When mass shootings occur, somehow the debate is always about gun control and never about why kids are massacring kids.

It's not normal, obviously. I would be wondering what kind of rot has seeped into society that's causing it. — Tzeentch

And so we should.

Meanwhile, let's ban guns right now everywhere whilst we work that out.

The former task should be easier and provide immediate safety. The latter much harder and might not even work.

Yeah Christoffer isn't a racist, he is just indistinguishable from one. — Streetlight

Scarily similar to some of the early anti-Semitism in 30s Europe though, much of the writing at the time talked about the culture of Jewry rather than the actual genetic Jew. Didn't take long to mutate into pure racism.

maybe you're just wrong and the findings in Ukraine by these independent investigators paint a far worse picture than you want to accept. — Christoffer

Yes, maybe I am. Maybe I'm not. That's the whole point I've been trying to get across in practically every comment I've made on this thread. We don't have enough information to be compelled to accept one narrative over another. The evidence is just not anywhere near overwhelming.

So the question becomes why do we choose one narrative over the other.

I'm speaking about the behavior of their politics influencing... — Christoffer

Re-writing really needs at least a few pages to go by...

the behavior is systemic in their politics, which leads to their war behavior accordingly. So it's ingrained in Russian traditional culture, it's part of their type of hero culture, their type of masculinity norms, and fascist power hierarchies. — Christoffer — Isaac

The number of mass graves and war crimes still being uncovered speaks against exaggeration — Christoffer

Well, no. Seeing as they're being uncovered by the very parties in whose interest it is to exaggerate to maximum effect, as I said. If you're under the illusion that Ukraine (and US/European allied foreign observers, now) wouldn't have a vested interest in maximising the impact of every find then you're not only more naive than I thought, but you've clearly no real sense of the peril Ukrainians feel. Anyone in their position would demonise their enemy to the greatest extent possible. It's happened in basically every single war ever. I know you lot like to heroise, but suggesting that Ukraine remain calm and dispassionate in their interpretation of war crime evidence is utterly absurd. They will, and understandingly so, do their best to provide the worst possible interpretation.

What is far less forgivable is people sitting in their armchairs hundreds of miles away using such propaganda to make racist assumptions about an entire nation, the vast majority of whom are not even in Ukraine.

Of course not because they are Russians... — Christoffer

No. Of course it's not because they're Russian. It's just that...

the behavior is systemic in their politics, which leads to their war behavior accordingly. So it's ingrained in Russian traditional culture, it's part of their type of hero culture, their type of masculinity norms, and fascist power hierarchies. — Christoffer

...which we can all see is totally different from saying that it's because they're Russian. It's just their entire culture, mythology, political system, norms and personality types...

I mean, alternatively, we're hearing the war-fogged actions of a very small minority of Russians heavily mixed up with the actions of the know Neo-Nazi mercenaries fighting for Russia, exaggerated to maximum impact by a country desperate for weapons, knowing their survival relies on a wholly negative image of Russia...

But that would be crazy, far more likely that the entire culture of a nation has become systemically psychopathic.

perhaps someone else does read them.

Because thinking that NATO and Warsaw Pact were the same and had similar objectives in nonsense. — ssu

And to whose thinking would that be relevant? Since the quote you responded to was...

With Russia, it's all about control and influence.
— ssu

Well, how is it different with America? — Apollodorus
— ssu

To which my parody of your response was entirely apt. The question was about the broad matter of control and influence. Rather than just saying "Yes, they're roughly similar there" like any normal person not trying to get a job at the White House PR office, you scattergun the thread with a load of pointlessly specific historical details unrelated to the actual question, just to try and deflect attention from the political point.

Your singling out of Russian foreign policy as being "all about control and influence" was simply wrong. It's no more so than most other powerful countries. The difference between NATO and the Warsaw Pact has nothing to do with it. It's no secret that the US uses different tactics to achieve it's 'control and influence', no-one needs six pages of Wikipedia summaries to tell them that.

You do realise I've just been randomly cutting and pasting sections from the relevant Wikipedia articles? I'm not even paying any attention to what's in them.

The first lot are from
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact
And the second from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93NATO_relations


It was supposed to be a joke I wasn't expecting it to actually work. Did the citation numbers left in the text not look a little suspicious?

What does it say about that style of discussion that one side can be entirely replaced by completely random sections of Wikipedia?

Russia joining NATO in the 1990's was a far more possible outcome and then it could have worked — ssu

Yeah but The Russia–NATO Council was established in 2002 for handling security issues and joint projects.

The idea of Russia becoming a NATO member has at different times been floated by both Western and Russian leaders, as well as some experts. No serious discussions were ever held.[155]

The thing is that, In 1991, as the Soviet Union was dissolved, Russian president Boris Yeltsin sent a letter to NATO, suggesting that Russia's long-term aim was to join NATO.[159]

What we mustn't forget is that According to Rasmussen, in the early days of Putin's presidency around 2000–2001, Putin made many statements that suggested he was favorable to the idea of Russia joining NATO.[158]

And... In early 2010, the suggestion was repeated in an open letter co-written by German defense experts. They posited that Russia was needed in the wake of an emerging multi-polar world in order for NATO to counterbalance emerging Asian powers.[160]

On Nov. 4, 2021 George Robertson, a former UK Labour defence secretary who led NATO between 1999 and 2003, told The Guardian that Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of western Europe. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’.

So, in conclusion Russian gas exports came to be viewed as a weapon against NATO countries,[183] and the US and other Western countries have worked to lessen the dependency of Europe on Russia and its resources.[184]

A 'proof' is hard to find. I can provide evidence though. So what position of mine do you want evidence for? — Olivier5

Right. Look at the article in question. https://labourheartlands.com/jacques-baud-the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine-update/#The_Military_Situation_in_the_Ukraine-An_Update

Do you see a lack of evidence? It's littered with evidence. Every single blue highlight is a piece of evidence. Not to mention the author's credentials themselves as an expert.

So evidence is not the differentiating factor here. You need to show why your evidence shows your position to be true and the opposing evidence is insufficient to do the same for their position.

Simply saying "my position has evidence" is facile. Both positions have evidence. The mere presence of evidence is irrelevant to the truth or not of either.

Which as it's only military operation occupied one of it's own members.

And that just tells where the real threat was: the main aim wasn't NATO, but also in crushing revolts that sporadically happened in Eastern European countries — ssu

Yes, but The USSR, fearing the restoration of German militarism in West Germany, had suggested in 1954 that it join NATO, but this was rejected by the US and UK.[25][26][27]

The Soviet request to join NATO arose in the aftermath of the Berlin Conference of January–February 1954. Soviet foreign minister Molotov made proposals to have Germany reunified[28] and elections for a pan-German government,[29] under conditions of withdrawal of the four powers' armies and German neutrality,[30] but all were refused by the other foreign ministers, Dulles (USA), Eden (UK), and Bidault (France).[31]

The thing is that Molotov, fearing that the EDC would be directed in the future against the USSR and "seeking to prevent the formation of groups of European States directed against the other European States",[36] made a proposal for a General European Treaty on Collective Security in Europe "open to all European States without regard to their social systems"[36] which would have included the unified Germany (thus rendering the EDC obsolete). But Eden, Dulles, and Bidault opposed the proposal.[37]

And don't forget Albania officially left the organization in 1968, in protest of its invasion of Czechoslovakia. Romania had its own reasons for remaining a formal member of the Warsaw Pact, such as Nicolae Ceaușescu's interest of preserving the threat of a Pact invasion so he could sell himself as a nationalist as well as privileged access to NATO counterparts and a seat at various European forums which otherwise he wouldn't have had (for instance, Romania and the Soviet-led remainder of the Warsaw Pact formed two distinct groups in the elaboration of the Helsinki Final Act.[81]).

It's not funny. You've just publicly claimed that the reasons Africans migrate to Europe, the reasons Africa is a worse place to live than Europe, are not the fault of Europe. You've just attempted to absolve Europe of hundreds of years of oppression, slavery, and racism. I don't find such claims funny, I find them disgusting.

Europe did ruin Africa, but to say that the Africans today who want to emigrate to Europe do so because of that is incorrect. — Olivier5

No one is in any doubt about your apologism, so repeating it doesn't get us anywhere. I was just being 'revolutionary' in showing it to be the bullshit it is.

stating historical or other facts --even straight from Wikipedia -- can be revolutionary — Olivier5

Oh good.

as Europe was being developed, Africa was being underdeveloped via resource extraction. His conclusion is that the structure of present-day Africa and Europe can through a comparative analysis be traced to the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism

The natives, who were portrayed as uncivilised by the Europeans, were excluded from the rights of citizenship.

colonial powers demanded use of African bodies in particularly violent ways for the purpose of labor as well as the shaping of subservient colonised identities.

violence in the colony was exerted on African bodies largely for the purpose of labor and submission.[24] European colonial powers sought natural resources in African colonies and needed the requisite labor force to extract them and simultaneously build the colonial city around these industries.
Because Europeans viewed native bodies as degenerate and in need of taming, violence was necessary to create a submissive laborer.

Colonisers viewed this violence as necessary and good because it shaped the African into a productive worker.

The African’s day-to-day life then became a show of submission done through exercises like public works projects and military conscription.

Critical theory on the colonisation of Africa is largely unified in a condemnation of imperial activities.

But do remind us again how 'factually' Europe did not actually ruin Africa, but the Africans did it to themselves.

it's not (factually not) because Europe ruined their country, as implied by Apo. It is because they perceived Europe as a haven of peace and prosperity, where one can hope to improve one's lot. — Olivier5

I thought there might be a lower limit to how far you'd be prepared to sink in your Western apologetics, but "the slave trade wasn't that bad" is a new low, even for you. Disgusting.

This is actually way easier than actually trying to advance or defend some actual position. I can definitely see the attraction.

Yes, but The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups.

Slavery was relatively rare in pre-civilisation hunter-gatherer populations,[2] as it develops under conditions of social stratification.[3] Slavery operated in the first civilizations (such as Sumer in Mesopotamia,[4] which dates back as far as 3500 BCE).

So you see, Both Christians and Muslims captured and enslaved each other during centuries of warfare in the Mediterranean.[6] Islamic slavery encompassed mainly Western and Central Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, India, and Europe from the 7th to the 20th century.

I think the important point is that European merchants initiated the transatlantic slave trade, purchasing enslaved Africans from West African kingdoms and transporting them to Europe's colonies in the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade was eventually curtailed due to European and American governments passing legislation abolishing their nation's involvement in it.

Just look at what the Warsaw Pact did compared to NATO. — ssu

Yes, but the Warsaw Pact (WP),[5] was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955.

The thing we have to remember is that The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO[6][7][8][9] in 1955 as per the London and Paris Conferences of 1954.

We shouldn't forget that There was no direct military confrontation between the two organisations; instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and in proxy wars.

So, in conclusion, East Germany withdrew from the Pact following German reunification in 1990. On 25 February 1991, at a meeting in Hungary, the Pact was declared at an end by the defense and foreign ministers of the six remaining member states.

But of course you don't know anything about my country. — ssu

So on what grounds are you even taking part in a thread on Ukraine?

And it seems that you have mixed my and Christoffer's country, which is quite telling. :snicker: — ssu

The article was about Finland and Sweden. You're from Finland are Christoffer is from Sweden. Is that wrong?

the issue is that now in every age group and income group, there is a majority for NATO membership. — ssu

Pathetic attempt at deflection.

The issue is that support for NATO membership is being driven by industries who stand to benefit from it. Which is why...

Though Sweden has held referenda on every major decision in recent history – EU membership, the adoption of the euro – it will not consult its citizens on NATO.

And why the article opens with a description of the heavily propagandised media to conclude...

In this media environment, it is perhaps unsurprising that support for NATO membership is high

The demographics are only really mentioned to show the blatant lie behind...

the political class ‘will now face a contest between an older generation and younger ones looking at the world with fresh eyes.’

...by revealing that...

In reality, though, the opposite is true:

the typical NATO-sceptic is under the age of 30, a worker or a student, earning less than €20,000 a year and politically on the left.

Far from the soulless statistical reportage you're critiquing, the point of the article is that, for example,...

Swedish industrialist Jacob Wallenberg, whose family holdings add up to one third of the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Wallenberg has been NATO’s most enthusiastic cheerleader among Swedish executives.

Sweden’s Expressen reported that the meeting suggested the business community holds far greater power over foreign policy decisions than previously thought.

...and...

Chief Executive Micael Johansson has said that Sweden’s NATO membership will open new possibilities for Saab in the areas of missile defense and surveillance.

The considerable influence of business leaders on the NATO question contrasts with that of the general public.

But by all means carry on pretending that this is about getting the polling right and ignore the blatant railroading of the issue by big business. I'm sure the fact that they stand to make billions out of the move is just another one of those coincidences we hear so much about lately, where rich and powerful institutions are both capable of influencing policy and benefit from influencing policy, but on this occasion just happen not to have done.


And by the way, I was tucking into some Knäckebröd, whilst listening to Abba in my Fjällräven shirt whilst writing that so I'm totally allowed to have an opinion on it.

Oh and...

And here is the prime example of media bias. — ssu

The mainstream media are literally inviting arms dealers on to give commentary on how the war is going.

Newspapers are actually contradicting their own previous reports to change the narrative about Nazis.

Social media platforms are consulting with the government to ban anything contrary to the official government line on the war.

...and only now you see fit to bring up media bias, now there's a left-wing article?

Hence Lily Lynch's agenda is quite easy to see. — ssu

And your agenda? Pointing out the omissions in a left-wing, anti-NATO article...?

Do we see the same eagle-eyed hunt for bias in the more centrist, mainstream offerings others have posted? No, of course not.

Spotting bias in politically embedded arguments is like spotting typographic errors. Pointless and ubiquitous.

What matters is why Lynch is looking to find a leftist, anti-NATO angle, and why your biases are looking to support a centrist, pro-NATO one.

I can't speak for Lynch, but the benefits of a leftist, anti-NATO view seem obvious - equality, fair distribution of power, etc.

What's different about centrists is that their arguments seem entirely to plead necessity : "we'd love to reign in America's power but unfortunately we're forced to pick the lesser of two evils", or "we'd love nothing more than to give more to the poor, but unfortunately the economy just doesn't work that way, our hands are tied".

So the whole centrist agenda relies on the objective, cold, hard, rational assessment. Which is why you guys cling so desperately to this idea of impartially.

Except it's bollocks.

Yeah, and that's actual papers with method statements and statistical analysis.

Once you get into the field of 'expert opinion', you're pretty much just getting a run down of the current paradigms from any consensus.

Not to mention the fact that when people say 'consensus' they generally mean a biased sample of experts whose views have been collated or otherwise published in the sources available to whomever is making that claim. We're rarely talking about some statistically valid sampling procedure.

And, add to all that the fact the experts in most fields simply do not spend their time frantically checking each other's papers. Maybe psychology is some rare oddity, but it just doesn't happen. Over the course of a decade, maybe a bit less you might just get sufficient turnaround for the earlier papers to have been checked by a small handful of their colleagues, the rest will certainly have an opinion on everyone's papers (got that in spades), but not checked with any rigour-adding methodology.

As for...

"the last 10 years things have started to change for the better" — Christoffer

The main improvements have been in pre-print servers and set pre-print methodologies. It's about the avoidance of specific forms of statistical manipulation and low powered experiment design. It wouldn't apply to vox pop experts at all.

I can add comments... — Olivier5

Comments would be an improvement, in my opinion. I might disagree with you most of the time, but at least I can ask you why you think what you think. Can't ask the journalist who wrote the article.

they wont attract one's attention to interesting content. — Olivier5

So the role you play is determining what's interesting?

I mean, you never post from an English language news site? What's the essential difference? — Olivier5

Not without comment, no. Posts should have a point, I think.

Because I read the French press, and they don't. — Olivier5

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=French+press+about+Ukraine&t=fpas&ia=web

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=french+newspapers+on+Ukraine&t=fpas&ia=web

I post this stuff because I naively think it can be useful. — Olivier5

Weird. Useful to whom? Do you think we're not aware that foreign newspapers exist? I realise I might be the one in the minority here, but I just don't understand this at all. If I want to know what the foreign press is saying I can look up foreign press articles, I've got access to the internet. Google do an excellent translation service... So you're doing what? The choosing for us? Why would anyone want someone else to do that for them?

So you disagree with media in Sweden being much more factual and unbiased than in many other nations. — Christoffer

Yes, as a statement of fact, I do.

Care to back up that disagreement with anything? — Christoffer

I have absolutely no reason to believe you. It just sounds like "Oh and my sources are the best, if you don't agree, you disprove it". I don't agree (by default) because it's a very convenient position for your argument.

And you disagree with someone using the consensus of researchers in the matter as most of the sources to form their argument? — Christoffer

No. I disagree with your claim that you have done so. Plus I disagree with the claim that a consensus of experts is more likely to be right that a single, or small group of experts. Qualification and error checking are the factors which make an expert opinion more likely to be right. There's absolutely nothing about a consensus to say they have greater qualification (in fact they will on average have less), nor that they have carried out more robust or lengthy error checking (again, I think marginally they will have done less than some). The expert most likely to right is the one who has the greatest knowledge and has carried out the most thorough error checking. That, by definition, will not be the mass around the mean, but rather one of the extremes.

Why would your sources of information that form your conclusions be of any more factual value than mine? — Christoffer

My conclusions are not more factual than yours. I don't know how many times I can say this in different ways that you might understand. I choose evidence which supports my preferred narrative. The narrative comes first, the evidence second. The difference between me and you here is that you're still labouring under the delusion that you don't. That you somehow start every investigation with a blank slate, unbiasedly selecting your sources, interpreting their conclusions according to some disinterested algorithm, and then just happening, by chance to come up with answers which exactly support your pre-existing political ideals. It's bullshit. You, like every other human in the planet, interpret a complex soup of almost infinite data in ways which confirm your pre-existing biases until such time as those narratives become completely unsustainable in the face of evidence to the contrary. You're hard-wired to do this, it's literally how your brain works, from perception, through emotion, right up to grand world-philosophies.

Your opinion is valued even lower if you only have a handful of ideological bloggers and individuals that you agree with in the first place. — Christoffer

Again, this is just your opinion. One with which others disagree. The people I've cited are all experts in their field. That you personally find them to be 'ideological' is your conclusion. As to your sources, you pretty much refused to cite any, so we can't tell.

You don't counter-argue, you resort to cherry-picking easily countered points pulled out of context, — Christoffer

Again, whether the points I counter are 'cherry-picked' and 'out of context' are both subjective judgements, I would obviously disagree with that assessment.

You make no effort to evaluate the actual logic or rationale of the others' argument, you just compare it to your emotional opinion on the matter and if it doesn't fit, then the other person is a stupid, indoctrinated puppet. — Christoffer

Once more, the idea of having countered 'logic' is a subjective opinion, one with which I would disagree. A recurring problem here is that you cannot seem to understand things which seem 'logical' to you are not that way to others. It's not as if you're arguing that 2+2=4, these are complex issues.

And when you get an argument with lots of actual sources you bail out, as you did with the "education" discussion. — Christoffer

I'm simply not going to engage in a full blooded discussion about education in a thread about Ukraine. The point of it was to see how far you'd take an argument. I was intrigued as to why you didn't just assume I was lying about being a psychology professor (seemingly the easiest option for your argument) but instead assumed that you (presumably unqualified in the field) could 'outargue' someone holding a professorship by looking up a few things on Google. That position simply peaked my interest so I wanted to see how far it went. If you want to start a thread about education I'd be more than happy to contribute, though I'd expect a bit more than a hastily thrown together collection of papers. My views on the matter are not mainstream though.

you persist to spam your unfounded emotional responses to everything said by anyone that has another conclusion than you. — Christoffer

Yep. This is a public forum, not your private blog.

that's all that you do, react, mock and fight anything that isn't fitting within your narrative. — Christoffer

Yes, that's a fair summary (the vast majority of the time). If I want to learn, I'll read a book. If I want to discuss with experts, I'll track some down (though I grant my personal situation makes this much easier for me than others, I'm not criticising other people in this). I have a very specific interest in this place - seeing how people react to having their views challenged, particularly on views I have strong opinions about (it reveals interesting things about my own psyche too, not that I'm going to share any of them publicly). Unless such a form of interaction is against the rules, I'll carry on.

My first arguments were in good faith of honest discussions — Christoffer

So 'no' to the trying then?

Because mainstream is always bad? — Christoffer

No, because reciting the mainstream is lazy, and careless when mainstream narratives work to immiserate people. Again, I'm just trying to get you to look at this from the other perspective. From the perspective of someone who disagrees with...

mainstream in Sweden focuses much harder on facts from people who worked with analyzing all of this for many many years. — Christoffer

...or disagrees with...

made my argument based on somewhat of a consensus in the matter. — Christoffer

These are, again, not just facts of the world, they are opinions of yours and other people disagree with them. That changes how they see your arguments. If you think your arguments are soundly based on unbiased consensus, then of course you're going to find opposition to them incoherent (or at least not understand the vitriol), but for those who disagree with that assessment, we might be offended your lack of effort, your lazy preference for the easiest narrative.

Your arguments have you and your country come out completely blameless and leave absolutely no obligation on you to do anything. They look just too convenient to someone unconvinced as to the unbiased authority of your sources.

Not much in the habit of writing post that aren't responses to anything (doubting anyone will read them), but this shining example of narrative altering really fits on this thread despite not being a direct reply to anything.

From FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting).

In 2018 the Atlantic Council wrote on the subject of the threat of the far right in Ukraine:

To be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in Ukraine’s polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of “red herring.” It’s not extremists’ electoral prospects that should concern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity.

By 2021 the same Atlantic Council in a piece entitled “The Dangers of Echoing Russian Disinformation on Ukraine,” give the argument as to why talk of far right problems in Ukraine was 'disinformation'...

In reality, Ukraine’s nationalist parties enjoy less support than similar political parties in a host of EU member states. Notably, in the two Ukrainian parliamentary elections held since the outbreak of hostilities with Russia in 2014, nationalist parties have failed miserably and fallen short of the 5% threshold to enter Ukrainian parliament.

The exact red herring they themselves alerted us to three years previous. Same data, different spin. When no American foreign policy is at stake, we're free to see lack of election support as a side issue to the rise in threatening violence. As soon as Nazism needs downplaying to ensure America's actions are whiter than white, those exact same election stats are wheeled out to perform the opposite function.

I started out with attempts at good arguments — Christoffer

Just try, try really hard, to see that this is a subjective judgement of yours, not a fact about the world. If seeing that is too hard, then just imagine it is...

Now re-read your take on how things have panned out from the point of view of someone who disagrees with you about that subjective judgement. Someone who sees your arguments as carelessly lazy echoing of mainstream narrative, someone who sees your arguments as deliberate attempts to draw attention away from the one cause we can purposefully rebuke, towards the cause for whom rebuke is pointless virtue signalling.

Try to see your arguments from the perspective of someone seeing Ukraine slipping into an endless war, and becoming another horrific tally on America's million plus death toll for its foreign interventions.

Try to see your arguments from the perspective of someone for whom the faux hand-wringing over 4000 tragic deaths when 300,000 face starvation (and are afforded not so much as a passing sentence in the same press from which your position derives) is sickening.

Your moralizing may well seem genuine and heartfelt to you, its opposition seeming thus beastly by contrast, but there are those who genuinely believe your position does more harm than good, and by several fold. These are not trivial questions of philosophy. Thousands of actual people's lives are being destroyed by the forces and strategies we're debating the merits of.

I generally fail at being consistently low-quality. — Christoffer

Classic. You don't disappoint. Tell me again how your posts are just sooo well formulated that anyone disagreeing with them simply must be trolling...

And harsh language, swears etc. are not ad hominems. — Christoffer

No accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being "mentally retarded" is. Your particular weapon of choice when it comes to the ad-hom is that your interlocutor's arguments need not be addressed because of either their lack of intellectual rigour, or their nefarious motive. Less flamboyant than @Olivier5's paranoid delusions about us all working for the FSB, but far more interesting. Counter-arguments need not be addressed as they're from the under-informed. How do we know they're under-informed? Their conclusions are faulty. How do we know their conclusions are faulty without countering them? There's no need to counter them, they're under-informed... Brilliant.

your first post in this thread is a sarcastic mock out of everyone seriously contemplating the risk of Russia invading Ukraine. — Christoffer

Not at all. It's mocking anyone suggesting that a war might 'just happen' and that the most powerful nation on the planet wouldn't have a position on that and be pulling strings as hard as it possibly can in a direction that suits it's agenda best.

The tone you set here is perhaps what sparks the quality to go down in a thread like this. I didn't start it, and neither did SSU or many others. — Christoffer

The tone of this thread has been that anyone talking about how America might share some blame is either uninformed, heartless, trolling, or actually working for the FSB. I really don't see how that could possibly be a coherent response to the perception of an overuse of sarcasm.

This is why I tried to call out to moderators to clean this shit up — Christoffer

No, what you called on the moderators to clean up was what you called poor arguments. But the moderators, having at the very least a post-adolescent grasp of epistemology recognised that the producers of said arguments would likely contest such a judgement and, lacking any means of disinterested arbitration, there the matter would rest in perpetuity.

it is the first-person nature of consciousness which they are obliged to deny. — Wayfarer

They're neither obliged to deny it, nor blind to it. They voluntarily deny it's relevance as part of their theory. It a decision made using that judgement you're so fond of telling us about. You, clearly, have reached a different conclusion. Saying they are blind to it is begging the question.

The issue is the means by which such differences can be resolved. Adding controls and statistical analysis is just a method for such resolution we've found agreeable. You can derive theories by whatever means you like, but it's nothing but storytelling if you can't come up with an agreeable method for resolving disagreements between them. The approach taken by the Churchlands is a framework for resolving such disagreements between theories. Unless you can produce an equally agreeable method, their progress on the problem exceeds yours, their frame is the more useful.

I'm actually curious about what it is about their method that you dislike? — GLEN willows

I'm most familiar with their work on belief where I don't think they've sufficiently accommodated the extent to which we take an active part in the environmental modelling process in the lower brain hierarchies. Their approach tends to minimise the role of noise reduction in neural signalling to more of a 'housekeeping' role whereas I see it more as and integral and two-way process between the somato-sensory system itself, the lower sensory systems and the higher cognitive modelling areas.

It doesn't really impact their work on consciousness much, but I think the degree of stress one places on noise reduction is crucial to any understanding of brain function and so that disagreement, although slight, does rather crop up quite often.

You mean, the way the Brits forgot all their crimes in Ireland? — Olivier5

Yes. I mean exactly that. Are you suggesting that was a good thing done there?

part of what will be explain, is the faculty that provides the capacity to explain. — Wayfarer

Yep. The apparent circularity of which you've just shown to be unproblematic by your doing exactly that from your armchair.

So the question remains. If you can explain "the faculty that provides the capacity to explain" from your armchair (using that very capacity), why can the Churchland's not do so from their lab (also using that very capacity)?

That's not what I said. — Wayfarer

You said it right here...

any claim to 'explain' what judgement is must beg the question — Wayfarer

As to...

Rational inference’, which neuroscientists, materialists, and everyone else rely on whenever they use the word ‘because’, neither has, nor requires, a scientific grounding. — Wayfarer

I agree. Since when has scientific inquiry proceeded only on the ground that such an inquiry was 'required'? I don't think even the Churchland's are making the claim that their inquiry is 'required' (though I wouldn't put that past them, I've no great sympathy for their approach).

and without reference to neuroscience, which is the point. — Wayfarer

No, the point was that you claimed judgement about 'judgement' was begging the question, then perfomatively contradicted yourself by making judgements about 'judgement'. You did so from your armchair, I do so by studying people in more controlled situations and examining brain images. So I'm asking - if the whole 'judgement about judgement' issue is now cast aside, then all you're left with is an objection to my methods. So what's so damn special about your armchair that trumps my lab?

What worries me is whether this tactic - so successful in the mainstream media - will be extended. How soon until we start to hear the same line being trotted out to deny, say, debt relief - "the slave trade was all in the past, water under the bridge - these African nations are so warlike, you wouldn't want to be supporting them would you...?".

Or to support orchestrated regime change every time there's a hint of socialism in South America - "we laundered their drug money and propped up criminal rackets ages ago, all irrelevant now, water under the bridge - you wouldn't want to side with the same people who abstained from voting against Putin would you...?".

Any move to end systemic racism - "yes we horrendously mistreated African Americans, but that's got nothing to do with the current problem, all water under the bridge - you wouldn't want to side with those viscous street gangs now would you...?"

And so on. Once a narrative's been established it can just be picked of the shelf for use next time and it sounds so comfortingly familiar that it's got its own appeal beyond the convenience even of the excuse it offers.

any claim to 'explain' what judgement is must beg the question, because it must assume what it is setting out to prove. — Wayfarer

And yet you've just waffled on for half a page 'explaining' to us exactly the sort of thing 'judgement' is...

Rational inference depends wholly and solely on the relations of ideas — Wayfarer

Judgements based on those simple elements are intrinsic to any rational claim — Wayfarer

they precede scientific analysis — Wayfarer

You can't step outside the process of judgement — Wayfarer

you need to use it in order to show it. — Wayfarer

...all statements about the nature of judgement, presumably arrived at using judgement. So it seems you can use judgement to explain some things about judgement after all. Which means it's the method you object to, not the mere fact of using judgement of reach conclusions about the nature of judgement.

Are you jealous of my fMRI?

The fact that you're to egotistical to tell the difference between a judgement of yours and a fact is not itself an argument for engaging in abusive language though, is it?

the low-quality posting and ad hominems you yourself whine about now. — Christoffer

I'm not whining about anything. I've no problem with the ad-hominems, it's a passionate topic, bound to raise some robust language - completely appropriate to the emotional scale of the issue, I think. I do have a fascination with hypocrisy - you lot complaining about ad-hominems when you're engaged in them to absolutely no lesser an extent than everyone else. I can't figure out how you're maintaining that level of dissonance.

This...

I don't find it productive to discuss with people like you and since mods don't care about quality in here, I'll just counter low quality with the same quality. — Christoffer

...for example, just doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's a direct contradiction from the outset, but even if it weren't, the idea of countering low quality with low quality doesn't even follow. How is low quality a counter to low quality?

And this...

... and then complain about the low level you drag others down to. — Christoffer

...is just bizarre since I made no such complaint, and I can't even see how it would help your narrative if I had. I mean it would make me hypocritical, but you just included your own hypocrisy (fighting low quality with low quality) as part of the same storyline.

It's quite the tangled web you weave.