Interviewer: "So they blocked it?"

Naftali Bennett: "Basically, yes. They blocked it and I thought they're wrong. In retrospect it's too soon to know.

[Naftali Bennett lists a number of disadvantages of continuing the war, and then continues...]

On the other hand, and I'm not being cynical, there's a statement here, after very many years. President Biden created an alliance vis-à-vis an aggressor in the general perception and this reflects on other arenas, such as China and Taiwan and there are consequences."

The war broke out, and within a month Zelensky said: "[Ukraine] could be neutral." And negotiations started in Ankara with Turkish mediation. And I spoke to the Turkish mediators. I spoke to people who were deeply involved in this. There was rapid progress made on the basis of Ukrainian neutrality.

Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]. The best estimate given to us by former prime minister Naftali Bennett in a very interesting, long interview he gave online a couple months ago, said: "The US stopped it. I didn't agree with them, but they thought they needed to be tough towards China. That it would be a sign of weakness to go along with [the peace negotiations]."

Honest to god. It's worse than five-year-olds.

You are campaigning against your own intellectual decency. — neomac

Convincing people that Ukraine has a chance of 'winning' is the main method by which continued drip-feed sales of weapons are justified (making the arms manufacturers an unrivalled fortune). Since Ukraine is actually being destroyed (economically, but also literally), it takes quite the major advertising effort to keep this illusion up. Hence the massive social media campaign, of which your posts (wittingly or not) form part. — Isaac

If "you people" means US voters, [...] — jorndoe

[...] a few US politicians are clowns, including RFK Jr. — jorndoe

If there are people here who are predicting imminent major successes in line with this paper reality, speak up please. — Tzeentch

If Ukraine lacked the capability to take Kherson, then Russians had no reason to leave it. — Jabberwock

What? You still consider the offensive in which Russians lost Kherson (the only oblast center they managed to take) as failed? — Jabberwock

That is, you have declared the Kherson offensive as failed (and Ukraine as losing the war) a bit prematurely, haven't you? — Jabberwock

Why do you think so? — jorndoe

NATO members (and whoever else) are indirectly involved (no declaration of war / combatants). Why "heavily" though? — jorndoe

Plausible enough, yet makes Prigozhin appear dumber than a fairly successful entrepreneur. Is he that out of touch? Does it stack up? — jorndoe

I've not heard you rate the two elements before (but I may be misremembering). Intention and effect are necessary but intention is 'first and foremost'. That complicates any judgement a little. How does this 'first and foremost' cash out in terms of moral judgement, for you? If a person really strongly intended a good thing, but a bad thing occurred, is that moral because their intentions is 'first and foremost'? The element of weighting adds a new dimension to my understanding of your moral system. — Isaac

Then I'm persuaded. Otherwise we'd go left. — Isaac

Why? Why meddle? — Isaac

So these acts of persuasion are not immoral, but not moral either. — Isaac

...so in what way 'pitfall'? — Isaac

No, I don't agree. If you and I were carrying a large object through the woods and reach a fork in the road. I think we ought go left and you right, I needn't have any strong conviction about left, nor you right, but we can clearly only go one way, so we must decide I must persuade you, or you I. — Isaac

There are loads of views I respect but thing are wrong (I don't see any need for 'categorically' here). — Isaac

But 'of great importance' is a different kettle of fish entirely to 'pitfalls'. — Isaac

If subconscious effects have to now be taken into account, your posts become a lot more risky. — Isaac

I can't help feeling all of this is a very long winded post-hoc way round the fact that your posts are fine because you have good intentions. You're not trying to hurt people and you're not trying to use them for your own gain, so it's fine that you post the way you do. doesn't that just seem simpler? — Isaac

Yes, but intent is not enough. You sell yourself short. You do persuade. and unless you've been living in a cave for your adult life, you'll know that when you present arguments as you do here, they sometimes persuade. — Isaac

Sure. But immoral. That's your claim. A moral action is good in both intent and outcome. Intent alone isn't enough. so any act of conversation which actually does persuade someone (even if you intended it not to) is immoral because it's had the effect of meddling in their affairs. — Isaac

You said earlier that non-horizontal dialogue was one which assumes the correctness of one's own position and the incorrectness of the other's — Isaac

I can respect you and still think you're wrong, I hope. — Isaac

How is teaching a child morals different from teaching them language, or maths, or history, or biology...? — Isaac

But people can tun off the TV, no? If we're concerned about the subconscious, then your posts here have more to worry about than their general persuasiveness. There's a whole slew of subconscious messages they might be conveying. Again taking intent and effect. — Isaac

The argument... ... seems to be trying to persuade me of a position you think is right. Is that then unethical? — Isaac

In the example I gave I could simply be 'thinking' the man greedy and happening to vocalise what I think. — Isaac

How would you know it was unwelcome in advance? — Isaac

What kind of action do you think people ought take to ensure their efforts are not unwelcome? — Isaac

Any and all moral declarations attempting to influence others will take place during some voluntary conversation. — Isaac

I'm not yet seeing the difference you're trying to get at between a forum like this and any other normal conversation. — Isaac

What is it about these that you find 'non-kosher'? — Isaac

Genuine being...? I assume if I want to persuade you to give more to charity, my intention is as genuine as if you want to persuade me to meddle less? — Isaac

I see a wealthy person and say "it's really greedy of you to keep all your wealth, children are starving!"

You see a meddling person (for example me, in the above situation) and say "you didn't ought meddle in that man's affairs, it's up to him what to do with his money, morality is about personal virtue, not imposing on others" (or something like that).

Are we still both on a par? Have I crossed a line yet in my intervention which you haven't crossed in yours? — Isaac

Wouldn't the same be true for almost all moralising? Very rarely do the would-be moralisers herd people at gunpoint into rooms before speaking. [...] I can't think of many examples where people are forced to listen to moral arguments. — Isaac

But you've previously argued that morality is not solely about intent. If the result of your posting here is that I'm persuaded to act other than I would have, then you've meddled in my affairs. You might not have intended to, but you've previously denied that as a credible excuse. — Isaac

I'm not seeing how morality alone 'meddles' in the affairs of others in this way. — Isaac

I can see a way in which strong social approbation might 'meddle', but that doesn't seem any different to what you're attempting here (trying to 'meddle' in other people's affairs in getting them to stop 'meddling' in other people's affairs).

If your arguments are persuasive, then you have undeniably 'meddled'. If I'm persuaded, I will stop the meddling I would have otherwise done, you have meddled with how my affairs would otherwise have progressed. — Isaac

Yes, but also and increasingly because there is a strong strand of secular morality which attempts to eschew traditional forms of morality, and even goes so far as to try to undermine normative behavior claims altogether. From this flows the idea that to call something immoral or wrong is passé. Surely this is rooted in the resentment you speak of, but it has become a force unto itself which shapes moral inclinations. Many now deem it mildly immoral to accuse someone of having done something wrong, and in some cases even the private judgment of wrongness is censured. In consequence we see the attempt to have it both ways: to have personal moral standards while at the same time professing that these standards are in no way applied to others. — Leontiskos

All I can say is that charlatans are praised the world over. I generally find bias to be healthy, it is good to think of oneself well. But in terms of understanding the world, it's ideal to exclude oneself from the analysis. I'd like to think I can do it, but I can see that neither intelligence nor wisdom makes one immune to being fooled, and so I know that in all probability, I'm not immune either. — Judaka

You're right, but I have no faith in "us", ... — Judaka

Moral behaviour is behaviour that is moral, no? — Judaka

Ideal governance involves anti-corruption bodies, and legal agencies, who do not have the same incentives as the officials they're monitoring. Accountability is circular, not top-down, and this is crucial.
Nobody should be trusted to act morally, we should never rely on self-accountability.

It's important also to remember, while within the moral context, we could "agree" to do away with power, that's never going to happen in reality. The existence of power must be assumed, and so, besides circular accountability, there is only self-accountability, and I have no faith in that.

Even if we could know the moral paragons, the selection bias for who has power isn't based on that. It'd be easy to, within the moral context, say "Well, we shouldn't allow that", but this is again, overreaching. Morality doesn't govern the world, those with influence, wealth, and power, aren't selected by their goodness, and that should also be an assumption we have to make. Thus, self-accountability can't be relied upon, you know those with power will not be moral paragons, and often, those with power are the ones you least want to have it. Those without moral scruples, choose the optimal route to power and thus outperform the ones with a strong moral conscience. — Judaka

Even if there were such moral paragons, we wouldn't be able to sort them from the charlatans. — Judaka

[...] those who would actually sacrifice their personal ambitions, their goals, their livelihoods, and their freedom, for moral purposes, are a rare breed. — Judaka

When acting morally is by far the best choice, due to being incentivised, and a lack of benefit in alternatives, then you get moral behaviour. — Judaka

Giving someone the ability to benefit from acting immorally, and then trusting them to avoid that temptation, it's dangerous. — Judaka

It helps others to act morally because it influences their decision-making. — Judaka

If ignoring immoral behaviour was the norm, it would encourage it. — Judaka

I am describing my own views, but I feel uncomfortable advocating them to others since as I said, I'm interested in imposing my views, not having others impose on me. That's where the politics begin, as is inevitable. — Judaka

To reiterate, though the primary beneficiaries of a patriarchal society are men, they are not men in general. As@180 Proof pointed out, patriarchy (as I conceive it, simply a society dominated by masculine values) funnels wealth and power to a small cadre of a particular type who happen to be men, but theoretically could be of either sex. And the solution is not to eliminate competition or demonize men or masculine values but to recognize that the way we understand our interrelationships is infused with an arbitrary self-justifying way of looking at things that, I would argue, is deficient and in some senses destructive. — Baden

Although your thoughts are almost the opposite of how I think about morality, I do respect your stance. — Judaka

We can't wait for moral paragons to guide us, ... — Judaka

What's your opinion on the need for accountability & enforcement? — Judaka

What compromises are you willing to make for them and how do they violate your moral principles? — Judaka

... , if you come in with the claim that what those kind of people are espousing is misandry, you end up behaving like one of their tropes. — fdrake

white people as a class — T Clark

black people as a class — T Clark

I'm a good liberal with close black friends and I see it in myself. They do too and some of them tell me about it. — T Clark

I don't see what you're not getting, it's quite simple.

Some men oppress some women, but not all men, and nothing about their being men has anything necessarily to do with it, and some of the people doing the oppressing are women, and some of the oppressed are men, and some of the men doing the oppressing it turns out are really women, and some of the women who were oppressed it turns are really men depending on how they're feeling that day.

But the important thing to remember is that it's the patriarchy.

Beware of the trap a lesser mind might fall into of just thinking that humans ought not oppress other humans and the best way of identifying victims is by their actually being, you know, victims, rather than by using chromosomes or skin colour which are obviously much better metrics.

Hope that helps. — Isaac

You are a careful reader. Tzeentch is not. — Amity

No, she doesn't. Perhaps read the whole article. — Amity

I understand your sentiment, but can you make the argument that connects Mirren's statements with a hatred of men? — Moliere

I guess her pushback against the sexism she encountered along her varied and fascinating life, made her what she is today. — Amity