That's already established policy in the US (the pivot to Asia). — Benkei

This wrong footed policy has been contradicted by facts. $40 bl for Ukraine ain't no pivot. Also, it wasn't the question I asked (twice). I guess questions and topics don't matter much to you...

Okay but do you think the US should 'pivot to China', like @Tzeentch is saying?

The Himalayas skirmishes are of very low intensity, though near continuous. They could potentially blow off into a full scale war because both India and China have used the tension for nationalist posturing in national politics. But every time the situation heats up a bit too much, there's a head of state meeting and they remember that they are brothers.

Anyway, do you think the US should 'pivot to China'?

A pivot to China doesn't simply mean a military pivot, since the United States does not have only military means. It would mean the United States would shift it's entire focus away from Europe towards Asia, military, economic, political, etc. — Tzeentch

There's no reason to 'pivot' anywhere. The US is perfectly capable of chewing gum and walk at the same time. They have the means to deal with several situations in parallel. Europe remains an important continent and Russia remains a threat.

You could say something like: if China rises to hegemony peacefully, what's the problem?

To which I would answer: what makes you think the United States is willing to peacefully give up its position as hegemon? — Tzeentch

Unlike you, I don't have a crystal ball.

If China poses no immediate security threat, if they are not going to invade anyone militarily, why 'pivot to China'? You are saying they are becoming a significant power, and that is true. But so far their power is mainly economic. NATO or the US army can't do anything about that.

Historically, China has waged war almost continuously in what are now China's borders. — Benkei

Long gone history is irrelevant. This particular regime has not been waging wars let right and center. They have been prudent. The idea of US focussing to a greater extent on the security threats posed by a newly assertive China may have some merit but not at Europe's expense; it's not like the Chinese are an immediate threat to anyone.

China does not need war to become the world's most powerful nation — Tzeentch

Well, in this case, 'pivoting to China' would be useless gesticulation.

It's absolutely foolish, from a European perspective and from an American perspective.

The United States needs to shift its focus to China, which is an actual peer competitor that can challenge the United States' position as hegemon. Not Russia. ... — Tzeentch

This scenatio seems too pessimistic to me. China has historically been a peaceful nation, and they will if anything be deterred from invading Taiwan (the only immediate risk they may pose) by watching Russia 'bleed' in Ukraine.

My point has always been that from a realist perspective Russia's actions were entirely predictable, that the United States were aware of this and provoked Russia intentionally, perhaps thinking they were bluffing. — Tzeentch

From your realist perspective, this would be a smart strategy to follow, don't you think? Draw Russia into a costly conflict, and bleed it.

According to the knowability principle, if a proposition is true then it is knowable. Therefore, if a proposition is not knowable then it is not true. — Michael

It seems to me though, that the knowability principle ought to apply equally to 'unknown truths' and 'unknown falsehoods'. A false proposition is the mirror image of a true one: its negation.

If p --> possibility of Kp, then non p --> possibility of Knonp

A proposition can be true within a certain period of time and false outside of that period. For instance the proposition: 'Now summer is back' is true at the start of summer; 'Socrates is alive and well' was true untill what? 400BC? Then it became false after his death.

Your proposition a. can likewise be true untill such a time when it becomes false.

Türkiye is not in the United States' sphere of influence. — Tzeentch

Apparently Ukraine is not in the Russian Federation's sphere of influence either.

You are only confused to the extent that you want to be confused. I won't cry foul if Russia expands its diplomatic and military alliances, the way NATO has been expanding, in a voluntary manner. It's only when they kill the masses and enslave people that I do object.

Except that is not what you are advocating.

You believe NATO should get to expand and interfere all it wants because they're "the good guys", and when another nation reacts you cry foul. — Tzeentch

Thanks for the laugh; that was a ridiculous straw man.

Whatever your position is, it's hopelessly confused.

You don't know what my position is because you don't care about it. And you are so easily confused... :-)

My position is that NATO will react to what the Russians do. If Russia invades a friendly European country, of course NATO will gear up its presence in Europe. That is to be expected, and entirely natural. To expect something else is to be delusional.

Your views on right and wrong don't influence at all the very real consequences of provocative policy. "We are the good guys, so we get to provoke" is obviously not something other nations care for. They will react. — Tzeentch

Of course the bad guys may react, as we may react to their invasion of Ukraine. Assholes are not the only ones entitled to react, if you think about it for a second.

This is your entry for the short story competition thread, right? Reads like science fiction to me.

In Kherson, a life at Russian time

The southern Ukrainian city fell quickly and without a fight to the Russians. Moscow accelerates the Russification of the region, while resistance is getting organized.

By Florence Aubenas (Le Monde special correspondent, from Kiev, Odessa and Mykolaiv)
29 June 2022

She found the letter in the kitchen, next to a plate of pancakes, in their apartment on the fifth floor of a quiet building. “Svieta, my daughter. Eat the pancakes, they are very good with cheese. I'm sick of the pain, I can't take it anymore. Goodbye. Your father." The father could no longer find anything to treat himself, so he jumped out of the window.

"Here, the lack of medicine kills more people than weapons ," reports a doctor from Tropin Hospital in Kherson, southern Ukraine, over the phone. The first big city conquered, a few days after the Russian invasion, Kherson does not let its particular situation known easily. From the outside, it seems almost intact, a seaside resort and port between two seas – the Black and that of Azov – a postcard beauty. Here, there was no massive destruction like in Mariupol or mass graves discovered like in Bucha.

Yet Kherson has been living under the occupation of Moscow for four months. Nothing arrives there from Ukraine anymore, neither food nor pensions. The roads are blocked, without even a humanitarian corridor: the only access that remains is through Crimea, the neighboring peninsula, already annexed by Moscow in 2014. Cut off from the world, the city of Kherson, like the oblast of the same name, has gone missing: the only independent testimonies come from refugees or residents contacted by telephone.

“We are here forever, Kyiv has let you down”, hammer the occupants, who have just completed a third line of defense. However, for the first time, on June 22, the official Russian agency TASS acknowledged that a car bomb attack had targeted a pro-Russian collaborator. Several prior actions had been kept under silence. Behind closed doors in the conquered region, another battle has just begun.

"The Russians had prepared their invasion, not only militarily, but with hidden agents at the heart of Ukrainian power" -- Oleg Dunda, Ukrainian MP

The story of Kherson, its capture and occupation begins with a mystery: how could the city have fallen without a fight – or almost – when the resistance elsewhere in Ukraine has stunned the world? "I would really like to know, like all citizens", says Iryna Verechchuk, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the occupied territories in Kiev. She remembers the early days of the invasion, when the national military committee wondered: why aren't the bridges blowing up? Why aren't our troops fighting on the border? These were the orders in case of aggression. Treason ? The word goes around, of course.

“If there has been sabotage, we will know, an investigation is underway , ” continues the Deputy Prime Minister. For his part, the deputy Oleg Dunda, member of the presidential party, recognizes that certain risks may have been badly assessed. "The Russians had prepared their invasion, not only militarily, but with hidden agents at the heart of Ukrainian power, " he explains. It is to the point where the American services did not share certain information, for fear that it may land in Moscow. »

In Kherson, in any case, on February 24, “soldiers, policemen, customs officers, all had evaporated” , remembers Dmytro Paraschinets, adviser to the region. A military leader ends up being contacted. On the phone, he answers "to be already very far away" . The only one to stand up: the territorial defense, a hundred civilians gathered in haste four days earlier. No weapons were issued to them. More than sixty died in combat. In the street, two strangers throw themselves with their bare hands against Russian tanks, an image of pure despair that still haunts Dmytro Paraschinets, now a refugee in Kyiv.

Vladimir Putin's strategy seemed to be working: the way was clear to advance to Odessa, 200 kilometers away along the Black Sea shore.

In fact, the columns were blocked halfway by fierce fighting around Mykolaiv, a strategic port. Fallback to Kherson. A resident remembers: “The Russian soldiers arrived at Victory Square, weapons in hand, and began to rob the supermarket." The occupation has just begun. It was the first week of March.

But this oblast does not resemble neighboring Crimea, where Moscow enjoyed strong enough support to integrate it into the Russian Federation via a referendum – imposed by the Kremlin – in 2014. Here, the pro-Russian parties never exceeded 20% of the votes.

So, every day, at noon, a ritual of insane courage began: hundreds of civilians with their faces uncovered demonstrate behind their national flag. "At the beginning, we were surprised: the Russians didn't touch anyone, " says one of them. "It gave us the audacity to continue." Moscow also distributes food donations in front of the station, buckwheat and tin cans, in front of Russian TV cameras. “They wanted to show themselves as good people,” says a businesswoman. Any other help is prohibited.

“They want the Dombas veterans, they want revenge.” -- the father of a veteran

At that same time, the first arrests began. Names of targeted people, addresses, functions, everything was recorded on lists "established for the most part before the invasion", explains MP Oleg Dunda. High in those lists figured the Ukrainian veterans of Donbass, who have been fighting against the separatists supported by Moscow since 2014. "They want the veterans, they want revenge, down to the last one," says the father of one of them. Arrested mid-March, his son never reappeared. Then came the people of influence, local authorities, journalists, neighborhood committees, bosses or demonstrators.

More than six hundred civilians have gone missing. Those who survived describe the same scenes: detention in cellars, stripping, beatings, torture with electricity, mock executions.

An elected official says that after three weeks he was offered to be released if he shoots two videos, one for the local population, the other for the Russians. “I had to say that I had not been arrested, but that I was responding to a medical examination. Then, I had to call to collaborate. The version for Moscow included one more sentence, only one: "I condemn the Nazism of Ukraine." Liberating the country from "fascism" remains the Kremlin's official justification for its invasion. Released, he found his house looted, even the electric kettle. He said he drank vodka all night. “At dawn, I understood that I would be their bait to arrest others, before being killed myself." He left the region clandestinely.

Social centers, nurseries, everything is closed. The last pro-Ukraine demonstration marched on April 27, a handful of people dispersed by the riot squad from Moscow. In the city, more than six hundred civilians are missing. Half the region has fled.

Historian and community activist in Odessa, Oleksander Babych has become a privileged confidant for those who remained in Kherson: his book The occupation of Odessa from 1941 to 1944 is a reference in Ukraine. Many consult it today to find out how to behave in the face of invaders. Babytch's response varies very little: “Prepare to be betrayed, including by those you think you know."

And indeed the floodgates opened, collaborators replaced one by one those who refused to work with the Russians in the oblast: the governor, the mayors or the head of the chamber of agriculture. "They display themselves without embarrassment," says a restaurateur in Kherson. In general, they were born under the Soviet Union, before independence in 1991, ambitious people who choose the strong neighbor."

If one of them were to symbolize the figure of the “traitor”, Volodymyr Saldo, 66, would surely fit the bill. Mayor of Kherson from 2002 to 2012, he had lost his mandate and was struggling with legal problems, untill the occupying forces offered him the post of governor on April 27.

At the beginning of June, two men got out of a 4×4 In front of a big farm near Kherson and introduced themselves to the farmer as businessmen. The farmer has never seen them, but the guns on their thighs made questions superfluous. The strangers offered to buy his crops, wheat, soybeans, vegetables, everything. Here, we are in the land of the black earth, one of the most fertile in the world, so rich, so oily that the Germans had the mad project of exporting it home by trainloads during the Second World War. The visitors offered a ridiculous price, three times less than the market. But the market no longer exists in the Kherson oblast: selling in Ukraine, or even more so internationally, has been impossible since the occupation.

Of course, the strangers wanted to pay in rubles: the new authorities now impose the Russian currency against the Ukrainian hryvnia. Thoughts were rushing in the farmer's head: “If I refuse to sell, they will rob me anyway." An idea occured to him: “What if I burned everything? No, not possible. They would take it as an offense." The other two made themseves clear: “It's either collaboration or the cellar". This farmer is one of the last who managed to flee the oblast.

Today, officers have settled in his property, they empty beers around his swimming pool. Russian soldiers have been encouraged for several weeks to bring their families and install them in unoccupied accommodation. “De-Ukrainization” is advancing like a steamroller: Russian will the school curricula be; Russian will be the only bank allowed to operate in Kherson, and it plans to open two hundred branches; Russian the businesses in the district; Russian the Internet, telephone and television networks; Russian the institutions; Russian any child born in the oblast after February 24, 2022.

Regularly announced, the organization of a referendum ratifying an attachment to Russia, as was the case in Crimea, is constantly postponed. Too risky: there is little or no chance that the result will be positive. So, at the microphone of the Novosti news agency, Governor Saldo pretends not to attach any importance to it: “The region already belongs to the great family of Russia." A procedure against him has been launched by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine: Saldo faces fifteen years in prison for treason.

In the morning, Kherson turns into a huge open-air market: smuggled Belarusian cigarettes, a few medicines sometimes, or a woman's bracelet placed on a headscarf. One sells what one needs to survive. This is the last place where the Ukrainian hryvnia is still current, though using it already constitutes an “act of rebellion”. There are hardly any more in circulation. Barter sets in, wages are paid in food for those who are still working. Ten thousand jobs have disappeared, especially in tourism. “We don't argue, but people don't talk about anything anymore, says a trader. We feel that something is being organized. But who is who? Who does what ?"

From noon, the streets empty, the inhabitants barricade themselves. Another life begins, as if separated from the first: the Russian hours. In the streets, one only comes across soldiers in bands, some wearing hoods. Or collaborators.

At the end of March, two of them had already been killed in attacks.

In recent days, the actions have intensified, more than 15, for those who are known in any case: Russian soldiers machine-gunned in a restaurant, car bombs against the director of the prison administration, the head of the bus station or Governor Saldo himself. These last three survived.

On a messaging service, a group has just been launched, called "the traitors' base". Seventeen thousand participants so far have denounced supposed collaborators, with their photos, from the most visible to the most pathetic, like this very young high school student, smeared with lipstick, who declares on Facebook her fondness for Russian soldiers. In Kiev, a military spokesman announced that a group of "guerrillas" had opened an internal front.

As a response, the former mayor of Kherson, Ihor Kulekaev, was arrested by occupation forces on Tuesday June 28. "Whoever was causing so much harm to the denazification process has finally been neutralized," said pro-Russian deputy governor Kirill Strimosov. Dismissed after the fall of the oblast, the ex-mayor had never left his city. He was at home when they came for him. He is now missing.

your shitty country — Streetlight

@ssu's shitty country is a great shitty country, full of smart shitty people.

Women Declare Themselves Corporations to Force Supreme Court to Grant Them Rights as People
Andy Borowitz, June 27, 2022

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of American women and girls have declared themselves corporations in order to force the United States Supreme Court to grant them rights as people, legal observers have reported.

Attorneys across the nation indicated that they have been swamped by requests from clients seeking to incorporate as soon as possible.

“The Supreme Court decided in 2010 that corporations are people, so all we want is to be treated like corporations, ” Carol Foyler, who now goes by the corporate name FoylerCo L.L.C., said.

The decision by millions of women to incorporate sent shock waves through the Court’s conservative majority, who reportedly scoured the Constitution in vain for a means to circumvent the ingenious tactic.

Even the normally taciturn Clarence Thomas was moved to issue a rare public statement. “It’s a sad day in America when the nation’s highest court is forced to treat women like people,” he wrote.

Some Russian satellite agency has published the pictures and coordinates of the NATO summit venue in Madrid, the Pentagon, the White House, British government buildings in central London, the German Chancellery and Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, NATO headquarters in Brussels, and the French president's residence.

It's unclear who they were trying to orient; I suppose some tourists in Washington looking desperately for indications on where to find the White House... Well, now they know, thanks to Mr Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos. :razz:

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-publishes-pentagon-coordinates-says-western-satellites-work-our-enemy-2022-06-28/

Australia will help the Kurds.

What is the rational reply to someone hating and despising you (for decades) and preparing to attack you with military force? — baker

Bomb Ukrainian babies, of course. That will help a lot.

I think this or a form of it is the obvious solution. If I imagine a database of all possible propositions, with a truth value column, I can just as well imagine duplicates of many propositions with them being differentiated by a timestamp column. This would allow you to have the set of all true propositions without timing becoming a source of contradiction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Fitch is just poor logical formalism (or poor English) passing for a paradox. @Janus and others made the same point.

I must admit I did not understand the rest of your post... :worry:

↪Olivier5
I wasn't objecting to Fitch there. Just giving an example of bewitchment of language leading to metaphysical conclusions. — Tate

Right. Thanks for the clarification.

We can escape Fitch by just saying we don't know if the status of Riemann's hypothesis is knowable.

Yes, that's perfectly fine.

My solution is to add the time variable to the formalism. Knowledge evolves over time.

So I would write:

Suppose p is a sentence that is an unknown truth; that is, the sentence p has been proposed, it is true, but it is not known that p is true. In such a case, the sentence "the sentence p is an unknown truth" is true today; and, if all truths are knowable, it should be possible one day to know learn that "p was an unknown truth" up untill that day.

If truth is a property of statements, talk of "unknown truths" might give us unstated statements. Not good. — Tate

Excellent. I made a similar remark on a related thread sometime back, about yet unproposed propositions.

Although I think @Michael avoids this specific objection to Fitch by chosing as an example a mathematical hypothesis already stated (Riemann's) but whose truth value is yet unknown.

I'd urge the Putin and company, the attacker, to quit bombing :fire: and send the troops home now.
— jorndoe

While the West continues to hate and despise Russia, as it has always done? — baker

You mean, all this savage Russian bombing stems from the sorrow of not being loved by Western countries?

She would say we shouldn't be bewitched by language. — Tate

A most bewitching Wittgensteinian proposition... both recognising the power that a language holds upon individuals speaking it, warning them against it in fact, but then offering no practical method to deliver them from the spell of their spell.

I will agree that one needs to use words with care, that they are 'treacherous' in some sense. But there are solutions, such as the pragmatic, instrumentalist approach: any given problem will require a certain degree of precision in language for its resolution, much beyond which it is useless to go. That's similar to the standard practice in math and physical sciences.

Its downside is of course that its very practicality misses on the creative, poetic and polysemic virtues of language. The bewitching can be a feature, in an explorative way. But then, even Witty's defiance towards language is perhaps missing on that, on the accidental creativity of the bewitching.

Anyway, this is an aside.

A deflationist does not have a problem with using the word "true" in the normal way. She just resists piling unwarranted projects on top of that normal usage. — Tate

Would you have examples of these unwarranted projects?

Is that true, though?

A typical deflationist will say that truth only serves a social function. Is someone disagreeing with that? — Tate

I would think that truth has an important psychological dimension; we (minds) cannot exist without a concept of truth. Even folks who think they have 'deflated truth' do in actual fact believe that it is true that they have deflated truth. They don't usually believe that they have come to some social agreement to pretend that truth was deflated.

. if the Riemann hypothesis is true and we don't know that the Riemann hypothesis is true then it is possible at some point in the future to know that the Riemann hypothesis is true and that we don't didn't know today that the Riemann hypothesis is was true — Michael

Fixed.

Oliver5, are you proposing that the argument suffers a modal fallacy? Can you set it out explicitly? — Banno

Yes, something like that. Poor logical formalism. The paradox is about the capacity to learn, to know not some truth at time t and then to know it at time t'. This implies that 'the knowledge of x' changes, that it depends on the knower and the time of the knowing, especially if we are talking of a learning process, as Fitch objectively is.

The logical contradiction stems therefore from postulating a change in knowledge in the problem statement, but then ignoring such change in the formalism.

If in the formalism of Fitch you introduce the idea that knowledge changes over time, you may arrive at something that in English means: he now knows what he knew not before. That is an unproblematic statement about learning something new. But erase time from Fitch (or from that bold sentence), and you get: he knows what he knows not, ie a contradiction.

I make the rules.

You should introduce a difference in time, t1 and t2, to account for the progression of knowledge that is assumed in your ◊. E.g.

3. ◊∃x∃t2(Kxt2(p ∧ ¬∃x∃t1(Kxt1p)))

7. q ∧ ¬Kq → ◊K(q ∧ ¬Kq) (from 1)
8. r ∧ ¬Kr → ◊K(r ∧ ¬Kr) (from 1)
9. ◊K(q ∧ ¬Kq) ∨ ◊K(r ∧ ¬Kr) (from 6, 7, and 8) — Michael

This is where I think the mathematical formalism is missing something important: the time variable. Knowledge is not static. You are talking of a process of discovery, of the possibility of solving the Riemann conjecture one day. Note that if and when this happens, our knowledge about it will evolve. What we knew not at time t1 will become known at time t2. Which you could write: Kt1(r)<>Kt2(r)

So by adding the time variable, there is no reflexivity anymore. You don't end up knowing what you know not, but knowing now what you knew not back then.

It's called learning.

This has nothing to do with Fitch's paradox. — Michael

It does have a bearing, but you are not interested, which is fine.

Someone, somewhere, at some point in time has some knowledge.

If one treats knowledge as a tick-the-box thing, as a feature or commodity, as a mathematical variable that is either present or absent or equal to 12, and existing independently from any particular human knower, then one may indeed end up in a mental glitch.

Just because one can write down K(p) doesn't imply that this scribbling means anything precise.

This has no bearing on Fitch's paradox. — Michael

I think it does. To be known is NOT a quality intrinsic to things, therefore 'an unknown truth' or a 'known truth' have no clear meaning. They are not concepts, just noises made with mouths. One would need to state precisely to whom the truth is known or unknown for these phrases to have a meaning.

Known by whom, and when?
— Olivier5

Us, now. — Michael

And someone else at another time would have a different knowledge. So there's no such thing as 'a truth known', or 'a truth unknown', in the absolute. It all depends on who does the knowing and when.

It's saying that there is some proposition that is not known to be true. — Michael

Known by whom, and when? To know is an action done by people, and not a passive state of affairs. Some people know, some people don't. To be known is NOT a quality intrinsic to things.

If I state: "Back in antiquity, people didn't know that the earth orbited around the sun" it means something like: "it was true back then that the earth orbited the sun, and folks weren't aware of it at the time, but now we modern folks are aware of it." So it would be like a truth unknown to antiquity folks, but known to us modern folks.

And indeed it is perfectly possible to know that "In antiquity, people didn't know that the earth orbited around the sun". But of course, the folks back in antiquity didn't know that they didn't know that.

The seeming paradox is due to adopting a point of view that lays outside of the world of human experience, outside of time and space, the POV of God. If you take time and the human condition into consideration, the Fitch's paradox simply disappears.

Within the boundaries of human experience, a proposition is some statement that someone proposes, at some point in time. A proposition is a proposal made by a proposer (?). Before it was proposed, the proposition simply did not exist.

Or if you prefer, it could only exist in the mind of God. Or maybe some superpowerful alien... Not in a human mind.

Likewise, a statement does not exist before it is stated by some author or another. A phrase does not exist before being phrased.

So, within human experience, it makes no sense to say that a proposition no one knows about is true. The proposition needs to exist first. Once it is proposed, then and only then can the question of its truth be asked, and thus be put into existence, and only then, can the question be answered (or not).

Now, in some sense "truth is out there", the world is what it is and not otherwise. But this "truth out there" is not yet phrased in the form of propositions.