Well, not on the side Western allies, at least. But in the case of Stalin's Soviet Union, remember that Russian soldiers were fed propaganda that only the dogs and the unborn in Germany were innocent. — ssu

OH yeah, fuck, I always forget they were considered the Allied back then as well. :groan:

With torture, you'll have anybody saying anything in the end. It's not as effective as you think — ssu

It's not effective. Period. People will do anything to stop torture, including telling you want you want to hear, which usually isn't the truth. And because I didn't feel like going through all the arguments again, here's Perplexity.ai on the scientific proof about torture:

Scientific evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that torture is not an effective method for obtaining reliable information or intelligence. Neuroscience, psychology, and physiology research consistently show that torture impairs cognitive functioning and memory recall, making it counterproductive for interrogation purposes[1][4].

Neurological and Psychological Effects

Torture severely disrupts brain function, impairing the ability to accurately recall and communicate information:

1. Stress, fear, and pain caused by torture lead to major disruptive changes in the brain, damaging cognitive functioning[2].
2. The brain's ability to regulate thoughts, emotions, and behaviors is compromised under torture conditions[2].
3. Extreme stress alters memory formation and recall, making recollections less accurate and increasing susceptibility to false memories[3].

Counterproductive Outcomes

Rather than eliciting truthful information, torture often produces unreliable results:

1. Torture disorients prisoners, preventing accurate recall of past events[2].
2.Individuals subjected to torture are likely to say anything to make it stop, regardless of truthfulness[1].
3. The physiological and psychological effects of torture can lead to confabulation, where the subject may be unable to distinguish fact from fantasy[3].

Scientific Consensus

The scientific community largely agrees on torture's ineffectiveness:

1. Extensive research shows that punitive behavior encourages lying rather than truth-telling[5].
2. Studies indicate that stress modifies pain perception, further complicating the reliability of information obtained through torture[5].
3. The signal-to-noise ratio in intelligence gathered through torture is extremely low, making it an indefensible practice from a scientific standpoint[4].

In conclusion, scientific evidence from various fields consistently demonstrates that torture is not only morally and legally problematic but also ineffective and counterproductive as an interrogation method[6][7][8].

Citations:
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0077
[2] https://humanrightsfirst.org/library/review-why-torture-doesnt-work-the-neuroscience-of-interrogation-by-shane-omara/
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5198758/
[4] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830471-200-torture-doesnt-work-says-science-why-are-we-still-doing-it/
[5] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5325643/
[6] https://theconversation.com/torture-isnt-necessary-our-study-suggests-an-ethical-alternative-130626
[7] https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/does-torture-work-research-says-no/
[8] https://www.science.org/content/article/torture-cant-provide-good-information-argues-neuroscientist — perplexity.ai

It's telling in any case, that however grotesque WWII was, at least on the Allied side there was no policy of torture. It happened but these were low level decisions and it wasn't systematic.

Why are your still on X? Stop wasting your time, or worse, ours.

I don't think there's anything essentially wrong with Mearsheimer's analysis as it paints the one-sided viewpoint of Russia, which is a view we have to contend with - either as actual arguments, motivator or even as an excuse. It's accurate insofar it reflects Russian arguments and thinking and you can think about it what you want but it has been raised repeatedly as a reason.

Objectively, there definitely is an argument to be made from a Russian security perspective that having a large military alliance on your doorstep has clear ramifications with respect to their military capabilities vis-a-vis your own country. The argument NATO is purely defensive is merely theoretical as Kosovo and Libya have shown but even the treaty changes with respect to, for instance, space warfare. It's not merely benign. But even granting what is defensive today, we do not know what it is tomorrow. So this worry of Russia, from a real politik perspective is entirely logical.

Some of the responses to Harris' video reflect a moral view of international relations, which simply doesn't mean much in a world where international relations are preponderantly governed by real politk considerations. Does Russia have a right to empire? No, but then no country does. Yet there were empires and there are empires; through military, economic or even cultural influence. Russia has the de facto power to project power in the near abroad as do other large powers (notably the US and China). And yes, that makes certain countries a lot less relevant to the point where they have little agency left. After all, nobody gives a shit about the strategic relevance of the Netherlands for a reason! That has nothing to do with ignoring agency of Eastern European countries, which is a moral cliam they should have freedom to chose, but simply that stark political realities say otherwise.

The problem with the moral argument is also that it only works if you adhere to moral principles yourself; otherwise it's just another real politik tool "Do as I say (but don't do as I do)". And while I agree Eastern European countries have the moral high ground; they are simply not the most relevant players between the proxy wars. There's no fundamental difference between the regional influence the US has (tried to) build through wars in various regions. The Russians simply are more ruthless. And it works - the EU is afraid to escalate - and opinions differ on how justified that fear is.

I think you pointed out we armed allies during the cold war and it never led to escalation (except for the Cuban Missile Crisis I guess?). I think that's a good point and in my view, NATO did drop the ball, could've delayed a conflict by clearly distancing itself from a Ukraine NATO-membership or more clearly committing to the defence of Ukraine to make it more costly. The wishy-washy approach was inviting Russia to invade now before security assurances for Ukraine became more solid. Boots on the ground was the moral play with respect to the Ukrainian people once they (Russia and NATO) fucked up the diplomacy.

There's a simple two word term for such ridiculous stances: victim blaming.

You know the underlying psychological process is that people want to distance themselves form the victim due to fear of becoming a victim themselves. So they would never be a victim because:

1. they'd be nice and accept insurance claims
2. would not walk around at that time at that place
3. would not walk around alone
4. would pack a gun and shoot him first
etc.

It indeed says a lot about people blaming the victim and that's that they are fundamentally scared.

I live in a country with nationalized healthcare and it's awful too, but perhaps that's just a question of who bears final responsibility. — Tzeentch

While there's plenty we could do better in the Netherlands, describing it as awful is a gross exaggeration. Healthcare outcomes are still superior to 95% of other countries.

A condescending attitude or the view "Why bother to respond?" simply isn't fruitful to anybody. — ssu

It is very fruitful as it doesn't give space to zealots where their arguments are prima facie engaged as if they are rational, reasonable or acceptable when in fact they have no argument.

If a philosophy forum doesn't debate the hard problems of our time and sees no value in discussion about them, what does that tell of us ourselves? — ssu

It's no longer a debate when people are not able to set out coherent logical arguments or deny facts.

EDIT: This is also why I have largely disengaged from the Trump thread.

I don't understand why you bother. Bitty is a zealot, fully buying into pretending Israel is a victim. Even in light of obvious power imbalances and war crimes, he will dredge up things 50 year in the past to excuse current crimes. It's pathetic.

I said let's not get into it. Focus on learning the basics of international law. You can start with looking up the genocide convention. I'm not interested in discussing politics with a religious zealout.

For those actually not fanatical supporters of Israel and therefore lost causes both morally and politically, here's the Amnesty report on genocide by Israel: report

Netanyahu can now be mentioned in one breadth with the likes of:

Hitler
Mugabe
Pol Pot

After 9/11 Bush said he'd make no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them. Sounds like a justification for genocide, no? — BitconnectCarlos

Also, let's not get into all the war crimes Bush committed shall we?

The US spoke in similar terms about enemies in Vietnam and Japan. Yet neither were genocides. The population of Gaza has risen by ~2% since last year never has there been a genocide where the victim population actually rose. The idea is preposterous. And of course Israel could wipe them out immediately if they really wanted as Israel has heavy weaponry. The facts simply don't bare it out the charge of genocide. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not going to point to the definition of genocide for the fifth time in this thread. But you're wrong. Go look up the internationally agreed definition of genocide when everybody still agreed on it.

@ssu What's the likelihood the buffer zone they just took in Syria won't be all that temporary?

Edit: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/09/israel-seizes-syrian-buffer-zone-amid-airstrikes-on-regime-weapons-depots

Anyone still doubting Israel is run by a bunch of fanatical belligerents? Just the sycophants obviously of which we have our fair share here.

Sorry, I'm researching some things on cancer at the same time and chatgpt got confused offering examples. IEDB.org is an option if you can figure out how to use it.

Frontline healthcare workers do appear to have a higher likelihood of cross-reactivity even for viruses they never had before.This is suggestive but not definitive: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55989-4

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1108303/full

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2024.1377259/full

That's equivalent to asking why some people get sicker then others. But there are models available to predict this. So again, not very mysterious just difficult to predict as there are a lot of confounding factors aside from immunilogical imprinting.

What do you mean, we don't know how it works?

If viral strains are sufficiently similar in their immunodominant epitopes, then populations of cross-reactive T cells may be boosted by exposure to one strain and provide protection against infection by another at a later date. This type of pre-existing immunity may be important in the adaptive immune response to influenza and to coronaviruses. Patterns of recognition of epitopes by T cell clonotypes (a set of cells sharing the same T cell receptor) are represented as edges on a bipartite network. We describe different methods of constructing bipartite networks that exhibit cross-reactivity, and the dynamics of the T cell repertoire in conditions of homeostasis, infection and re-infection. Cross-reactivity may arise simply by chance, or because immunodominant epitopes of different strains are structurally similar. We introduce a circular space of epitopes, so that T cell cross-reactivity is a quantitative measure of the overlap between clonotypes that recognize similar (that is, close in epitope space) epitopes.

source= https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8472275/?utm_source=perplexity

How is that a mystery? T-cell reactivity to a virus can be learned from an infection of a different virus, a phenomenon known as cross-reactivity or heterologous immunity. Such cross-reactivity has been observed with regard to SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza A: https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/158308

Your metaphors are obviously not the only thing that are dogshit.

Ah, yes, there's plenty to say about the continued carte blanche support and how our president, as representative of the Netherlands - the country hosting the ICC - is looking for possibilities of Netanyahu to visit the Netherlands without him getting arrested.

Even Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof got under the feathers of his Minister of Foreign Affairs on November 29 by talking about “scenarios” that could prevent Netanyahu’s arrest on Dutch soil. Earlier, Schoof suggested that a visit by a suspect to an international organization such as the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) could perhaps serve as an escape route. This form of ‘ingenuity’ is undesirable, and would undermine the status of international law – and thus the rule of law that this cabinet claims to embrace – in any case. The relativizing words actually do that. — Ko Colijn (machine translated)

Love the dehumanisation of people in that post. Nice to see a win of Trump have you show your true colours more clearly.

That we are tired of everything wrong going on around us. There's only so much shit we can or want to engage with. At least for me. Also, my reach on LinkedIn is much bigger, so I use that instead to talk about politics (which gets frowns from some contacts but my company wholeheartedly supports).

Yes, you're a veritable enfant terrible. It's what's so adorable about you. :yawn:

Your second paragraph is what is actually interesting. You should've led with that. It is however still wrong. Your interpretation is not supported by the original paper, found here: https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2481375_6/component/file_2637485/Hoehl_Hellmer_2017.pdf?mode=download

And it's not bare if you'd actually be familiar with the research in this area in humans and other primates. I only gave you an example in an accessible format in case you weren't familiar with it. Need more papers after this one? I have another 10.

Still nothing.

Your post isn't particularly interesting. Unless you have an actual reason why you believe the experiment was conducted incorrectly or makes the wrong conclusions your opinion on the matter is boring.

But that enlargement to Ukraine they had already stopped before February 2022. — ssu

What are you referring to here? The Brussel summit of 2021 reiterated, for the first time in 13 years, that Ukraine would eventually join NATO. It looks like the opposite...

This isn't really challenge (though, i probably would choose to challenge the use of innate here) but do you propose a reason many (significant numbers) of people are naturally not predisposed to be fearful of snakes? I'm one, so i'm genuinely curious here. — AmadeusD

It's hereditary so you could not have inherited it but more likely you grew over that innate fear (well, more like anxiety).
https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/innate-fear-of-snakes-and-spiders-a-survival-instinct-found-in-babies-293462#:~:text=Scientists%20at%20the%20Max%20Planck,could%20have%20learned%20this%20reaction

That's possible for some but I doubt the Jan. 6 attempt of insurrection has a statutory limitation that short.

What nonsense. These cases will be restarted after his 4 years. It's no use to sentence him if he can pardon himself.

But again, this is how Biden has worked. First M1 Abrams tanks weren't an option. Too complex! Then few M1 Abrams tanks are given. Then MLRS/HIMARS weren't an option. Then they were. Then NATO states want to give F-16 aircraft. Biden rejects this. Too complex! Then after a long time, Biden accepts these transfers. — ssu

Gradual escalation is more predictable and unlikely to lead to erratic behaviour from the other side, so safer. It's a tactic in and of itself.

There's been plenty of historic instances of royalty wanting to keep their blood pure through what we now consider incestuous relations. It's quite a sociological condemnation. That said, you are obviously hinting at parent-kid relations, or uncle-niece, which comes with huge issues with regards to influence and power imbalance. That's generally why they are wrong for the range reasons as "teacher-pupil".

Plus it's icky... I don't know how natural that reaction is but fear of snakes, for instance, is innate. And if it's innate disgust, I think we should trust nature.

But perhaps this is in the realm of things like the obsession to pay the most for health care anywhere for a mediocre health care system, something I cannot wrap my mind around. — ssu

Let's not insult health care workers. The care is fine just not accessible because too many people are uninsured.

I have no clue which company this is and not enough time to find out!

The US and Biden's push into Ukraine is the single greatest threat to the world since the Cuban Missile Crisis - not Trump.

Trump has been elected on a strong platform to end this war.

As Trump moves into office, we see the Biden administration deliberately taking steps to deteriorate the situation in the hopes of making peace impossible.

Is partisanship the sole reason you're avoiding this pink elephant, or do you really not see it? — Tzeentch

I do believe you should focus more on the situation at hand, not lament the mistakes of the past. The proxy-war in Ukraine has a long history with both players escalating over time. The reality is Trump is not exactly a stable factor where it concerns foreign policy. Since the EU is not sufficiently integrated militarily to deter Russian aggression, Trump is not making our world safer. Zelensky realises this and immediately signalled a willingness to negotiate.

Of course, it could lead to long term stability at least on the European continent, where it concerns Russia, if we ensure the EU has a strong role in establishing the peace deal and it becomes more a tri-partite treaty than bilateral.

If only the Democrats were "anything else".

Russia was open to negotiations all the time if that meant they wouldn't have to fight to keep the land they have. The recent overtures by Zelensky and, for instance, Germany for negotiations are informed by a position of weakness because they do not expect Trump to continue to support the war effort in Ukraine. Nobody is falling in line, they're hedging against Trump's erratic behaviour.

That's funny. Why don't you look up under who's term it peaked? Bush. Who began de downward trend? Obama.

Well, he certainly can't be elected again. That would require a constitutional amendment which ain't happening. — Michael

Ahahaha, rule-based thinking has never stopped dictators. If he's so inclined he will look for other ways. I personally think he's in it for himself, vanity, greed, etc. and therefore don't think there's a particularly high chance but even so "culture eats rules for breakfast".

Tulips are originally Turkish. :yum: