to operate, but won't join themselves the fighting. — ssu

Even from what little can be gathered inside Belarus, it is clear that people there are dead-set against their country entering this war - even those who take the pro-Russian position. Of course, if push comes to shove, no one will ask Belorussians what they want, just as no one asked the Russians. The difference is quiet opposition on one side and quiet acquiescence on the other side of the border. And, as you noted, Lukashenko is sitting on bayonets as it is; dragging his people into Russia's war against their will is the last thing he wants.

So far, Kremlin has been accommodating, but one wonders: how long will Putin tolerate this wily, self-willed and treacherous vassal? Will he at some point decide that it would be so much more convenient to have a loyal silovik in charge? Of course, taking over a personalistic, top-down security and patronage system from a man who has been at the helm even longer than Putin would not be easy and smooth. But does Putin realize this? His delusional ideas of how easily he would take over Ukraine do not instill confidence in his judgement.

On the other hand, what could Belarus bring to the table if it was forced to enter the war right now? Perhaps 20 thousand of poorly armed and unwilling conscripts. Would it be worth the trouble?

Rather, there have been wild fluctuations of climate through geological time far larger than can be accounted for by variations of insolation. The history of humanity has been one of unusual climate stability sufficiently long for the effects of milankovitch cycles to become noticeable. — unenlightened

You are losing track of the relative time scales here. The history of humanity is a point on the geological timescale. We could be living right smack in the middle of one of those "wild fluctuations of climate" that you mentioned and not notice it.

Ask yourself, SophistiCat, does Russia or anybody really listen to the Transnistrians when deciding on these matters?

In fact before February 24th for a long time things in the Donbas were rather similar to what you stated above from Transnistria: people could move back and forth to Ukraine and Ukraine even paid pensions to people in the Donbas People's Republics. I'm sure the people that actually supported Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics back in 2014 aren't so enthusiastic about how things are going now. — ssu

It's not a fair comparison: life in Donbas was pretty miserable even before the invasion. And among those remaining there, quite a few did want to be absorbed into Russia already, instead of remaining in limbo, as it were. Or else they didn't much care one way or another. And even now there are those on both sides of the front line who are convinced, despite everything they've had to go through, that Russia did the right thing (and should have done it much sooner).

But I take your point: of course Transnistrians will not have a say if Putin decides to "liberate" them next. But neither will they do anything to help. All that "remind[ing] of their plans to secede from Moldova and join Russia" is only because they believe that they are safe for now.

You know it's a frozen conflict from there existing a Bureau of Reintegration... — ssu

Yeah, and no one appears to be keen on reigniting it. Russia has its hands full with its present war, which it doesn't know how to end without losing face. It doesn't have a common border with Moldova. For an invasion it would need to establish a land corridor through southern Ukraine, which now appears to be a remote possibility.

Moldovan army is pretty much non-existent. They know that in the (unlikely) event of a full-scale conflict with Russia they would be crushed like a bug.

Transnistria is the least interested in upsetting the status quo. All these years they've been left alone, enjoying generous subsidies from Russia in the form of virtually free gas and a share of the Trans-Balkan pipeline. On the other side Transnistrians can travel freely to mainland Moldova (and from there visa-free to the EU), since most Transnistrians have Moldovan passports. While in theory, people there are staunchly pro-Russian, having been fed a steady diet of Russian TV, they like things to stay just as they are.

All this sabre-rattling is nothing more than a halfhearted diversionary maneuver from Russia, I think.

The fake referendums would not be legitimate even by the Russian law. According to the Russian Constitution, parts of other countries cannot join Russia without those countries' consent. That is why the de facto annexation of Crimea was legally framed as a two-step maneuver: first a "referendum" was staged on Crimea's independence from Ukraine, then the newly sovereign Republic of Crimea asked to become part of Russia. The same calculation was seen behind the official recognition of the breakaway Donbas "republics" shortly before the invasion. Now it looks like they are abandoning even that thin veneer of legitimacy.

Or at least that's the plan... It's hard to see how they are going to pull it off within the declared time frame. Russia controls just over half of the Donetsk region (which is claimed by one of the self-proclaimed republics), and its advance there has been glacial. And lately the Right-bank part of the Kherson region, including the city of Kherson itself, has been under pressure.

Does solidness exist?

Yes or no? It's a simple question. — Watchmaker

When you put it like this, this question will land you in hot water with some philosophers. A better way to ask would be: Is anything solid?

The obvious answer, which I think is the right one, is: Yes, of course! This would be the right answer if you mean "solid" in the usual sense. If you mean it in an idiosyncratic or specialist sense, then you need to be more specific.

I understand electrons aren't solid, but what of protons and neutrons, et al? Are there really tiny dense indivisible b-b's that make up matter. It seems that everything I read about this, implies that ultimately nothing is really solid. — Watchmaker

Here you seem to be asking: is the usual sense of solidity applicable to microscopic entities postulated by fundamental physics? And the equally obvious answer is: Of course not! But what implications does this have towards mind-body dualism? None that I can see.

I'm trying to think of a kind of explanation that's not about relationships to other things. — Tate

Well, any explanation relates something to something else - that's just how such discourse works. But "something else" doesn't always have to be something in the causal chain, or even something from the same category of things, such as explaining events in terms of other events or objects in terms of other objects. For example, a teleological explanation would relate events, actions, states of affairs to intents, goals, values.

Would breaking a thing down into parts and relating the parts to each other serve as an explanation? — Tate

Yes, that's a kind of explanation that we employ sometimes, isn't it?


Of course, any explanation could in turn be challenged, ad infinitum. But that's a rather obvious observation.

Explanations come in various forms. Some, but not all explanations take the form of a causal narrative, like your God example. Since causal explanations relate different parts of the same world together, your conclusion holds: you cannot give a causal explanation to everything put together, because your explanans would then leave nothing to serve as an explanandum other than itself, and causa sui is a trivial and unsatisfactory explanation.

But what about other kinds of explanation?

Interesting topic. Entropy, macro- and microstates are notoriously tricky subjects, even to specialists.

Would it be useful to consider a four dimensional (i.e. time inclusive) form of entropy?

Entropy is often defined as the number of possible microstates (arrangements of particles) consistent with an observed macrostate.

Time entropy would be the number of possible past states consistent with an observed present state. Is this potentially useful? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is not very clear to me what you mean by this formulation. A microstate is consistent with a macrostate in the sense that it is consistent with the macroscopic variables that make up the macrostate, such as temperature and pressure. In general, those state variables change over time, so that past microstates will not be consistent with the present macrostate in the same sense in which the present microstate partition is consistent with it (except in the static limit).

Perhaps what you have in mind are past microstates that, when evolved into the present, would be consistent with the present macrostate? In other words, past microstates that evolve into any of the microstates that partition the present macrostate.

Now, let me backtrack a bit and reexamine your definition of entropy. A given macrostate induces a particular statistical distribution of microstates. When a system is at a thermodynamic equilibrium (and thus at its maximum entropy), all its microstates have the same probability of occurrence. Then and only then can we calculate the entropy simply by counting the number of microstates. In all other cases* entropy can be calculated, per Gibbs' definition, as a sum of probabilities of microstates in a statistical ensemble. Given a time discretization, we can then add up past microstate distributions leading to the present distribution to obtain your "time entropy."

Am I on the right track?

* By "all other cases" I mean a rather restricted class of pseudo-equilibrium states of matter, where the system is weakly interacting with its surroundings, and changes are relatively slow. This is the context for all talk of entropy, macro- and microstates.

It's worth noting that for use in some physics problems, entropy's definition is altered to be: the total possible number of microstates consistent with all the information we have about a system, such that, as you complete more measurements and gain information about a system the "entropy" goes down because your information continually rules out certain microstates.

This may be a better definition because the number of potential microstates for a fully unobserved system is obviously infinite. Observing a "macrostate" is getting information about a system, which is then reducing the possible configurations the system can have. So while the definitions seem different, it isn't clear to me that they actually are. The idea of naively observed "macrostates" may be one of those concepts we inherited from "common sense," that work well enough for some problems, but hurt us in the long run. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This epistemic take on entropy comes information theory. Information-theoretic and physical entropies are related, but they are not the same - the differences stemming mainly from their uses in their respective fields. Physical entropy - the kind that enters physical equations - is not a function of information that we have about a system at a given time. The choice of macroscopic observables and microscopic degrees of freedom is subjective, to a degree. However, once the choice is made at a high level, the rest objectively follows.