Air Defence needs coordination and integration right from the start. It has to detect an incoming strike, it has to coordinate it's own actions with your own aircraft (not to shoot them down) and it has to know when to attack, when to put on or shut off it's radars. — ssu

Yes, that's why I say you still need "enough". My point was simply that in the context of a ground invasion you need significantly more. If you want me to elaborate on why exactly I can do so, but I was meaning for this to be obvious.

Relying on other radars is what basically a functioning AD Network is all about. Yet that data has to be linked to you via some command structure. And if your S-300's are safely hidden in some warehouse or inside a mountain cave, then you have to get them out, prepare them for firing and get the radars working. Doesn't happen in an instant. — ssu

These systems wouldn't be all in some sort of storage. Some would, others would be camouflaged as well as have decoys. The Russians have been playing hide and seek with the Americans for decades, I assume they can hide these systems well enough. Now, once they fire they can be seen from space and targeted, but if a launch truck fires all it's missiles, the loss of the truck is fairly acceptable and can be replaced (why in my first comment focused on resupply from the Caspian so much).

That's why the combat survivability isn't the same as with more mobile and smaller systems. Hence the need for a layered multi-system approach. Which then puts even more stress on the technical ability of your people. — ssu

Yes, but I'm assuming the Iranians ( / Russians telling them what to do) have set up these multiple layers.

Also, keep in mind that the biggest missiles in the S-400 system are for a pretty impressive range of up to 400 Km. So, some of these missiles can be kept 200 kilometers from the border / outer air-defense perimeter and still cover 200 km outwards. Some missiles can be at the border and target support air-craft (tankers, AEW&C, bombers wanting to fire various air-to-ground missiles) up to 400Km. These missiles can also cover an aircraft carrier -- air-craft carriers are launching planes all the time and are not themselves very stealthy, so you can just keep firing these missiles in the area of an aircraft carrier which at a minimum is highly disruptive and also doesn't involve trying to hit the carrier itself, which the US has said would treat as a nuclear escalation; taking pot-shots at planes around the carrier seems fair game (so, even in the current context, Russians probably won't sell missiles that can hit carriers at super long ranges to anyone).

Again, if these missiles work, this is incredibly disruptive to the the entire US war fighting framework, obviously that's the goal.

So, you stay out of range, but that significantly reduces effectiveness: time between sorties, time in / over combat, payloads reduced, and the potential need to outrun any AA missiles will burn more fuel further limiting range.

Of course, the US can change equipment, methods and tactics, such as swarms of killer drones controlled by some sort of skynet. However, that can't be done overnight, so there's significant geopolitical implications if we are currently witnessing an inversion in the stealth / carrier system vs AA systems (that are proliferating) hard power relations.

Anyway, the way now Trump has managed the narrative is beneficial to him. His hardcore supporters don't like the neocons and so the story that everybody on his political team starting from überneocon Bolton was for the strike and he decided not to do it is good for Trump. — ssu

Yes, in terms of short term political public relations, we can be fairly confident Trump will spin this to his base in an extremely pleasing manner to them. I have no argument here.

I agree. I do not think that his decision had anything to do with what he said. I was poking holes in his claims not trying to explain his decision in terms of them. I am sure that an analysis of causalities is something done at the beginning and was discussed early on, not something that no one considered until Trump brought it up at the last minute. — Fooloso4

Yes, we definitely agree on this point. Though we can't dismiss what Trump says in terms of analytical value, nor can we dismiss the possibility that his account is exactly how it happened, it's extremely dangerous to start analysis with an unreliable account.

My theory, that the presence of advanced SAM caused the last minute cancelling, is supported without Trump being president nor any of his words. If Obama was president the analysis would be just as sound and follow the same logic.

Doesn't make it true (it could really be Trump is that "mindy-changy", whatever his reason was), but it's usually a good approach with respect to geopolitical events to first make de-personified analysis, what are the real relations between powers and how are those real relations changing (due to technology, trade, armed victories and defeats, etc.), and then afterwards consider to what extent personalities could guide or even radically alter outcomes. There's a bunch of reasons to approach things this way, which we can get into if there's any doubts, but I hope my theory here presents the merits of "geopolitics" as a framework.

I don't see how this explains why he went from being "cocked and loaded" to calling it off at the last minute. — Fooloso4

Yes, this is exactly the unquestioned assumption in the Western media. Not a single journalist, as far as I know, has questioned the assumption that Trump could have destroyed those SAM sites and killed those 150 Iranians if he had wanted to without any air losses of any kind on the American side.

In my theory, it was agreed that they need to blow up something, as that's just what they do in these situations and Trump obviously sees the logic in that (he didn't start this whole thing with Iran to look weak), but there's genuine ambiguity if it can be done without suffering any air losses of any kind. There's also ambiguity if Iranians would dare fire back at US planes with real pilots in them. So, mission is a go, planes are sent, and when the Iranian radar and SAM sites respond in a way that would likely result in American casualties the mission is canceled.

For, the real balance of power on the ground is that Russians have been setting up advanced air defense (far more advanced than Iran had before) and certainly helping the Iranians deploy all their anti-air assets in the optimum way. The whole point of air defense is to defend the air; the Western media has gotten accustomed to the fact that for US opponent, air defense doesn't matter and has simply carried through the assumption to this case. But it does matter. If you want to go and attack a SAM battery, it is a reasonable question to ask whether that SAM battery has more than 0 percent effective chance at fighting back, as is it's entire purpose.

The purpose of stealth plane technology is to defeat SAM batteries despite their purpose being to destroy planes, and do it with easy. But stealth is a fairly old technology at this point that the Russians have been working on defeating since whenever they first heard Americans were maybe developing it. It's possible that their system works.

If the Russians have created an effective air defense in Iran, then pursuing the attack would likely result in American air casualties. This would be a terrible position to be in: throwing good lives away to avenge a drone loss. It's also US attacking Iran and Iran simply defending itself; so it doesn't make a good argument to go and avenge the pilots that died avenging the drone.

Now, whatever the real sequence of events, which we may never know, geopolitical analysts around the world will make one clear conclusion: Iran got advanced air defense from Russia and suffered zero air attacks. (as you say, this could change tomorrow, if my theory is correct then it won't change, if I am wrong then the US going and flying around Iran and blowing a bunch of things up would be proof my theory is wrong.)

As I mention in a previous comment, US went "all in" on stealth and it's simply too soon in the procurement cycle to admit it doesn't work; just using stealth planes as you would normal planes would be a PR disaster; sending in non-stealth planes when you have stealth planes would be a PR disaster.

All this analysis is also not "in a void". The US commitment to stealth technology was highly criticized during the development and "all in" phase -- I mention above it wasn't "stupid" for the reasons I explain, but doesn't mean people didn't see this exact situation coming -- and US has been making "a big stink" about Russia selling their S system to anyone: Russia had to climb down from selling the S-400 system to Iran and only supply the "S-300 with upgrades" (though no one knows if that's anything more than changing the label from 400 to 300) to appease US complaining, and US has been threatening Turkey with sanctions for buying S-400, and there's also a diplomatic roe with India about the system. So all these facts fit my theory.

As for what difference, if any, does Trump's personality and words change the analysis. Well, I think it fits in nicely. When Trump lies, he often let's slip relevant themes (such as accusing an opponent of something he's been doing or won't hesitate doing), so in this case perhaps "potential casualties results in mission canceled" is the right theme, just not Iranian casualties. Also, Trump understands branding very well, so he would certainly understand why revealing the stealth isn't so stealthy would be terrible for the American brand and also showing weakness is terrible for America's brand, so understanding this and being good at branding, he'd come up with a good PR move: such as "I wanted to spare Iranian lives, it's not worth it for a drone" (and just ignoring the fact you can blow things that have no people around, even if just symbolically to make the point that you can blow thing up but don't want casualties, so we blew up this radio tower or this bridge with no one on it, or both!).

But, as mentioned above, regardless if my theory is correct, geopolitical analysts in other countries will assume there is enough probability in this theory to buy or develop advanced sam systems that can shoot down stealth aircraft (this was already happening, it will just happen faster now, and this is why you wouldn't want to create this situation if you were a US president).

Sure, US can completely alter their conventional war fighting paradigm, but this can't be done over night; even the US military cannot replace trillions in assets like they were nothing. It takes time to develop, test, procure weapons and weapons platforms, and develop the war fighting doctrines and skill sets that go with those systems. An Empire cannot simply "lose a decade" and get em the next decade without major repercussions.

If my theory is correct, why did this happen: stealth technology is a huge barrier to entry (in the arms supplying market) and it's incredibly profitable to perpetuate the idea it's effective even long after sophisticated enemies have invented systems that can defeat it.

Edit: again, if this theory is correct, explains nicely why neocons are starting to move onto casual use of tactical nuclear weapons as a normal and reasonable thing to do: they've corrupted themselves into a corner, and now they have to nuke their way out.

You both seem to want to make things both simpler and more complicated than I would argue is plausible.

First, Trump has definitely proven that he imagines what sounds best and then jumps to just saying that, regardless of whether it makes any sense or is in consistent with what he's being saying so far.

"Sparing Iranian lives" is obviously what sounds best as a reason for not responding militarily to a military attack on a military asset.

These things happen, the US has always responded to these sorts of events, with or without casualties. The US has military planners, has generals, has analysts, has intel, and has always multiple plans and options available, and people can always go make more. If the concern was casualties, there was certainly a plan available that creates no casualties.

Also, the US has always responded based on their version of events and completely dismissing anyone else's version.

So, taking essentially anything Trump says as meaningful insight into what happened -- that he sent the generals to do something and only found out later there would be causalities, and there's no plan B of striking without casualties, so he called it off -- is buying into the oversimplification not just of Trump's incoherent speech, but the shallow analysis that is found in the media.

However, that there might be a connection to the congress vote to block the Saudi Arabia arms deal is way over complicating things. Trump can veto this legislation that's trying to veto his approval of the arms sale to Russia, and it's generally agreed there are not enough Republicans that would vote against to veto Trump's veto; in other words, this vote against the arms sale is only symbolic and doesn't prevent it.

Also, other theories like "sending Iran a threatening message" by attacking and the cancelling are also over complicating things. That's not how you send that kind of message.

The only message sent here is that you can blow up a US asset and the US is unwilling to respond in kind.

If they really do know that the drone was in Iran airspace and that was the reason, then they would say something like "oh, in reviewing our logs, something, something, maybe drone crossed the line to avoid a potential collision with another aircraft" or some excuse like this. But they haven't, so imagining that they've used some over-complex logic of this sort based on maybe there's other evidence out there is very implausible; they would just dismiss any other evidence even if it came to light. And, anything reasoning like this doesn't stack up to the mission being nearly launched and then cancelled.

Now, it's possible it's only due to Trump's unpredictable personality. But I feel if this was the case there would be moaning and groaning from the neocons ... well, which there is, but I feel there would be more of it, and especially a lot of focus that it makes US look weak to not respond at least in some way (both from leaks with very angry planners, generals, analysts, as well as pundits picking up on it).

My theory I believe explains things much better. They wanted to blow of anti-air sites; well if it looks like those air defenses will be in some way effective (dozens or even hundreds of ground-to-air missiles could be launched), then the answer is to send more planes, but there would be losses: even for blowing up something without casualties (Iranians can't know the target and even if they did may defend their airspace anyways). As I mentioned in my previous post, American commanders themselves may not know the effectiveness of their anti-anti-air equipment and methods.

The US air force largest, US navy air force second largest, US arm air force third largest air force in the world. — Willyfaust

The question is not whether the US has a lot of planes.

The question is how useful these planes will be in a world where there is a proliferation of advanced sam systems the Russians are now selling to everyone.

I am going to go out on a limb and predict that we'll eventually find out what the real reason for the canceled attack was. And by eventually, I mean as early as next week when Trump tells us at one of his rallies. He will say that, yes, one reason was to spare Iranian lives, but another reason was that (and not very many people know this) sam systems were clearly tracking the planes and could have shot them down, so the mission was canceled; that he had said "do it, but don't lose any planes".

Any struggle will see a quick end to true struggle. — Willyfaust

I have no idea what this means, please elaborate.

As for nukes, sure Isreal or the US could nuke Iran.

Also, key point, the US military massive commitment to stealth wasn't stupid.

It made sense in a world without the neo-con driven Ukrainian conflict to ... I guess they wanted to spank the Russians by taking their Naval base in Crimea away, nor the neo-con re-igniting the cold war rhetoric, nor Trump taking American diplomatic capital, standing in the middle of oval office, letting it smash to pieces on the floor and then continuing to grind the pieces to dust every time he or a neo-con passes through.

In a world minus all that, sure the Russians can probably down stealth air-craft but they wouldn't be just handing out such systems to Syria, China, Iran, India, Turkey to provoke the Americans.

So, if other nations are decades behind Russian sam technology, then a huge investment in stealth makes sense. If the goal isn't to full scale war with Russia, then it's just a question of preventing Russians from selling their sam technology.

American soft power could easily stop such a proliferation of advanced Russian sams, by treating Russia with a minimum of respect due a country with thousands of nuclear weapons and having cards to play like sanctions and toppling allies like Syria and so on and applying other forms of diplomatic pressure through allies.

Problem today is all those neo-con "new cold war dream cards" have been played and there's zero disincentive for Russians to sell their system to whoever wants to buy it. The neo-cons started the process, but Trump is accelerating it resulting in potential for stealth to be obsolete decades ahead of schedule.

This would be a major policy disaster for the US military global posture, and one (of many) geopolitical issues at play in this Iran situation.

Edit: Neo-cons of course haven't learned anything from their schemes failing (it's Obamas fault), which is why they are starting to buzz about the need to be using tactical nuclear weapons.

Yet competence is a factor that has to be taken into consideration. We (as armchair generals) tend to look just at the performance charts of these systems. You do need a lot of technically trained people. In order for an Air Defence network to operate one needs a functioning command and communications network and an efficient Electronic Warfare capability, which isn't actually so easy to do. — ssu

Your points are very relevant in a situation like a ground invasion (as you mention in Iraq), where things are being bombed all over the place, chaos is erupting, enemy troops are advancing towards the capital.

Absent a ground invasion, you don't really need much integration and coordination and training (you still need enough, but not nearly as much as using these systems in the context of a ground invasion).

You can rely on other radar for early warning and / or just wait until you're being bombed, then turn on the S-300/400, fire a whole bunch of missiles, turn it off and try to skedaddle or just let the visible parts of the system (radar transmitters and launch vehicles) get destroyed and replace them later. If you go searching for the other components (command and control, radar receivers, spare missiles) or just "drop a lot of bombs" in the area, now you have to contend with a bunch of cheaper and shorter range sam systems.

Maybe Americans can play this game all week without losing a single plane. Maybe not.

Now, I'm not saying the American arms manufacturers are incompetent, but I'm also saying the Russian arms manufacturers are likewise not incompetent. The proposed methodology for taking out modern sam sites is sending a bunch of stealth air-craft which fire a bunch of missiles at stuff using advanced signal analysis. Maybe this will work. But if it doesn't, a bunch of aircraft got committed and are shot down.

The reason I'm stressing on this is because the US military posture just made a massive commitment to stealth technology with the F-35 and various stealth drone programs. Usually, this sort of "does it actually work" doesn't actually matter because the kind of conflict where it would be tested doesn't arise. However, this Iran situation is exactly the opportunity you'd want if you were eager to show how your 5th gen multi-roll fighters are great at taking out sam sites. So not doing it says something, doing it and failing would say something much louder.

In the not doing it case; well you can always blame something else. Allies that toe-the-line will still buy the planes. But in the doing and failing case, it's going to be really, really hard to keep up the pretense the F-35 program is a success; not even the US military and congress are able to brush off a trillion dollar waste.

The reason for developing this argument is that it seems at first glance any military conflict would be good for the US arms industry, but this particular stand-off actually has potentially huge downsides and embarrassments if you do send in the stealth fighters and they get shot down. So it's a very unusual situation.

A full ground invasion solves the problem ... but is that really a reasonable way to solve the "stealth doesn't work problem". Doing nothing ... well already at this part of the conversation, Russia is sitting pretty to sell a lot more S-400 systems; what happens when they're all over the world and keep piling up and keep getting cheaper and easier to use, if stealth doesn't work, all the American carrier groups full of stealth aircraft become ocean ornaments.

the report came out that Trump ordered strikes — Michael

Damn, I talked up a storm for nothing.

From this moment forth you may call me: Storm Talker.

(before cancelling) — Michael

Until this moment.

Hence basically it was a show of force, a tit-for-tat warning, similar which the Israelis typically do now and then. So I guess Trump still listens to his military. — ssu

The difference is that the Syrians couldn't retaliate anyways. So vis-a-vis the Americans, it's not tit-for-tat, it's just tit.

With the Iranians, any small retaliation can create genuine tit-for-tat that keeps escalating. The Iranians can tat to your tit, so it's not just a theatrical performance for the home audience, there maybe real consequences to sending a dozen cruise missiles to blow something up in Iran. Iran blows something up too, then what, where does it go?

It goes straight to Iran doing everything possible to develop nuclear weapons during this tit-for-tatting process. Then one day they test a nuke. What happens then?

Again, the invariable conclusion that emerges is a ground invasion is necessary if you don't want Iran to have nukes nor do you want a deal.

Now, Trump may genuinely not care if Iran develops nukes or not, but there's the rest of the world.

Rest of the world may just keep to the Iran deal. This makes a mockery of American power. What happens then?

For sure the talking heads will be spinning in their swivel chairs, I guarantee you that.

Let's discuss this in detail, if you are interested. — ssu

Yes, it's a very interesting topic; if these systems do work it changes the global power dynamic.

First the S-300/S-400 systems are technically very challenging to operate. [...]
Hence we would have learned by now if Russia would have sent the operators too with the missile systems. Now Iranians aren't bad in tech: they have kept flying the F-14's even after a long war with Iraq and have had the ability to add to their fleet the Iraqi aircraft that defected to Iran (during operation Desert Storm). — ssu

Well, I assume Russia did send operators to train the Iranians. However, more importantly, in my view, is that Russians can send in a team to fix the system. And if the Russians would really would want to be hands-off in downing American planes, Iranian teams can keep going to Russia for training. Iran is not a standard dictatorship where the army is mostly afraid of the population, nor is Iran intellectually oppressive and unable to both foster in their society and attract into their army intellectuals that can manage these systems effectively.

Now, maybe not effective enough or maybe the system simply doesn't work, but I wouldn't assume these things can be taken out simply due to incompetence.

The second issue is that the system has low combat survivability in the modern battlefield. — ssu

Well, this is what we would find out if the Americans attacked Iran with stealth planes.

However, the photos you posted don't give an accurate impression.

The system is modular and all the components can be separated by some distance and have backups.

A truck seems really easy to spot if it's in the middle of the Siberian tundra, but you can easily put a box over it and make it look like a normal truck and drive it around civilian roads, or keep moving it around at night and setting up camouflage during the day; again, an army has a lot of trucks it's moving around all the time. It can also be one of several launch trucks and far from the radar and command and control stations and maybe you can have individual launch tubes that are even harder to spot.

It cannot move easily, a missile battery is a big observable target (especially when it puts it's radars on). In fact the S-300 (and the S-400 too) have to have their own air defence as we have seen from the Russian deployment of the systems to Syria. — ssu

Yes, radars can be easily seen, but the radar components can be far from the actual missiles which are far from the command and control and there can be backup radars. Attackers may have to actually look for the other components or then just bomb everything that might be something in the area, but then need to contend with shorter range systems.

Generally, S-300/400 refers to the long range system which is part of a layered defense including shorter range anti-air. If one of these systems was being attacked, it would probably launch longer range and then medium range missiles and then turn off. Shorter range systems would then turn on (that can see stealth aircraft due to the short distance).

Of course, you can then bomb these shorter range systems and once all anti-air is defeated just keep bombing things.

The question is not that the system can be defeated, but how many planes and other air-assets are lost during this process.

Critically, if it's not a ground invasion but just a bombing campaign, the Iranians can salvage whatever equipment survived, get replacements and setup somewhere else.

Also keep in mind, that the Iranians can keep this system off until the Americans are bombing something, then turn it on and fire a bunch missiles at a bunch of planes and then disperse the system into hiding (with lot's of decoys around as well). To inflict any significant damage on the Iranian military, you need to send a lot of planes and a lot of bombs, and the Iranians can just wait. If the Americans decide to wait too ... well then there's no bombing campaign.

My basic point is that, if stealth doesn't really work, then the Libya strategy of bombing things into a failed state and calling it a day can't work without continuous air losses. The air losses might simply be too high to reach failed state status; you have to bomb a lot of things to exceed a population's ability to cope and repair things.

Hence, the conclusion becomes a land invasion is the only route to regime change, but we know that this results in casualties even with total freedom in the skies as well as dealing with the 2 decade "quagmire" afterwards.

Yet the worrying thing is that there are not many adults in the room with Trump. All the generals in the White House have either left or been fired, which was one of the few good moves Trump did (because obviously Mattis, Kelly and McMaster were recommended to him and weren't eyeing for any political positions, yet one earlier general was a different case, who didn't last for long). — ssu

My guess is Trump liked having generals because he thought they would follow orders ... but discovered generals aren't good at brazen lying, so they became a liability and Trump got rid of them.

Neocons, which I agree Trump doesn't care about their grand full-spectrum dominance vision, at least know facts and integrity doesn't matter if you have the power ... and even if you don't have the power, facts and integrity still don't matter.

This would be my guess of the switch from military men to neocons; they're good propagandists and Trump needs that, not bureaucratic competence.

However, Trump's experience as a bully maybe why he doesn't attack Iran. A bully instinctively knows you only prey on those who can't fight back; Iran can offer a fight, so it just doesn't make any sense to attack them, why risk it? (Shooting down the drone, whether it was in or outside the border, is Iran calling it that this is the case.)

Since Iran acknowledges it shot down the drone the somebody possibility that Trump "imagines" stretches the credibility of somebody who has little or none to begin with. Will the evidence that Trump says is "documented scientifically" be released to the public or to congress or the United Nations? — Fooloso4

Well, I believe that's how science works.

Trump also mentioned they didn't put no man or woman in the drone, and Iran's lucky about that, which I think is also documented scientifically.

But I agree that Trump is just hedging his bets in every possible direction, but I only see him doing this because he's decided a war with a lot of American soldier and mercenary deaths wouldn't be good for re-election. Americans like their army and war, except for the American's dying for no good reason part.

If a "bombing the shit out of them" is also not practical due to Russian re-supplying air-defense, then there's simply no good violent option.

However, unlike North Korean and Venezuela, the situation can't just be walked away from at this point. US would need to back-off the sanctions either explicitly or signal to Europe to get the work-around up and running.

If Trump was already aware they had no good options after tearing up the deal, he may have brought Pompeo and Bolton in just to be able to blame some neocons for the failure. It seems reasonable somebody told him at some point how things would play out (only way to stop Iran nuclear program would be War) ... but I wouldn't be surprised if he just avoided such talk until it became unavoidable with recent tensions.

Actually, the US has already tested the S-300 system, not to the S-400 Triumph and many allies and friendly countries to the US have the system, like Greece, Ukraine and Egypt. The US even bought some missile systems from Belarus in 1994, not with everything but still. — ssu

By S-300/400 I mean to reference the S-300 "with upgrades" the Russians have sold Iranians.

What matters is not so much "having" an S-300 or 400 or some mixture, as taking out 1 battery the US could certainly do with overwhelming force.

What matters is that the Russians can resupply Iran with replacement parts and missiles and they'd be motivated to show their equipment works and highly motivated to tweak, optimize, and resupply.

This is the key difference with Iraq, Afghanistan and Lybia, which were isolated countries that didn't require much to topple over into a failed state.

But I agree with your observations. The US military knows quite well it's own limitations. This has been more of response-with-increase of troops. It happens some time with Iran. These scares with a strike on Iran happen all the again once the average person has forgotten the past crisis. But of course if tensions rise even from this, I would start to be worried. — ssu

For the past I agree.

The problem this time is that Trump not only pulled out the deal but slapped sanctions not just on Iran but anyone trading with Iran, so trying to force the other signatories of the deal to break it too.

Trump supporters love to mention that "the Senate didn't ratify Obama's deal". Ok, US doesn't care about diplomatic credibility. Other countries, however, do care, and see it as important to fulfill their part of a deal they signed (why Europe is working on a legal framework for companies to trade with Iran and avoid US sanctions).

And so, for the rest of the world that cares about diplomacy, Iran has a legitimate grievance. So unlike in the past, Iran now has a credible position to develop nuclear weapons if the deal isn't upheld. It's going to be difficult to get parties that signed a deal to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons to pull any resources into accomplishing the same goal with money and lives. Only Trump thought that was a good idea.

And, only Trump supporters think it's common sense that the "deal was crap". Europe, Russia, China Iran and the US (with advice from their military and intelligence agencies) all signed the deal because it made sense.

Whereas before the deal was signed, there was a real risk to Iran that Nato countries would invade to prevent nuclear development (and without credibility, Russia could not be counted on to help; selling the Iranians anti-air was in parallel to the credible deal of not developing nukes, which Russia doesn't want either).

Post-deal, post-Tump tearing up the deal, now it's going to extremely hard to not only bring any other country into the war but very hard to pressure other countries to pressure Russia to not resupply Iran air-defense. Before the deal, war was a lot easier, but still extremely costly and destabilizing; hence the deal.

I imagine you support the Iran deal; however, it's not obvious all the diplomatic implications, which now put the US, as the joint chief says, in the position of going to war and a costly regime change ... or some sort of escalating tit-for-tat leading to war anyways ... or Iran develops nuclear weapons.

Well, literally a couple hours after my comment, it seems I was right what the high level discussion involve the high cost of war ... or then obviously not dealing with Iran developing nuclear weapons.

According to CNN, citing a military staffer, describing the chairman of the joint chief's position:

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, continued to point out in internal discussions that what to do about Iran is a policy question, the official said. If the policy is a military response, then Dunford is prepared to explain in detail the cost of doing that in every discussion.

The official said the military view is this:

If you want to really stop Iran’s nuclear program, that immediately gets you to regime change, which is an enormous undertaking.

If you want to respond with a single strike to any particular Iranian provocation, you cannot predict how Iran might react and it still risks leading you to war. — cnn

This may also explain why Trump is de-escalating his own rhetoric, claiming the drone incident maybe just a mistake by a missile operator, captain, general, what-have-you, rather than threatening to turn Iran into a lake of fire.

I wouldn't be surprised if Trump later throws Pompeo and Bolton under the bus, ridiculing and firing them for not being able to deal with Iran: "I brought them in to deal with Iran, couldn't even do it, military said cost would be high. Sad. You know I said it, I said those trillion dollar planes was too much for a plane. I know planes, I know those guys, they're great guys. The best. They make great planes, but we need to accept the planes couldn't take out the missile sites in Iran, just couldn't do it. I said: well go blow them up! Military said they couldn't do it, just couldn't. We need new planes ... or a lot of drones; I'm talking so many drones, drones like you wouldn't believe it. I hardly believe it, and I've seen these drones and all the plans to make a lot of them, so many, so many they'll be so many drones like you wouldn't even believe. Beautiful." Which would be the coherent part of the speech, followed by the incoherent part explaining why pulling out the Obama deal was still a great move, the best move, had to do it.

Edit: it's obviously a joke the lake of fire thing being an escalation. So far there's a 1:1 correspondence between threatening turn a country into a lake of fire and the next day expressing a deep love for the supreme leader of said country and the entire issue disappearing from the news.

With the downing of a 120 million dollar US drone, whoever attacked the tankers, Iran seems to be calling the US' bluff.

The Trump admin maybe now finding out why Obama cut the Iran deal: that it is by far the best option and all military options don't go anywhere without a full scale invasion that would cost thousands, possibly tens of thousands of US soldiers and mercenary lives, which no American wants.

That it of course played great to the Republican base to criticize Obama striking a deal with Iran (so Republicans harped on about it as much as they could, and it was just "bold common sense" for Trump to withdraw from the deal and increase sanctions) ... but that same base isn't actually going to support American lives being lost.

What is their thought process? That the US military is essentially magic and that there must be some way to deal militarily with Iran without losing any lives.

If a bombing campaign isn't feasible, as I described in my post above, my guess is the war room meetings keep spinning around from "we could invade this way or that way ... but we'll lose soldiers ... and it maybe slow going resulting in months of closure of the straight" and "we could just send cruise missiles to blow something up ... but what are we accomplishing? they'll be testing nukes sooner or later".

Also, keep in mind that the reason the US could escort ships through the straight during the Iraq-Iran war was because Iran was not at war with the US, so would not wantonly fire on US warships. Obviously that changes in a US-Iran conflict, and Iran can keep firing missiles at anything in the straight as long as they can access the coast; Iran has been stock piling anti-ship missiles for this purpose and tankers are possibly the easiest target in the sea other than islands.

More important than whatever is said in these threads is what the dominant narrative will be that shapes what happens going forward. — Fooloso4

This was certainly true in the previous wars, but Iraq and company were easy targets that could be bombed or invaded with ease. And so, as you say, all that mattered was a "plausible narrative" for talking heads in the media and politicians to prattle on about, even if no one believes it (which a lot of people did).

What is different with Iran is that there are real obstacles and real geopolitical consequences to any significant bombing campaign and even more obstacles and geopolitical consequences for a land invasion.

Even at this stage in the escalation, the US may have no good options and is already losing even more credibility. Obviously diplomatic credibility has been jettisoned already, but revealing that idiotic decisions lead immediately to unmanageable consequences.

However, now that Iran has downed a 120 million US asset and US already claims the Tanker attacks were Iran and that sufficient reason for a military response in itself, the logical response if stealth technology works is to go and stealthily bomb a whole bunch of Iran military assets. If stealth technology doesn't work then the logical response would be to do nothing or to maybe send a bunch of cruise missiles.

The situation is quite severe in terms of the US military industrial complex massive investment in stealth technology for both the US military and export. Already there's a lot of doubts about stealth technology; a bunch of European nations see no need for it -- now, there's certainly niche applications where it's important to be invisible to civilian or out-dated radar, but that would only justify needing a few such planes ... not all the planes, as is the premise of the F-35 program -- but as long as it's never really tested, it doesn't really matter.

However, to reveal in a dramatic fashion the technology isn't useful against anti-air that exists on the market today, not to speak of years from now, is a big problem even for the massive budget levels of the US military. Of course, all else being equal, it's better to have stealth, but things aren't equal as stealth requires major sacrifices in terms of both cost and ordinance capacity. If a stealth plane costs twice as much to buy and maintain, has less range, and delivers half the ordinance, then it's really a 4 times more expensive plane or worse.

Of course, US arms industry doesn't claim stealth is magic, just a significant advantage, but the situation emerging with Iran is the opportunity to demonstrate this significant advantage. Already it can be claimed by a reasonable observer that not doing it is admitting the advantage is not so great. A very large amount of stealth sales will be lost if both the US military and other buyers of the F-35 lose faith in stealth, and the entire military posture of the US air force, navy and marine corp placed into serious doubt.

Why this whole stealth thing is crucial to understanding the situation, is that there's potential this could be a situation where US arms manufacturers lose money from military conflict, due to decrease in stealth technology purchases and increase in Russia exporting the S-300/400 system, leading to even less desire for stealth (if people start to believe it can easily deal with stealth, due to US stealth inaction in this situation in Iran). Keep in mind, US arms manufactures can't export anti-stealth systems without abandoning stealth technology themselves ... so, unless stealth works, then they've created an entire multi-billion, multi-decade market for systems that can shoot down their stealth planes that they can't participate in for obvious reasons, and on-top of this fewer and fewer people will want their missiles specifically designed not to shoot down stealth aircraft, and on-top of this placed the US military in a position of needing to never use these stealth systems in a way that might demonstrate they are not cost effective.

It's bad for business. One of many reasons Obama struck a deal with Iran precisely to avoid this kind of situation.

Informed proponents of stealth, that accept they can be shot down, claim that stealth will shine against modern anti-air systems using coordinated attacks of many aircraft. However, such a dramatic attack that fails (sending dozens of planes that get shot down) would just amplify all of the problems listed above in the loudest possible manner. It would be a big gamble.

We will see in the coming days. What is for sure is if the US has been bluffing with their stealth technology, Iran is calling that bluff. Of course, US command themselves may have no idea how effective sending lot's of stealth planes would be. The entire stealth program was likely premised on only ever needing to bomb mercilessly failed states ... which makes sense if the goal was to have a more or less stable world where there's no reason to attack functioning states like Iran. But then who do you bomb? It seems the US has run out of weak isolated states to mercilessly bomb. Again, terrible for business.

It's looking like war is edging closer. The word war though is poorly used, as it infers two nations in a military struggle. The military power of the u s would see target practice, with the struggle only from Iranians seeking to keep soul intact. — Willyfaust

This is a naive assumption.

Iran is very different compared to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, which are the "successful" wars. These countries were isolated diplomatically and weren't preparing for decades for war with the USA.

Iran has friends and has prepared since decades for war with the USA. Iran has also been able to observe these other wars and plan accordingly.

Iran has very favourable mountainous terrain and has "global force projection" in the form of being next to the straight of Hormuz. The above mentioned countries could do nothing that would affect the global economy. So, if you just bomb Iran without taking the coast, then no ships (would get insurance) to travel the straight of Hormuz. This makes a "bombing into submission, internal chaos or significant weakening (to invade later)" campaign a lot harder as it would affect the global economy and create reasons for nearly every other country to apply pressure to stop the war.

Iran also has for certain the Russian made S-300 air defense system with "unknown" upgrades that may make it the S-400 with a S-300 label to please the West. There's never been a test of either S-300 or S-400 against American planes. Maybe it's a total fail, but I haven't seen any compelling arguments to believe that would be the case. Iran doesn't share a border with Russia, but does share the Caspian Sea, which as far as I know, there's no way for American ships to enter the Caspian and no way for other neighboring countries to effectively blockade the Caspian, assuming any of them would want to (which is doubtful). So, it's easy for Russia to resupply Iran with anti-air equipment and missiles. A pure bombing campaign could easily turn into a war of attrition of anti-air vs air assets; the only way this wouldn't be the case is if the S-300/400 system simply doesn't work or there's both a physical and diplomatically viable way to blockage Russian re-supply (or the even more remote possibility Russia abandons supporting Iran). You keep bomb the Russian ships in the Caspian ... but you'd only need to do that if the S-300/400 system is effective, in which case you now have to deal with many more such missiles ... and de facto declaration of war on Russia (one of the key points of a blockade is that it makes it ambiguous who is attacking who first).

Keep in mind also, that effectiveness of stealth against the S-300/400 system is unknown. Stealth is visible to long wave radar, although accuracy decreases as wave length gets longer, it may nevertheless be accurate enough to send missiles in the general direction of the plane which have a reasonable chance to find the plane with shorter wave radar, infrared, signal processing and maybe some algorithmic guesswork, it then becomes a question of sending enough missiles. A quick web search tells me that a S-400 battery is 300 million USD and comes with 120 missiles, so the upper bound of cost / missile is about 2.5 million with these figures. The S-300/400 system is also modular, with the various radar, signal processing equipment, missiles and launch platforms installed in different locations, and each part can have a off-line backup, so a single hit may not take the system out or then leave it easily repaired. An F-22 is 150 million and F-35 is 85 million USD, but the cost of training the pilot must also be included, in addition to the enormous PR cost of the loss of any of these stealth planes in addition to the traditional PR cost of potentially captured pilots.

The F-35 and F-22 planes took a lot of money to develop and are supposed to last decades, so even a below even attrition rate between these planes and the S-300/400 system would be a pretty big PR victory for Russia and Iran, no one would really care if Iran paid more / owes more to Russia to shoot down these planes than they are worth (i.e. one battery firing all it's missiles on average downs 2 or less planes).

What's more, an air-war-of-attrition favours the defender if they can be resupplied with missiles and equipment, as it's much easier to test different algorithms and gather data to improve the missiles and radar systems than it is to improve fighter jets (an iterative process against a largely fixed design), and Russia would be certainly extremely keen to make every effort to improve their system.

Now, if one or two F-35's are lost to temporarily disable S-300/400 systems in support of a ground invasion, then that would be completely fine from a PR perspective and doesn't result in an iterative attrition process as described above.

But a ground invasion of Iran, again, cannot be described as target practice. Sure, the world's super power would probably prevail, but it would be a massive undertaking and result in casualties. There's also no easy root to Tehran, which is far from the coast and the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan (which may not be practical to invade from these "conquered" countries anyways as it would super-charge domestic insurgency elements and Iran foreign insurgency tactics against the supply chain).

Also critical, Trump is unlikely to be able to "sell the war" to allies or the home audience, both due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars seen as costly failures and due to Trump himself having zero credibility, at the same time Iran has been building up diplomatic credibility as the US is losing it.

For all these reasons, to answer the OP, I'd bet a conventional war between the US and Iran as unlikely as well as just a "bomb a bunch of stuff to make a point" being unlikely as well.

Whoever is behind the attacks on the tankers, I would argue it's to either just increase the cost of oil and make bank as a oil supplier or futures trader (2-D chess), create a crisis to create diplomatic pressure (3-D chess), or it is the staging events to more dramatic events to shutdown the straight of Hormuz to create a global crisis (4-D chess).

I think is doing a good job explaining Kant obviously knew that "always jump" and "never jump" aren't categorical imperatives of which one or the other must necessarily (or potentially so) be followed by all people all the time.

However, I would like to add a little historical perspective that I think is useful in understanding why Kant just doesn't come out and say "well, obviously lie if the alternative is to give the true code for a nuclear bomb to a person intent on blowing up the city or entire world".

Kant did not know about nuclear weapons.

Likewise, the Mafia wasn't a big problem at the time that obviously needs infiltrating. Governments had not yet decided it was a good idea to make illegal popular products people would buy anyways leading to global scale criminal networks that threaten the honest functioning of governments.

Most of the obvious counter examples to Kant's "lying is bad" are fairly modern. Kant did not live in a world with weapons of mass destruction where nearly everyone believes we need spies to try to protect state-owned weapons of mass destruction and prevent non-state actors from developing their own.

In Kant's day it was a matter of debate whether spies were required for warfare or whether it was "un-gentlemanly" for aristocrats to spy on each other and read each-others mail. Germany was not a democracy. But Kant was not a radical non-violent person, even though he wanted peace. Kant viewed favourably the French revolution (or at least in a nuanced way that did not outright condemn it) ... just not that a similar movement is required in Germany.

These are not difficult positions to take in Kantianism if it is a universal principle to "overthrow intolerable tyranny when necessary ... or very likely necessary", which he can then claim "it's not so intolerable in Germany, nothing to see here".

From a Historical perspective now (of WWI and WWII clearly being far more violent events than a German democratic revolution prior to WWI), it seems obvious Kant was wrong, but Kant didn't have this convenient perspective; and history has also proven Kant right, that violent revolution is not always necessary to go from tyranny to democracy.

So we can certainly strive to find hypocrisy in Kant's political views, but even if we take his stance that "no one should ever lie" at face value, Kant lived in a time where this was far more plausible than now and he couldn't start his argument with examples like "well, obviously we wouldn't give a mad man the codes to arm the nuclear device", and so we don't see Kant dealing with these examples.

A better reading of Kant is to try to imagine examples that would be obvious from Kants perspective and whether it's plausible they can be dealt with without lying (Gandhi and MLK achieved political objectives without the need to lie, whether we think they are liars or not), and then of course consider if Kant leaves "a way to a more important categorical imperative" if the need to lie does arise (just as Gandhi and MLK didn't rail against under-cover police and spies protecting nuclear weapons).

Rand is one of these typical immigrants to the US who praise the exceptionality of the American system. — ssu

If you want to psychologize Rand, open a new thread in the psychology section.

She's dead, so will not be able to benefit from any psychological analysis you have in order to amend her biases.

She makes this mix of individualism, libertarianism and capitalism in a way that obviously some Americans like. I think it is simply counterproductive brush this of as ludicrous humbug of one crank. — ssu

It's not ludicrous why people believe ludicrous humbug of a crank, it happens all the time, and we should take it seriously.

I agree it's counter productive to brush aside this fact in political analysis, for it makes up the political world, in this specific case but also a general case.

The question of the OP is why is the material, as such, not taken seriously by academic philosophers. And the answer is that it's ludicrous humbug of one crank: otherwise they would take it seriously.

To say otherwise is to mischaracterize the views of most academic philosophers. And if they say otherwise, I would say nearly in every case, it's to spare feelings, as you suggest, but if you then ask "if you saw this material today, and it was presented as new, would you take it seriously or would you dismiss it as crankish?" the answer is, very likely, they would dismiss it as crankish and they would point to the obvious errors in reasoning that the whole purpose of academic philosophy is to strive to avoid.

You Americans genuinely voted Trump to be your President, so that tells a lot. And people here are discussing solipsism, so... — ssu

Sigh ... not an American ... don't live in America ... don't see how that would change the discussion. I suppose it's some sort of ad hominem referencing the American left's unhealthy obsession with the health of their political system.

I recommend you introspect why you would just wantonly assume false premises and if it has only ever occurred this once or whether it happens all the time. Now, I don't expect you to share the results of this introspection today, nor tomorrow, but some day perhaps, and on that day I do not expect you will give me credit for having pointed you in this direction. But will that be just another false premise? I know not these things.

Your lurid example of merging with Scientology is beside the point here, so I'll answer to this above. — ssu

Why is it lurid? People believe it, we can psychologize about why Scientologists like Scientology just as much as Randians like Rand.

You seem to agree with the entirety of my methods, dismiss a movement's content as lurid or wacky, when they are not a political ally of yours.

If they are a political ally of yours, promoting policies that sometimes align with your position, then, regardless of why they promote these policies and who might be paying them to do so, we need to put on the kitten gloves and stroke their hair and keep them around on the forum as some sort of pet, that, sure, the meows and purrs aren't participating in philosophy but doesn't mean we can't have cute philosophical names for these kittens.

But, prey tell, if you really do use the same standard for all, tell us why Scientology's content isn't "baseless"? Tell us why the Girku's content isn't "baseless".

As I said, to make any advancement I will need a common and fair standard in order to tell the difference between crank and not crank, between rehash of classical philosophy and crank, between mediocre enlightenment and crank. Propose a standard and we can go from there vis-a-vis the OP's question.

Look, I just made a comment that she isn't a fascist to Pattern-chaser's comment, It's you that is making a huge fuss about it. — ssu

Then render to Pattern-chaser what is Pattern-chaser's.

Though I didn't bring in the word fascist, I didn't say it's an irrelevant topic to discuss here. My position is more nuanced than Pattern-chaser's, at least as first presented, if you want to debate against Pattern-chaser, do so, if you want to debate against me, then expect me to present my own position and to clarify it when it seems misunderstood -- I think you would do the same.

This is this strange adjacency accusation which I actually don't like at all. That basically what you actually say doesn't matter, but if the wrong people (who you don't have things in common) refer to you, quote you or whatever, then YOU have common ideologies and sympathies with them. Even if you have said you oppose them. This is simply ludicrous and utterly illogical. — ssu

Following this reasoning, if Stalin said he was opposed to tyranny, he is not a tyrant, case closed. It would be completely illogical and ludicrous to say otherwise.

There are in fact two other logical possibilities:

A. Stalin is lying when he said he's opposed to tyranny.

B. Stalin does not understand what is meant by tyranny and is in fact commenting on something else.

Furthermore, I choose my words carefully, why not carefully reflect upon them?

I said:

does this make her a Fascist yes and no. No, to the extent "she doesn't want fascism in her heart", yes to the extent she was promoting an ideology and cooperating in processes that lead to fascism — boethius

I used the words "yes, to the extent", meaning it is up for debate to what extent it is. If she had no participation in fascism or creating fascist ideology, then the term fascism would indeed be this adjacency fallacy. However, if she created a fascist ideology that she simply didn't refer to as fascism and does not understand what historians understand by the word fascism, then she is a fascist in this sense; likewise, if she knowingly helped fascists then she is a fascist in this sense of participation in a fascist movement. If she helped fascists, but not knowingly, I agree we cannot say she is fascist to this extent, only that she was a useful idiot of fascists.

Since this seems your main concern, whether we "call people names" which I agree we shouldn't if those names are only insults and provide no insight. I agree that we shouldn't call movement's making use of, or or entirely based on, crank material as "crazy" movements.

However, we can not simply call no one names at all, that people aren't people, that children aren't children, that a socialist is not a socialist, that a fascist is not a fascist. What matters in these cases is if the name is useful, does it express some useful meaning, and of course whether there's any actual evidence the meaning is useful in describing the person.

You seem to want to live in a world where all fascists and all fascist ideology simply vanished after World War II. This is a dangerous world view.

I will deal with other trivia, and then present my position on the matter in my next post, though it may take a few days; as I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

It's not tricky, it's a historical fact that many ideologies have started from the simple idea that making the World better, some people simply have to be killed. And many people have accepted these kind of ideas, unfortunately. And on both sides of the political divide. — ssu

It is tricky if "well meaning" and "what we want" is morally exculpatory as all these movements you refer to will all say "ah, we meant well" and "ah, we didn't want our actions to result in a totalitarian hellscape". If "well meaning" is sufficient for moral exoneration, this applies to nearly everyone. If we want to condemn the SS officer we need more, as someone can simply insist he "means well" and we cannot be sure he "doesn't mean well".

Social Darwinists favor death for the weak, so why would they mind if some portion of the population moved to Sierra Leone? — frank

They might mind or they might not, but such minding or does not follow from Social Darwanism.

For instance, if they do mind they may say because of Social Darwinism, they have evolved to be people who mind, if they don't mind they can say the exact same argument to defend not minding.

The kind of engagement I was interested in was: imagine radical rightists are taking over your country. What would your response be? — frank

This seems far from your question in the OP, but I have no trouble responding.

If the radical rightists were taking over in an open and democratic way, my response would be open and democratic: espousing my views in the public sphere, collaborating with others with similar views in an open format.

If the radical rightists were taking over in a secret and violent way (and by taking over I read as the process of succeeding and democratic institutions built to avoid such a scenario have failed and are no longer democratic): my response would include secrecy and violence. What is effective to be secret and what not, what violence is effective and what is not only not-effective but counter productive, would be the important questions and there are no obvious answers.

And my earlier point was that if we do ascertain beyond doubt that something is a fact, then I remain unconvinced, despite what has been said by ↪boethius that we can acknowledge that the something certainly is a fact, and yet disbelieve it. — Janus

This statement seems to have premise, that facts ought to be believed.

Also, I'm not arguing AJJ's premise is false, that facts ought to be believed, I believe it is universally true, nor arguing with his conclusion that, since facts ought to be believed, we ought to believe the fact that facts ought to be believed.

I wouldn't use the word "objective", because it usually has connotation of "we'll agree with enough discussion" (which is what I don't believe is a fact), but AJJ and I have since clarified that his use of the word objective is the same as using my use of universal here.

My position is that people don't necessarily share this ethical theory in an ontological sense of having this deterministic epistemological belief, that facts ought to be believed, by default.

It's not clear what sort of things you have in mind; could you give some examples to clarify your point? — Janus

If you ever deal with someone who is in denial about a drug problem, or other bad habits, or in denial about their "expert skill level" being a reckless attitude, or in denial about some hope that has been empirically revealed to be not-true, and especially if you care for that person, it may become painfully obvious how people are capable of believing contradictory things: that sure drugs are a problem but they don't have a problem, etc.

What is of much more concern to me is contradictions on the political level.

It is a common view among our historians that propagandists usually fall victim to their own propaganda. By this they mean that propagandists end up really believing what they must have been aware are lies when they invented them the first time.

Let's take the fairly common belief among the Nazi's that they were invincible. Where did it come from?

‘then a day would come when a nation of citizens would arise which would be welded together through a common love and a common pride that would be invincible and indestructible forever.’ — Hitler, A, Mein Kampf, p. 387

Now, Hitler is being subtle here. He's not saying they are invincible now, which he knows makes not sense ... but we'll be invincible later. And, no way to verify this fact, maybe he did really believe it the moment he conceived of it.

But what of his agents of the state? Now, being good Nazi's, they would want to achieve Hitler's vision, and so teach others, especially the young, that the day has come that we really are welded together through a common love and a common pride that would be invincible and indestructible forever.

However, these agents of the state, did they really believe it? Certainly it didn't pass any standard of critical scrutiny. They just lost WWI. They also are aware that if 1 storm trooper can die, n + 1 storm troopers can die, until they are all dead. They even need the belief that they aren't invincible in order to execute battle plans in any reasonable way. Even a Hitler youth was still taught enough critical thinking skills (so that he would be a good soldier) to be able to make these reasonings, that the Nazi regime isn't invincible nor could it ever be.

So why did people believe it? First, because Hitler told them to and they believe they should do and believe what Hitler says (and if we look at this more fundamental belief, we will probably expect to find it is based on more lies). Second, if they do reflect critically upon this belief in itself, instead of reasoning that it's absurd, they may say "maybe it isn't true, only time can tell, but what is true is every German should believe it so that confidence and zeal in battle is a maximum, so chances to win the war are at a maximum precisely because we are not invincible we need to do everything we can to maximize our chances as the war should be won".

I contend someone really can believe this is a true and sound argument, and since they too are a German and "all Germans ought to believe this lie that they are invincible" then they too come to believe the lie because good Germans ought to believe this lie and they are a good German.

And if you look at that argument, you will see it is based on the premise that the Nazi's aren't invincible, but concludes with the belief that the Nazi's are invincible.

Really? Address something that I actually wrote in the edit section? Gosh. — ssu

Ok, you have no standard of what is crank philosophy.

You've obviously thought about it, and perhaps you offer no standard because you realize a lot of what you already said about Rand would fit snugly into that standard.

Good you had the answer in parentheses and added "though not much". Otherwise it would have been really awkward. — ssu

I have zero problem recognizing we have common ground, it's not awkward to for me to say you do have points I agree with and points that I don't.

There is obviously no reason whatsoever to discuss the thoughts of a crank. — ssu

This is not my position. I think the Girku is crankish, but I still read the first volume even after it passes my standard of crankishness with flying colours on the first one or two pages.

Why did I read it then? Because others believe it. If no one believed it, or everyone who liked it viewed it as just entertaining fiction and nothing more.

And this is why Rand is discussed more than the Girku on philosophy forum, since enough people believe in Rand's ideology to have political force. If Rand really was just a "mediocre Enlightenment author" that no one studied or believed; it was just a footnote to historians that someone advocated that "altruism is evil", but no one believed it because it's as absurd on the surface as completely devoid of any meaning at all when unpacked, then no one would care, least of all me. But people do believe it and these people have real consequences in the world. Though simply "number of belief" and "political consequence" shouldn't change what academic philosophers view as crankish material, as that would be to admit that content has not much relevance and only popularity and further to admit that any similar material should be taken as seriously because it might one day become popular.

If adherents of the Girku developed into a political force and, after merging with Scientology, wanted to start simulate the drowning of people to purge them of Thetans as this they have discovered was the best way to deal with dissenters, I'm fairly confident that you would suddenly view their ideology as warranting discussion. You don't have any desire to discuss the Girku now because, for now, they represent no political force.

But, again these questions are serious, would you change your opinion of the Girku being crankish material just because it developed into a political force? Or, would you say your opinion of the material has not changed?

Based on your answer, I think it very likely we can quickly close the chapter on "is Rand crankish material or not", which has been my position I have been defending, and move onto what you find most important which is "should people be calling her fascist or not". (of course I'll also briefly go over why she's no "mediocre enlightenment material" or "rehash of classical philosophy", which are both in my view completely ludicrous statements, that shouldn't go unchallenged)

I'm sure you are aware I have not once called her a fascist in this argument nor bring the word "fascist into the argument", just that, once the word appeared and you took issue with it, explained my own view that fascists saw it convenient to promote her ideology (does this make her a Fascist yes and no. No, to the extent "she doesn't want fascism in her heart", yes to the extent she was promoting an ideology and cooperating in processes that lead to fascism). So this is our common ground: that we both don't just call her a fascist because she "wanted fascism". Do you see a lot of common ground beyond that, or agree with me that it is "not much".

For, as you are certainly also aware, "well meaning" and "what we want" (absent any critical thinking that would what our actions are likely to lead to) are tricky concepts in moral philosophy. Is the SS officer taking his coffee on the Fields of Mars and seeing Jews and other riffraff being assembled to be sent to the East somewhere, morally exculpated because he might "means well" and "wishes them no harm".

I can only speak from my own experience, and I find myself incapable of willfully disbelieving anything that I see as being a fact. The question is what must I acknowledge as factual and on the basis of what must I acknowledge it? — Janus

Yes, I have no problem believing you value facts, just as with AJJ.

My point here is that we're not forced to. We can just see contradictory things and believe them both. Now, whether each thing warrants belief in itself, that "we have to ascertain that something is in fact a fact", we might say "doesn't change the fact that these two contradictory facts cannot both be true".

To give names to the positions I'm discussing. An "epistimic determinist" would believe that once someone is aware of a contradiction they cannot believe both things simultaneously. They would probably conclude this because they themselves try to unwind or resolve contradiction when they see it, and assume everyone does likewise.

My point of view is thus "epistimic indeterminism", that there is no necessary connection between what we see as true and what we believe. We are capable of seeing a contradiction and believing it doesn't warrant unwinding or resolution, and so continue to believe in both contradictory propositions. We are capable of seeing the law-of-non-contradiction itself and believing it's not true. Philosophers generally agree this leads to incoherent world views, but we can see that our world view is incoherent and have no problem in believing it anyways.

I would liked to have seen you engage the question earnestly, but I'm guessing you're busy. — frank

has already pointed out the obvious implication of your thesis lead to the absurd conclusion that we should live in worse conditions rather than better, why is that not earnest engagement? If it seems to you too easy of a point to make, perhaps it was due to a too large a flaw in your claim.

However, I would like to put to you two additional things.

First, if your moral premise is correct, that we need evil entities to harm us in order to learn and express our goodness, shouldn't this be applicable to our teaching of children? Should parents and teachers seek to be the "Sauron in their pupils sky" and harm and abuse them so that they may grow strong and resilient?

If you don't agree to this, then I assume you agree with the alternative method promoted among parents and teachers, which is to challenge students without harming them.

If you want the market to be a sort of teacher, as you express in your OP, shouldn't you want to ensure that the market is suitable challenge for adults but, just like any educational situation, things are arranged that these challenges aren't more than what students can deal with and the consequence of failure is no potentially extreme and unmitigated harm. I.e. would you not want the social safety net which not only follows logically from your desire for "market as teacher", but also has been shown to work fine empirically in the countries that have developed such a regulatory system?

Second, much more important thing, certainly you do not view the market as the source of only bad things, but also good things.

Are you not setting yourself up, with your "harmful entities create good by making people struggle in a heroic way like Frodo", to be in a position to meet any and all information about unregulated market with approval? If you see something good in the unregulated market such as a new gadget, you say "look, the market provides a bounty" and if you see something bad, such as a person crushed by legal bills in an obviously bad faith dispute with a much larger corporation, you say "look, the market is such a great teacher, someone here will certainly learn to be stronger because of it" or if you see no perceptible benefit you say "look, these people had the chance to slay their corporate Goliath -- that the market has been so kind as to place in their path -- to slay the giant and become glorified as reddit memes, but they blew it; too bad for them, still they should be thankful for the chance, maybe the next people to come along will have what it takes".

In other words, you have created an empirical theory, that an unregulated market leads to good results, that has no refutable evidence: good results are good, bad results are good too. Everything you ever experience can only confirm your theory.

while they may be true irrespective of what any particular person believes about them, are not objective, because they don't pertain to the realm of objects — Wayfarer

As you may know, Kant refers to these as synthetic transcendentals, though I'm not sure Kant would say they are not objective because they are not objects. As you note, we can view all objects as actually just thought ... and then, well it definitely gets harder to distinguish "thought objects" with "objects only in thought"; though I'm not contradicting you here, I would tend to agree we can start to make these distinctions (it just gets really hard, really fast, but we can justify that by saying it's because we don't normally think in this way, just as we don't normally think in quantum mechanical way so it is very hard).

I am however curious if you are working within a Kantian view, or you would want to point in another direction.

The problem I see with this argument is that it is not so much that we ought to believe facts but rather that if we accept something as a fact we cannot disbelieve it. — Janus

I agree with you here that "we'd want the truth to be that which we cannot disbelieve", but I am defending the view that we could just "disbelieve it anyway", as an act of will.

And I am not defending this view simply to make curious discussion, it seems an issue of the most critical political importance. The most powerful man in the world (or at least certainly very powerful) says one thing and then another in direct contradiction to the first, and seems to genuinely believe what he is saying each time. He has a following, that at first completely disoriented by this behaviour, (after he won) quickly got to work building an entirely new epistemological industry over night that claims feelings are a justification for factual beliefs. For me, in both cases, this is working backwards from an act of will to believe one thing to whatever is convenient to support those beliefs, and critical thinkers are mistaken to simply ignore this (even if none of these people argue their points on philosophy forum: because it is not convenient to believe they should subject themselves to critical scrutiny on philosophy forum) because ignoring this leads to a false world view where all political actors are of good faith.

Now, I don't want to put the discussion in a political direction, new threads can be made for that, but I do want to provide context that the views I'm defending have consequence. If we say "well of course we'll just dismiss the idea of lies as truth, or contradictions as good" as we need these ideas to do philosophy; we may indeed need these ideas to do philosophy, but we must also contend with (what seems to be) the fact that, in the political sphere, people don't agree with us nor see a need to do philosophy. And so if someone says "I ought to believe facts" we should not ontologically or epistemologically exclude there is some way, even if it is strange to us, to really believe "I ought to believe lies".

The purpose of so doing is not to label opponents as "those that believe they ought to believe lies", we can never know (I liar will usually say "I am no liar"), but rather to bring us to reflect on how our politics changes if there are such bad faith actors (from our point of view of wanting beliefs to pass critical scrutiny).

Ok, so now I have to defend my argument. — ssu

Yes, you do actually have to defend your argument. I think that's what we do here.

With references. With Detail. So be it, Boethius. — ssu

You are free to defend your case by flipping the burden of proof on me.

But I think you know where that would lead and why I first responded to your concerns by listing a whole list of crank philosophies. But since you mention it in passing as a implied criticism, I think we should deal with it as explicit debate.

For, if I need to prove in the positive sense Rand is a crank philosophy, by going through all her work and listing all the contradictions and writing a whole thesis PhD style on each one to definitely show that, almost certainly, there is no possible interpretation that makes sense, then I'd hold you to the same standard for any other crank philosophy.

Demand you read through all 7 volumes of The Chronicles of the Girku before dismissing it.

Do you not know ssu, that the Girku Chronicles is just a rehash of the work of Carl Sagan? Sagan also talked about aliens, so does the Girku. Anything wrong with the Girku is because it's fiction! dumb dumb! you also need to read through all the other published commentary, the online forums, go to several years worth of meetings, directly connect to the alien sub-quantum-frequency broadcast*, to have any chance of understanding what the Girku really means. The arrogance of these philosophers!

Now, the Girku might be true. I don't dismiss the Girku because I have an arrogant epistemology where I'm right and everyone else is false. The Girku makes little sense (and I read the first volume to better understand what humanity gets up to); but the truth might make little sense. The Girku reinterprets all history as the work of aliens and dismisses thousands of years of non-alien based explanations for things by nearly all historians past and present; well, aliens would certainly have that power to both determine our history, hide their involvement and individually manipulate each of our historians if they must and then choose the Girku author to reveal themselves.

Given this, that we cannot be certain the Girku is false. Why haven't you read it and are not continuously proposing to the forum to, if not believe it, at least take it a bit-seriously as just a variation of Saganism?

And this is a serious question, I require your answer in order to apply a common (and fair) standard to Rand.

Once we agree on this standard, then I will respond to the idea that Rand is just an enlightenment thinker transported to the 20th century.

I know why I dismiss the Girku "Without references. Without Detail.", do you?

Now, is Rand more serious simply because we are discussing it here? Well, I just brought in the Girku so we're now also discussing the Girku here; the Girku is a newer revelation and so naturally takes time to be discussed as much as Rand on philosophy forums.

*I have zero clue if you really need to connect to the sub-quantum-frequency-broadcast to understand the Girku, or if I just did connect and I've just been told that all humans can now connect if they want as an additional avenue and easier way to just download the information into their brains (seven volume of non-sequitur was only for the courageous pioneers). So, if you haven't connected, well that's your choice to continue to grope around in the darkness, cherish your ignorance.

Edit: I'll of course address the "she's not fascist argument" (and we will find some common ground there, though not much) but my position is her philosophy is crank level and not "Ayn Rand's objectivism is a resell of older classical philosophy done in a light-weight manner" or "In my view perhaps this would have been something modern yet mediocre in the time of the Enlightment"; I view this as a gross misrepresentation of classical philosophy and associating Rand with the enlightenment is ridiculous, so I definitely want to deal with that first, which requires a criteria to distinguish "enlightenment quality" if only written yesterday, and crank quality both yesterday, today and tomorrow. To give a preview of my next arguments after that; I agree that Rand doesn't "want fascism", the issue is whether her philosophy, if taken to heart, leads to fascism anyways regardless of what she wanted and if there's anything in her philosophy, other than blatantly contradictory statements or simply flatly denying it, that would lead us to conclude otherwise.

For one, there are no facts regarding whether something is good or not. It rather refers to a way that we feel. — Terrapin Station

Exactly my point. I can't convince you, and me typing this is achieving your goal, but I'm a friendly guy who believes people are ends in themselves and so I help when I can (when helping doesn't impede my own goal of treating everyone as an ends in themselves). I type more for my own ends and in so doing accomplish yours; it's a win-win if I ever saw one.

“Truth” doesn’t refer to beliefs. That would make it subjective. Truth independent of thought is objective. — AJJ

I agree that you can use the truth like this, if you define your terms carefully. But we usually, in common language and in most technical philosophy (since there's no reason to use words differently than normal without cause), use the truth to qualify beliefs as true or false (sometimes something else; the law-of-the-excluded middle is a rabbit whole). So "the Truth" really refers to just all true beliefs, which of course are true because they correspond to "reality" or "the case", or whatever the truth corresponds to.

Saying "this tree is true" doesn't really make much sense in the common usage of truth, whereas "this tree is real" makes sense. The typical philosopher would say "the phenomena of the tree is apparent to me, and I believe it's true that the tree really is there as we'd commonly say, but I also know there's some noumena of the tree beyond what I see and I can't access that noumena", or something similar (and I leave it completely open to what the typical philosopher would say "might be the noumena": pure matter, pure thought, etc.).

Actually, if “I ought to believe lies” is true then I don’t think it does lead to a paradox. It seems to me you just can’t justify it like you can with the truth. — AJJ

Yes, was just writing that, just like with the truth, I just keep asserting the lie. You tell me that's a lie, I say "great, lies are what I ought to believe".

This degenerates quickly into the well known problem of denying the law of non-contradiction. I say "we should avoid contradiction", you say "no, we should contradict ourselves", I contradict you on that, you say "awesome, thanks".

By “objective” I mean existing independent of thought. I’ve been using it where I don’t absolutely need to when the other person has a different definition of “truth”. — AJJ

Out of curiosity, does the author use objective that way?

I've never encountered "objective truth" to mean independent from thought, usually "objective" is used precisely to refer to some thinking process, either individual or collective, that strives to arrive at a perspective of the truth (as in as close as possible). For instance, "I'm trying to be objective here", or "this is objective analysis" or "these scientists were objective", which is why I took such issue with it.

Also, if the "truth" refers to the "beliefs" (beliefs corresponding to facts corresponding to reality, or real states of affairs, or the case etc.) then there is no truth independent of thought.

The usual word in philosophy for reality independent of our thoughts about it, is "the noumena", which again comes from Kant referring to the "the thing in itself". We see phenomena in our minds that we infer arises from some noumena that gave rise to the phenomena (exactly how they are connected is very difficult to say).

Being solipsistic, by the way, does not mean denying that others exist. It simply means that I can only KNOW that I exist. You may actually exist. I cannot know it. I cannot know my wife exists...or my closest friends. But, of course, they may. — Frank Apisa

This is usually just skepticism, if you're emphasis is on the knowledge.

As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. This extreme position is claimed to be irrefutable, as the solipsist believes to be the only true authority, all others being creations of their own mind. — wikipedia

Is the OP's meaning.

I would agree there's no way to convince a solipsist that I exist, so it's irrefutable in that sense.

Many things are irrefutable in this way, I can't convince someone who denies the law of non-contradiction or that there is any truth at all, I can't convince that goading me into writing more than him isn't a good goal, as writing more to express that just confirms to him that I have written more and he should thus deny more to get more writing out of me; it's irrefutable and there's no use struggling against that or making a deal of it of course).

However, there maybe reasons for me to believe other people really do exist, and it maybe impossible for a solipsist to convince me that they don't exist.

For me “true” can refer to statements and propositions that correspond to the objective Truth. It can also refer to things that are part of the objective Truth, i.e. facts. — AJJ

Again, your use of the word objective makes your, otherwise perfectly sensible in my view, argument simply not true.

The meaning of "objectivity" as you implied in your OP, and seems very much the writer's usage you are sourcing your argument, generally refers to scientific objectivity. "There is no objective ethic" is true when understood in the context of science. The fact that you can perform no experiment which would resolve the issue of "ought I to believe facts" is reason for extreme skepticism that it is an objective statement, in the scientific sense of objective.

"I ought to believe facts", I agree is true (and trivially so as you have been suggesting for most of the arguments you have been making), maybe "everyone ought to believe facts" whether they believe it or not, is also true. Your author, however, makes a mistake in concluding that this shows "an objective ethic exists"; which one should already be skeptical of because "objective" doesn't even appear in the argument (that you have presented anyway).

No scientific experiment can resolve "ought we to believe facts" so it's not objective in this scientific sense.

Not everyone needs to agree that "I ought to believe facts", they may disagree just for the heck of it without any justification or reasoning and simply deny any criticism of their position, and if they want they can go further and say "I ought to believe lies" and can then point to as neat an infinite regress as you provided in your OP of "I ought to be believe lies, and I ought to believe the lie that I ought to believe lies, and I ought to believe that lie, etc.". So it's not objective in the sense that everyone has to agree (nothing is; at best most people agree, it seems, for now).

In terms of logical structure, both argument are similar and you can not decide to believe "I ought to believe facts" simply because it leads to infinite regress as lies can also have infinite regress.

Other uses of "objective" are either purely ornamental, it adds a bit of prestige to say "objective truth" rather than just "truth", or have no functional meaning in your argument, such as "unbiased truth"; bias hasn't been an issue so there's no reason to specify the truth is unbiased.

So you can simply remove "objective" from your argument and have a "I ought to believe facts" and claim it's true. You'll probably have the same objections (but at least have a more refined position).

I'm a plain language person, so what I'll be saying next may not be as precise in philosophical terminology as others might put it. — EricH

I'm also a plain language person, although I can engage in complex semantic discussion when required.

In this case, I do not think that leads anywhere, and you maybe straying farther and farther away from the plain language usage of the words truth, ought, reality at your peril.

For instance, imagine plain situations. Someone says "It's raining outside", you say "is that a fact?" they say "yes", so you ask "ah, but is that fact true?" and they say "yes" and you ask "ahhaaah, but ought we believe facts?", they respond "yes, don't be silly". From there, the conversation can go no where constructive in any normal situation.

To believe we can actually take apart the words "ought", "true", "facts", "belief" and arrive at a different conclusion (or interpretation of all the words so radically different that we no longer even know what we're talking about) other than, "yes, a person that values truth, ought to believe a fact if they have sufficient reason to believe that fact is true".

However, the state of affairs to them is neither true nor false. I’m saying that the state of affairs is part of the objective Truth, which is why a statement can be said to be true when it corresponds to It. — AJJ

As noted in my first response, "objective" in your argument makes it not true, under most definitions of objective. With definitions of objective that are fine, such as "unbiased", it doesn't add anything to say the truth is unbiased.

I said something very specific/qualified about that. Hence you demonstrating poor reading comprehension. — Terrapin Station

Well unless you can explain how literally "not reading" is useful for reading comprehension, I'm unable to take much stock in your opinion on reading comprehension.

Let's review more closely:

I'm not that interested in it, really, but I enjoy going back and forth with people who act like as much of an unjustifiably arrogant asshole as you do, especially when I can goad you into typing so much in response to short answers. — Terrapin Station

You clearly state that you engage in debate you are not interested in and you enjoy wasting people time by typing less but watching them type more.

If you do this, then presumably it's among your goals on this forum to achieve, and so likely to be the intention we see in some, if not all, of you posts.

Keeping with the theme of this thread, I have no problem accepting that you may genuinely believe one moment you are debating in good faith and the next moment just "enjoy going back and forth" with no concern to the content of your words. I have no problem accepting one moment you genuinely believe all of your posts have been made only in good faith, and the next moment genuinely believe all your posts have been only to goad people or to build up a position from which to goad.

The problem with simply announcing that you engage in bad faith debate -- for (I assume) the enjoyment of the moment of "striking a blow" since you could do nothing else with respect to argumentative substance you are unable to deal with -- is that once you claim you argue in bad faith, your subsequent claims that "oh, this time it's good faith" are hollow; it's entirely consistent to assume your subsequent protests "that sometimes I engage in debate in bad faith but this time not" is itself an argument in bad faith selected because you want to get back in the goading game when it was fun (before you had not only let the cat out of the bag but nailed it to a board).

But please, humor me, elaborate on the:

I said something very specific/qualified about that. — Terrapin Station

To show when you engage just "not that interested in it, really, but I enjoy going back and forth with people who act like as much of an unjustifiably arrogant asshole as you do" and so we can just ignore you, and under what conditions "no, no, I really am interested and I have only respect for the other people participating in the debate".

If you can provide no reasons for us to believe you even have such "specific/qualified" ideas in your mind that would make the difference, I think it's safe to assume that you don't debate in good faith all the time, and it's saver to assume never, and simply keep asking you to account of your own claim that "not that interested in it, really, but I enjoy going back and forth".

That being said, I have no issue with believing you truly believe what is convenient for you to believe one moment, and may completely change it the next if new beliefs become more convenient.

That if presented with a fact, such as the above is a reasonable response to a bad-faith actor in a debate, then, even if you see the fact is true, you will genuinely believe "I ought not to believe the fact" but rather "I ought to believe whatever facts will lead to more 'enjoyment of going back and forth' ". And so you win against AJJ! Believing facts are not objective, we need not all, or do, believe we ought to believe facts. You can take comfort in that.

I'd never use the phrase "take seriously," and I've not said anything even slightly supportive of Rand. — Terrapin Station

Which is why I used the words "a bit seriously".

Respond to Benkei:

She's not taken seriously because objectivism is crap. When she's right, she's unoriginal and when she's wrong, it's clear she isn't aware of philosophical history and so obviously wrong it just makes her look stupid. Hence anyone downplaying the reasons for this by suggesting she's not taken seriously for irrational reasons is tacitly endorsing crap. — Benkei

If you want to defend your claim that:

I think Rand blows. — Terrapin Station

Actually I stated what I thought quite clearly about her if you would mind reading what people say. — ssu

Yes, please defend your thesis by referencing Rand's material.

But seems like your hunting for some Rand supporter to attack. To unleash some wait, it's coming... — ssu

If I was hunting for Rand supporters to attack I'd be on Reddit, not here.

The question here is "Why isn't Rand taken seriously by academics?".

As you are aware, I'm defending the position that she's not taken seriously because she has no material that merits being taken seriously.

It follows from this that her arguments are comically easy to show have no merit (otherwise they would have merit and should be taken seriously).

Therefore, I should have a comically easy time of it, which I do.

If the results seem a strawman, it's up to you to demonstrate that.

People who want to defend the position that her material should be taken seriously -- or from what I understand of your position, maybe shouldn't be taken seriously as philosophy but we should go through the motions of taking it seriously to spare the emotions of people who erroneously take it seriously due to being poor and innocent in the ways of philosophy? (But please make your view more clear if this isn't the case) -- people who want to defend she should be taken seriously, to one degree or another, need to do actual defense of her material, not flail their arms around in the meta realm of arguments about her arguments that don't reference her arguments.

However, the only other position here, of you and , seems to be she should be taken "a bit seriously", but not serious enough that you or Terrapin would quote anything she says to defend your view.

If there are Randians on the forum, or who read this thread and join the forum, that want to defend her arguments, maybe you should leave space for them to do it, rather than step in to ... well I still don't know what your trying to do here ... which might leave the impression that the serious ssu is their shield and the very fact you seem (maybe? from a distance?) on the side of the Randians (in some subtle way) shows, again in the meta realm of flailing about with arguments about arguments, that Rand has some merit.

Or, if you want to play devils advocate, well an advocate needs to do some actual work to defend a case.

That's not at all the case. You have really poor reading comprehension, as you've demonstrated over and over again. — Terrapin Station

Well, if my premise is correct, that:

which is your goal is to goad people into wasting time and you will work backwards to whatever statements and beliefs are necessary for that (which you have stated is your goal), then it follows you've just selected the belief that you believe will maximize your goading potential. — boethius

Then it follows that your claim that I have poor reading comprehension you've selected because it maximizes your goading potential.

Again, I have no problem accepting you genuinely believe this.

I also have no problem believing you genuinely believe your method of reading comprehension that involves literally "not reading" is superior to mine that does involve reading:

I never read that. — Terrapin Station

I only read the above by the way. — Terrapin Station

Is surely a way to comprehend what someone has written (in your mind).

I think Rand blows. It's just that that's not the only reason she's not part of the academic philosophy canon. Tons of stuff in the canon blows. — Terrapin Station

Following from my premise here, which is your goal is to goad people into wasting time and you will work backwards to whatever statements and beliefs are necessary for that (which you have stated is your goal), then it follows you've just selected the belief that you believe will maximize your goading potential.

Perhaps you did believe "Rand blows", perhaps you didn't. Perhaps you did believe Rand was great, but now genuinely believe you previously believed she blows.

I have no problem accepting that you genuinely believe whatever is necessary to attain your goal of more goading.

Tons of stuff that's in the canon consists of low quality arguments. — Terrapin Station

I've already requested of you on this point in my first response to you:

Yes, please provide a list of these many academic philosophers who are as poor thinkers as Rand but are not only published but seriously studied by other academics. Let us compare the errors of the one with those of the latter and see for ourselves if they are similar and Rand is indeed unjustly not counted among the incompetent philosophers. — boethius

Are you unable to satisfy a simple request to backup your claim?

If indeed you can show "the cannon" is filled with as bad thinkers as Rand, I have no problem petitioning the community of academics to enshrine her among the "low-quality argument shelf". If it's her due to be "officially bad philosophy", it's her due. I agree there.

But, if it's more goading your after, I'm ready for round 2 too.

I'm not sure you understood what I wrote. Did what I write come off as an endorsement of Rand for some reason? — Terrapin Station

Oh, so you agree with my point 'd' that the overwhelming reason Rand isn't taken seriously by academic philosophers is the low quality of her arguments. I'm glad our little discussion has come to a close.

But at least you have given the credible impression that you have still actually read her work. — ssu

Please point out who in the discussion does not give a credible impression of having read Rand's work? Ambiguous and loosely ended criticism I'm sure you agree in just bad taste.

And what is even your position here? That Rand should be taken seriously?

Demonstrate your case, cite her passages that are serious philosophy and explain to us why.

Or is your case only that we should be very, very concerned that the poor innocent ivy league freshman that attends the local "council of Rand" to quickly verify that there is no possible criticism of how money is accumulated, either by his family or anyone else and he should never for the rest of his life reflect on his devotion to whoever pays him the most as he launches his brilliant career in corporate America, and he can simply brush aside thousands of years of political philosophy that has grappled with the problem of corruption in government and vulnerability to a full take over by rich and powerful citizens, because it is easily solved by just viewing money as votes and "influence" is what everyone is doing anyway (look, these "philosophers" are doing it right here!), the rich just win while the poor lose -- that we should be overly concerned this poor boy with the depth of knowledge of a frisbee and the innocence of a soft eyed lamb will be slightly taken aback to find out that critical thinkers on the internet don't just throw out thousands of years of political philosophy when they hear "greed is good" and "altruism is evil" and "dollars should be votes" and "taxes are immoral and robbery ( ... but also deny any moral code that would be the basis to assert anything at all is immoral apart from self-interest ...)" and "there is no public good apart from the interest of individuals! ... construed in whatever way is needed to remove constraints on the rich while protecting their property, whether it's in the interest of anyone else or not, of which we will always claim they are policies for the public good anyway even though we literally just said the public good doesn't exist, only individuals. I. I am an individual."?

It is absurd to say facts are not things we ought to believe. Because every denial invites the question, “Well ought we to believe that? Ought we to believe that facts are not things we ought to believe? If the answer is no, well ought we to believe that? And so on. It’s really just this I’m appealing to to demonstrate that facts definitely are things we ought to believe, because we ought to believe true things, which are facts. — AJJ

The problem with your argument is you use "we".

You are lack the imagination in your argument to understand that other people can, in a very strange and roundabout way, believe they ought to believe non-truths. If you said "I should believe facts", then sure, you should believe facts if you value truth.

However, one is not obliged to value truth, and insofar as that is the case, then even if it's true that you should believe, it's not an objective truth.

This is what is trying to say.

Not by his words in this debate -- which is just foolishness that you have identified as much -- but his goals for debating on this forum to begin with, as he tells us in the "Why is Ayn Rand not Accepted Academically?"

I enjoy going back and forth with people who act like as much of an unjustifiably arrogant asshole as you do, especially when I can goad you into typing so much in response to short answers. — Terrapin Station

If Terrapin's goal is to goad you into wasting your time, then he ought to not only deny any obviously true statement you make but also genuinely believe it's not true, for with genuine belief comes much more effective goading.

Now, can he defend this goal in any rational way? No. But by simply claiming his goal is rational he attains it: for people will waste yet more time trying to convince him that goading people rather than engaging in constructive debate is harming mostly himself. "Aha!" He will say to himself, "I have succeeded once again, they have wasted more of their time". So, not only should he believe lies to attain his goal, he should never question internally if his goal is worthwhile as that would divert effort away from his goal and stand in his way of attaining it.

And, should goals be attained? Of course. How truer a statement could ever be made, and so from a much clearer and more abstract perspective, the truth does come to his aid for indeed the definition of goals is that which you want to attain, he has a goal and therefore wants to attain it and if he needs to believe lies to attain it, so be it; it's a noble sacrifice to forego what would otherwise be useful, as presumably the truth would otherwise be useful, in striving to achieve a higher objective.

For, if I ought to believe lies, I ought to believe the lie that I ought to believe lies. This is were you argument fails in terms of objectivity: people can choose to value lies over truth and simply deny any true statement that would lead them to believe otherwise. Therefore, it is not the case we would all agree that we ought to believe the truth, for some people can prefer lies as well as prefer to simply deny the possibility of any understanding that undermine their own belief in their project.

This is similar reasoning the Randians use. They both assert that their self interested actions achieve the social good, and deny any social good exists apart from self interest. They both assert self interest is rational because everyone wants to achieve their goals, whatever they are (don't judge me bro), and deny that socialists or communists or anarchists or trade unionists or collectivists are rational in trying to achieve whatever their goal is (they are vile Stalinists that will bring back the gulag). both is and is not defending Rand, both is and is not interested in the debate at all.

And crucially, it is against their self interest to believe anything that would undermine their current concept of what their self interest is. So, if concern for the environment would undermine the idea that they should seek to maximize resource consumption throughput, and this is only possible in a society that seeks to maximize resource consumption throughput at a macro level, and they can intuit that it is trivial to arrive at the conclusion that the very conditions that support society and make civilization possible are a social good apart from arbitrary self interest of individuals in that society: therefore, even if they are devoted to "being objective" and "empiricism" and "science" and "Aristotle", they must simply deny any environmental issue could ever cause a problem for society (that rich geniuses won't easily solve). If they promote what they know are lies for the purposes of confusing the public in order to support anti-environmental policy -- whether they really believe the concerns will be easily solved by technology we do not yet have or whether they intuit this "negative externality" thing is really a serious conceptual problem for them -- then they ought not only to spread those lies to attain their goals, as in the volcano example (but to avoid any action against the danger, rather than promote responsible action to verify, address and deal with the danger if it is present), but ought also to make whatever act of will required to really believe those lies, for true belief is more effective than doubt and so more valuable to attain their goals than whatever it is that is true: again a noble sacrifice.

For it is not a curiosity of philosophy that it is conceptually possible to value lies over truth, people really do it and work backwards from the lie to whatever statements they need to believe that supports it, changing to whatever seems the next convenient beliefs to support the lie when encountering criticism they can't deal with.

They are as devoted to the lie as you are to the truth, which of course they will tell you is a lie and make whatever further statements are needed to try to convince you, and themselves, that it is true.

I don’t want to discuss this with anyone who can’t see why the below statement makes no sense:

“there is nothing that we ought to believe, including the proposition that there is nothing we ought to believe.” — AJJ

I agree that the statement makes no sense, though others can simply disagree by believing they ought to disagree, so it's not objective.

The argument is the same structure as " 'no truth exist' cannot be true, as if it was true it would assert it was itself false". Likewise, "Something must exist, as if nothing existed this statement, and whoever is making it, wouldn't exist either".

If the book you refer to uses this argument to jump to the conclusion that Christianity is true, that leap doesn't work. We can use the above arguments only to refute arguments of the form "Christianity can't be true because nothing is true" or "Christian ethics can't be true because no ought statement is true" (it is as you suspect: someone advising you to "not believe A" cannot do so because "nothing should be believed to begin with" -- but, as discussed above, it does not prevent them from genuinely believing that they should make that statement and genuinely believe that "they have the truth that no ethic is true and that they and others ought to believe it").

Now, that "all statements are false" is false, and "facts should be believed" is a statement you should believe, does not do much, and may at first glance seem can't do anything, in pointing towards anything else that is true or things ought to be believed.

However, Kant does use this style argument to found his ethics, but in a slightly different form.

He argues in essence that to believe anything at all we must assign value to ourselves, our potential to believe anything in the first place must be a good potential and we must be good to have it, and that, therefore, the only coherent position is to not only value ourselves but assign the same value to others.

You give people respect by making a well thought, informative response to their questions. — ssu

Yes, we agree here. I also believe it is not constructive to simply list negative adjectives without context, pointing to further resources, or backing up the claims.

I also very much share your empathy for confused or misguided people.

Nevertheless, we may differ in how far it is practical to making an encounter with critical thinking, such as on this forum, psychologically easy for people who are certain their beliefs are not only true but hold up to critical scrutiny, and are equally certain that if "academic philosophers" or "people who have read books" disagree then those people must have ulterior motives, bias and arrogance -- anything other than the merits of the content -- to not treat their cherished material with the same reverence and respect that they do and it.

It's simply not feasible to make it a pleasant and welcoming experience. Just like when someone with zero mountain climbing experience shows up in Nepal insisting they can climb Everest, all on their own. If they go to the Sherpa society in order to verify that they know how mountains are climbed and challenges dealt with from watching Into the Void, that they have the levels of courage and grit required, and that they just want a friendly check that they can easily converse and banter as an equal (with respect to mountain climbing) with the most seasoned Sherpas and toast the mountain before setting off to conquer new heights, it's unlikely to be as pleasant an experience as they imagine. I would wager they will almost immediately encounter the comments that they're beliefs are a danger to themselves and to others.

Sure, it's better to try to be civil and talk them down from essentially committing suicide and endangering the lives of others that will be compelled to try and save them when they call for help over their radio or sat-phone, but if the "mountaineer" persists in insisting they're just as good a mountaineer as anyone else, and they're going to prove it, I think we should err on the side of forgiving the Sherpa's their frustration with this disrespectful individual than be overly concerned that the "mountaineer" has their feelings hurt in the exchange.

The minimal role of the government is the way a lot of right-wing libertarians especially in the US think. Not to be confused with the Libertarians-in-name-only type who talk about libertarian values and are for something else. Yet it's wrong to think that libertarians are fascists. — ssu

was clearly referring to the libertarian Randians. And you yourself made this close association by beseeching us "imagine the poor person who first picks up some of Rand's book, or listens to libertarians talking about Rand".

Though I agree it's in principle possible for a libertarian to see Randianism as contradictory and poisonous to any governing principle, whether big of small, and that sufficient number of people following Rand, especially in government, will undermine the libertarian idea of property rights as well as the political process that we might otherwise hope to rectify the situation, by pursuing their idea of justice, which is to maximize their own gain, but we would otherwise call corruption.

In the case of Randian libertarians, they are Randians first and believe that the strong should dominate the weak. This is the essence of Rand's so called "philosophy", that "real men" do what they please and the weak shouldn't band together to protect their collective interests (either as individuals much less to further some idea of a justice independent of their individual interests), but rather should either join the rich and powerful if they can by too becoming "real men" or then just get out of the way and watch the many more wonders industrialists will make for us when freed from the obstacles of taxes, regulation and voters.

That the strong should dominate the weak and pay no head to what the weak and their allied misguided wealthy "do-gooders" think of as morality (that this form of morality is just the weak trying to trick or beg the strong into caring for them when they shouldn't, when they should only care about themselves), is the heart of fascism. To the elites trying to move a country towards fascism it's simply the pathway that gives themselves the most power; to the poor asked to support this fascist movement, of course the ideology of self interest isn't offered but rather whatever ideology is at hand that will lead the poor to support the fascist takeover against their own interest: racism is often handy, unquestioning patriotism is a must, idolizing the leader always useful.

Ironically, in post-WWII united states, it was also useful to promote an ideology that lionizes personal profit above the general interests of society, indeed denies any such general interest can be conceived, while simultaneously insisting that people following this ideology will create the most public good of any ideology (of which any standard of public good is denied, and so if asked to backup the claim, there is nothing to backup or verify i.e. whatever results from people following their own interests is for the public good, as there is no possible standard of public good other than people following their own interests QED; if someone takes all the power and all the wealth and rules like a king for their own pleasure, torturing and killing those that would oppose them, even carrying out the killings in foreign embassies rebuking and taunting the whole world and their precious diplomatic civility and charter of human rights, well power to them: they're a winner, you should try to be a winner too next time ... just not through collective action but as a rich industrialists who can compel cooperation through payment, bribery and violence when required or for the heck of it).

And what alternative is there?

To say "hey guys, help me seize power and remove all constraints to my own freedom that the laws and the government now impose on me, which is so painful and onerous I can barely bare it (woe, woooeee is me), because this is rational for me to want, total and unfettered freedom ... but also don't consider if it is rational for you to support this cause and, most of all, I want you to happily sacrifice your own lives, in foolish service to ancient and savage tribal idealism that I personally despise and you have not yet learned enough to hate too but still believe there is a land worth anything more than a place to put my billboard (and if I myself were called to serve I would seek deferment of the draft until the war is over, but do what I say not as I do) -- I ask this so I can increase and then protect my property, which will soon be de facto the whole of the country when I control all the organs of the state and there are no constraints to my freedom. Step up, step up! brave idiots and do what is best for me with no thought of yourselves: for it is the individual, in particular my individual, that has alone any value (it's as clear as day to me and indeed the only thing that I can see and the only truth that I could ever call objective)".

This is why:

As the late Umberto Eco noted, Fascism is a synecdoche. A "fuzzy totalitarianism" with "no quintessence". This is useful in both theoretical conceptualization, and as a bulwark against an encroaching fascism. — Maw