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Comment by joecot | Hacker News Reader

Americans have been so indoctrinated to the idea that every issue must have two sides who should be equally considered, that when we have issues where one side is the obvious aggressor completely in the wrong, they don't know how to comprehend it. Our media has made everything a debate game because it gets viewers, and it's rotting people's ability to actually figure out what the right side of an issue is.

There is no equally valid argument against man-made climate change, evolution, gay rights, the right for people of color to exist without harassment, or Ukraine defending itself.

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This is wrong. You are saying, this is so established that entertaining any alternative is wrongheaded. No. That's not how it works. We need dissent even in the middle of battle. We need to re-asses and continuously examine what we hold true to ensure it is still true. People are not gods. We can be in the wrong. This echoes GWBushe's you're either with us, or you're against us. It's a made up dichotomy.

Speaking of made-up dichotomies, surely there's some option in between "news shows should constantly debate X vs Y" and "X is so established that entertaining any alternative is wrongheaded".

Yeah, I think there is. Usually you could find them by looking at third parties that did not have much stake in either alternative.

For example, the southern border. You have OpenBorders vs Close the border camps. But there has always been the guest worker visa program on the hoper but no one wants it. It would drive business costs up, it would drain the Ds and Rs of energy around that topic. If you look at many LatAM countries, they themselves implement controls so that locals have preferences for jobs even with respect to immigrants legally able to work. But CNN never mentions those aspects. CNN doesn't mention Bernie used to vote against having foreigners compete against the local workforce for jobs.

Or abortion vs Abortion bans. Let's look at the rest of the world, and if not the whole world, then Europe, and we see there a mixture with some consensus around some figures. But we don't get that coverage, it's all outrage one way or the other.

> We need dissent even in the middle of battle. We need to re-asses and continuously examine what we hold true to ensure it is still true.

Tacticians act on Intelligence. Dissent is not Intelligence.

Dissent is so toxic it is literally weaponized to cripple an adversary with indecision and domestic unrest. It is the militarization of gaslighting.

It's not something you want arising mid-campaign, especially when (as in this case) its proponents are entirely fictional.

I upvoted both of you because you both have valid points in spite of apparent contradiction.

Dissent, if it's based on intelligence, can be extremely useful. It's literally something that can save a society. But intelligence involves a careful analysis of facts, and it's something very hard if you deal with an army of trolls.

> one side is the obvious aggressor completely in the wrong

If your model of any political situation resembles a moralizing children's cartoon, 99% chance you are a mark, incapable of identifying propaganda.

> it's rotting people's ability to actually figure out what the right side of an issue is

99.9% of issues in the population of issues we ever think about do not have a clear right answer, because if they did we would just discharge the issue immediately, and it would not stick around. Everything that remains exists in a tradeoff space, and if you think there's a clear right answer, it's probably because your understanding of the tradeoff space is naïve and low-dimensional.

Okay, so what is your take on the issues GP identified? Or is the only conclusion you can arrive at "it's complicated"?

GP made the very salient point that some things are clearly bad. Blind clinging to the idea that everything has two sides is just as simplistic as thinking everything can be viewed from a perspective which is just as moral as every other. Except maybe even more so, because at least the moral simplicity of black and white forces us to show flag instead of hiding in "neutrality".

Nihilism, strong moral relativism and contrarianism without a constructive goal are lazy pseudo intellectual positions that do not serve any constructive purpose (be it insight or improvement of the material world) and serve only as deflections and comfort arguments.

And for those that disagree with me: I'd love to hear where and why I'm wrong about thinking "Putin and other authoritarian strong men are worse than democratically elected politician" and "there are degrees of corruption, and the west is less corrupt than Russia". Because I've got evidence for these beliefs (the industrial output of Russia and Putin's palace being only two data points). What's yours?

"The west probably could have avoided (or maybe just delayed) this war if they had taken steps X" is some the nuance you could add to your statements.

Simple example of X would be stating Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO.

More complicated example would be if Europe prioritized energy independence from Russia putting in a weaker position. An example that loops in nuclear power debate, one which likely could have been manipulated (see other threads around Reddit bots in addition to twitter bots) by the Russians themselves to achieve that end.

Russian being the bad guy doesn't make conflict inevitable. And if it does, then we're probably just buying time until full scale nuclear war within the next century and none of this actually matters.

I agree with all of this. The US and EU kept discussing inviting Ukraine to NATO or even the EU, and the US was pushing towards a military alliance with Ukraine. This would've caused tension even if Russia was a democratic country not run by Putin. With Putin it led to near certainty of a conflict with Ukraine.

But while it's worth looking backward at that to try to get our leaders to not pull political moves like that in the future, it in no way changes the Ukrainians being on the right side of this war, and Russia being on the wrong side. Yes, the US's actions were likely to cause a war, no, Russia is not justified in starting that war. In the same way that European appeasement of Hitler and USSR's neutrality deal clearly led to the Nazis invading Europe, but do not in any way justify the Nazis invading Europe, or the Nazis being the right side.

> USSR's neutrality deal clearly led to the Nazis invading Europe

Hitler (Nazis) and Stalin (USSR) were allies and jointly invaded Poland.

I still see zero reason for Russia to start a war against a sovereign country with a democratically elected leader. It’s like saying that the other classmates didn’t let the bully copy their homework so he is right in beating the everliving shit out of a completely different kid.

> It’s like saying that the other classmates didn’t let the bully copy their homework so he is right in beating the everliving shit out of a completely different kid.

Is this the only way that situation gets resolve or are there any alternatives? Why is the kid a bully? Why does he feel the need to copy homework? Maybe the classmates should group together and seriously injury the bully first, would they be in the right if they did so? How do you know the bully will actually harm the kid and doesn't just want to scare him?

You can make any situation a simple good-evil answer by drawing arbitrary boundaries around the situation. The propaganda this thread is mentioning enforces those boundaries and potentially prevents people from discussing the real underlying problems. Doesn't mean the outcome or conclusion is any different.

The point is it does not matter that the kid has a horrible life. It's still bullying and attacking people and needs to stop. The first rule of helping a family member with depression or a friend lashing out in pain is protect yourself, otherwise you can't help anyone.

The situation would be different if e.g. Ukraine had invaded Russian territory after the invasion of Crimea, or had done broken armistices beforehand, or there had been a mass killing of ethinic Russians in Ukraine. There has not been. This means long before we can talk about Russia maybe feeling threatened by NATO expansion they need to stop the war they started.

There is no nuance here. Russia felt that for whatever reason an attack-war was warranted and couldn't even be bothered to come up with a believable justification. The fact that other countries have done the same thing (e.g. over allegations of WMD) changes nothing here.

I'm confused from how we got to "USA potentially had the ability to prevent the war if they had..." to "This means long before we can talk about Russia maybe feeling threatened by NATO expansion they need to stop the war they started."

USA/west could have made concessions that weren't really concessions (taking Ukraine NATO off the table) before the 2022 invasion. Those concessions may or may not have worked. We're now just supposed to ignore that fact and pretend that it never happened until some point in the future that may never take place?

> Simple example of X would be stating Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO

What makes you certain that this was going to prevent the invasion? Russia gave a number of pretexts for the invasion, some unrelated to NATO: De-nazification of Ukraine, protecting Russian-speakers within Ukraine, among many others.

> Russian being the bad guy doesn't make conflict inevitable.

Oh, so you prefer the Chamberlain-style "Peace in our time" appeasement. What next, cede Finland or Poland to Russia when Putin demands it?

I mean the real question here is why all the central European states wanted to join NATO. Given how peace loving the Russians have been, it seems to be a mystery.

And let's be clear, the Russian Ukraine war started in 2014, not in 2022. I personally would be looking for allies if another country had already invaded part of my territory.

> What makes you certain that this was going to prevent the invasion?

It's not certain but assuming the worst is just an extension of the same moral pure-good and pure-evil that this thread is about. My point is that if your view of the world is that Russia is an pure-evil actor that will keep invading more and more countries no matter what the west does then it'll eventually lead to nuclear war. In which case none of this discussion matters. The reason Finland (or any country) is joining NATO is because it makes that point explicit.

> It's not certain but assuming the worst is just an extension of the same moral pure-good and pure-evil that this thread is about.

One doesn't need to delve morality to figure this out: empirical evidence alone is sufficient to come to the same conclusion. Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine was in 2014, and it still wants more than the Donbas.

Assuming the best goes against existing evidence. Russia has not explicitly said what the limits to its aggression are. Without invoking morality, why would you assume Ukraine is the limit?

If we don't want to believe anything they say then why bother having any diplomatic ties at all? Do you think we'd be in the same or better place if we just cut all communication with Russia?

You only know what they tell you and what your intelligence agencies can uncover. Russia said Ukraine joining NATO was a red line in diplomatic discourse and then they acted on it. Same way the USA told China that aiding Russia in this war would be a red line and China has refrained from providing direct aid even after what happened in Taiwan recently. I don't have any access to classified information so no idea what information is in there but hopefully it's a lot more accurate then what we can read on twitter and Reddit.

> Russia said Ukraine joining NATO was a red line in diplomatic discourse and then they acted on it.

They acted on what exactly, considering that - as far as I know - Ukraine is not a NATO member?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/biden-didnt-accept-putins-re...

I don't understand why you're still pursuing this argument when Kremlin has dropped the NATO pretext quite a long time ago. According to Putin[1], now it's a special operation to liberate Donbas from their Ukro-Nazi overlords. The Russian PR machine has recently been struggling to find better justifications to this pointless carbon copy of a 19th century colonial war.

As a result of this war, Finland and Sweden joined NATO, turning the Baltic Sea into NATO's internal waters, which isolates Kaliningrad and St Petersburg. Ukraine will sooner or later join it too. The whole western border from Sochi to Murmansk (except puppet state Belarus) will soon be in a mutual defence pact against further Russian aggression. So in this dimension, it's been a spectacular failure for Russia.

The argument of protecting Russians in Ukraine has become morbid at best, after Russia razed to the ground several major cities with large Russian populations, many of whom now lie in nameless mass graves. Daily missile attacks on civilians in eastern Ukraine, where disproportional number of Russians live, doesn't help the case either. After the spectacular counteroffensive, which expelled Russians from Kharkiv region, they have nothing left but threats of widening the war against civilians in pursuit of scorched-earth policy.

So what justifications of this war remain? What halftones are there to discuss? That maybe there still remain some undiscovered arguments in support of blowing up hospitals and power stations?

[1] https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1570808500053475331

Why do you believe the diplomatic situation is the same pre war as post war?

> Russia gave a number of pretexts for the invasion

Why would you pay attention to these, except as an exercise in PR strategy analysis?

Because the only reason people would even consider that the invasion would have been avoidable if only Ukraine had ruled out joining NATO is because Russia launched a PR campaign in advance of the invasion insisting that all it wanted was for Ukraine not to join NATO (its most effective PR strategy of the whole war)

In which case it's also worth taking into account that Russia was very loudly coming up with a bunch of other rationales for why it needed to go to war for domestic consumption, none of which would have gone away if Ukraine had ruled out joining NATO, making it even less likely that all Putin cared about was the remote possibility that it might join NATO at some unspecified time in future

> Russian being the bad guy doesn't make conflict inevitable. And if it does, then we're probably just buying time until full scale nuclear war within the next century and none of this actually matters.

One of the things that are crystal clear thanks to this war is that Russian army is in a deplorable state and while a few of their nuclear warheads still probably work, Russia can not be considered a threat in a conventional war except against a state like Azerbaijan.

What is the point of talking about previous actions or non-actions today? What will change if we spend our time and energy talking about past?

> so what is your take on the issues GP identified

I refuse to discuss it here, because much of the site's userbase seems incapable of having an even slightly nuanced political discussion, and I will possibly get a nasty comment from moderation accusing me of flame-baiting or something.

The best I can do it argue for epistemic humility, because at least people generally find that abstractly palatable.

> "Putin and other authoritarian strong men are worse than democratically elected politician ... the industrial output of Russia"

If your benchmark of how good a political system is is just its industrial output, China's anti-democratic system is better than Western systems. I can't even disagree with your argument, because it's not internally consistent.

So basically all you are doing is claiming to have a nuanced take, but you aren't capable of expressing it in a way that won't get caught by HN moderation who despite me being an eccentric hothead that can't always resist some snark manages to no accuse me of bad faith, and rarely if ever seems to censor interesting debates. Forgive me if I take this as evidence that your arguments and thought might be less nuanced and well developed than you claim.

And regarding the point of China, aside from being a very naive read of Chinese economic history (see PolyMatters series on China for evidence) this is a non-sequitur, the output of a completely different culture and system has nothing to do with the output of Russia, nor did I claim this was the completeness of my argument.

I observe again that all you seem to do is exclaim you cannot believe how stupid peoples arguments are for not being nuanced or developed enough, without stating your own take. For anyone reading this thread, pay note to this pattern, it's basically debate smell for someone not engaging in good faith.

> won't get caught by HN moderation who despite me being an eccentric hothead that can't always resist some snark manages to no accuse me of bad faith, and rarely if ever seems to censor interesting debates.

Have you considered that this may be because your comments are insufficiently original to ever fall outside of the overton window of the site?

> the output of a completely different culture and system has nothing to do with the output of Russia

My friend, you are the one who claimed that industrial output was the criteria by which we could judge the russian system is worse than the western one.

I agree this argument is nonsense.

> without stating your own take

I already explained why I can't do this on this site.

> model of any political situation resembles a moralizing children's cartoon

I'd actually be interested in those cartoons, if you have links. Propaganda pointed at kids is fascinating!

Quite a few one dimensional villains come to mind from my childhood:

Dora the Explorer's swiper the fox, G.I. Joe's cobra commander, He Man's skeletor, robbie rotten from lazy town

Still, I'd say it's a stretch to call, say, the oversimplification of the idea that stealing is wrong, propaganda.

Alice in Wonderland.

>we have issues where one side is the obvious aggressor completely in the wrong, they don't know how to comprehend it.

The fact that so many believe this to be 100% the case, actually makes the point of the OP. We should be able to condemn Russia and still point out that we're lying when we pretend the US didn't get this ball rolling when we funded and fomented a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and installed our puppets.[1][2]

We should also be able to discuss war crimes regardless of the perpetrators.[3] The fact that anybody who points these things out gets called a Russian bot, really just proves the point. Especially considering which side 90% of the bots are on...

[1]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

[2]https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/04/how-and-why-the-u-s-go...

[3]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/09/ukraine-must-...

Ah now, if the US had formented a coup in 2014 then why didn't the pro Russian people of Ukraine reelect the original people in later elections?

It seems to me at least that the Maida revolution was driven more by anger against corruption and a desire to join the EU than the US involvement (which there definitely was, along with Russian involvement).

Because the candidate was banned and the party dissolved.

And nazi paramilitary gangs were burning people alive and shelling cities.

But no Ukraine is pure as fresh fallen snow.

The extent to which westerners have internalised a fact free vitrolic hatred of russia is downright terrifying.

Because Yanukovych, after he was removed by Parliament, immediately fled to Russia.

Sure, but if it was a coup orchestrated by the US, the next elections would have returned someone similar to power, right?

That's not how coups work. Once in power the new regime changed the Constitution. Think of it as "pulling up the ladder" behind them.

> There is no equally valid argument against man-made climate change, evolution, gay rights, the right for people of color to exist without harassment, or Ukraine defending itself.

While I somewhat agree with you, a discussion is good and necessary. Without such a discussion the subject becomes a dogma, not something reasonable. When someone is against evolution or, say, GMO they most often don't understand it. When they learned how these things work, and maybe making some experiments themselves, they can either accept the facts of decide that their beliefs are more important than facts, which is their fair choice. If you take away a discussion, you eliminate that possibility.

I'd argue that, yes, there can be a valid counterargument against everything you mention. The only dangerous trend here is pretending that there are undeniable consensus. Especially if they were forged in the last 0.5-0.05% of the lifespan of humanity.

Also nobody is critizing Ukraine from defending itself. We're critizing Reddit and redditors in general for being hypocrites. Never in history were "people of color denied from existing without harassment", etc. What does people of color even mean? Doesn't that group comprise the vast majority of human beings?

You've swallowed an entire package of propaganda and, more importantly, implying that that's The Truth (tm) and that it cannot be argued with. That's why I think people like you are our biggest pressing problem.

> Never in history were "people of color denied from existing without harassment", etc.

I would suggest reading about Jim Crow, Red Lining, the fight against school integration, New York's Stop and Frisk, and a "Black Lives Matter" movement fighting against cops regularly shooting unarmed black men to death. I would suggest those things, if I had any indication your statements were being made in good faith.

Insistence we should respect the possibility that arguments against say, evolution are equally valid to arguments to arguments against it whilst altogether dismissing the idea that anyone in history has ever been subject to harassment because of their colour is an... interesting juxtaposition.

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