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guerrilla

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You're getting downvoted for the example, but this:

> Often times enemies agree on complete lies because it benefits them both.

is absolutely true.

At the risk of giving another controversial example: When one guy says "you're all a bunch of nazis!", and the self-identified nazi also says, with stars in their eyes, "yes! We are all nazis!" then it may perfectly well be that the persons so called are not all a bunch of nazis.

It's common for people on both sides of an issue to divide the world sharply into enemies and allies.

The Communist Party in the USSR was a party with communist ideology, aiming to achieve communism. They were communists, but they did not claim that USSR's system was communist at any point. The system was designed to industrialize the USSR, increase literacy and life standards and work towards achieving communism. It wasnt communism itself.

*Until the party was co-opted by authoritarian plutocrats. and still said all the same things without tangibly moving towards those goals.

What I understand from extensive study of the period's history is that they became a war-time administration, and stayed as one. Its no surprise considering the constant push for world war 3 from the US side and economic warfare. In the period, the US almost caused a nuclear war with its hostility, most of which during the time of Reagan, who mounted an all-encompassing military 'exercise' that was identical to a nuclear first strike. And all that, without the constant economic warfare.

Yeah, that's what they said and it was in the elite's material interest to say that, which is my point.

I disagree with such propositions. 'The elite's 'eliteness' in the USSR amounted to eating caviar, getting access to newest cars earlier, getting access to more desirable holiday locations. Otherwise all the citizens got access to everything - housing, free healthcare, education, higher education, childcare, paid maternity leave, paid vacations and all that.

Your premise is dubious. This is a definitional question, what’s the commonly accepted meaning of a word.

There’s no other way words are defined, widespread acceptance of the applicability of a term is self-proving.

The fact that the official government representatives of the whole world agree on the definition means that’s the definition.

It’s certainly possible there’s injustice embedded in word choice (consider what is and isn’t called terrorism, for example) but the system is providing a defensible result.

> The fact that the official government representatives of the whole world agree on the definition means that’s the definition.

It seems you misunderstood. That they did not agree on the definition is part of my point. They only agree on the word, to mean opposite things (the US meant dystopia, the USSR meant [on their way to] utopia.) In any case, it's just an example. See my other[1] comment for clarification of the general point.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33482679

In both cases they agreed in a clear and understandable way.

They agree the word means “the system of government and economics currently being practiced in the Soviet Union and affiliated countries”

Your assertion that the USSR should not be referred to as communist is incorrect. The relevant parties agree that it should, definitionally.

Asking a fact checking system to produce an alternate result isn’t a reasonable expectation.

> They agree the word means “the system of government and economics currently being practiced in the Soviet Union and affiliated countries”

No, neither had that definition for the word "communism" and as I said, it's beside the point, which you seemed to have missed even if that were true.

Meaning is use. And people neither think in definitions nor learn language through definitions (there is a reason dictionaries usually provide examples and use cases), it is an entirely artificial construct with limited use.

Don’t disagree with you on the epistemic point, but for that example, I don’t think anyone in the USSR was under the illusion that they had achieved communism. During the 60s the propaganda (originally for and then also used ironically) was that the USSR was “actually existing socialism”. It was of course run by the communist party, which I think is what people generally mean when they say it was communist.

It’s obvious in hindsight, but looking back there are plenty of thinkers that i look up to (e.g. Du Bois) that supported the regime far longer than is comfortable (so i’m hesitant to say i would have been any different at the time).

I agree with your point, just to add a little detail to your example- USSR & Co called themselves “socialist”. They considered socialism to be an imperfect intermediate state en route to communism.

The USSR never claimed to have “achieved communism”. I know there are Marxists who claim that the USSR wasn’t even properly socialist, but this sort of doctrinal bickering doesn’t make any historical difference until it reaches somewhere outside the realm of fringe radical movements and academic ivory towers. And even then, the power dynamics of the differing groups of adherents matter a lot more than the doctrinal nitpicking, just as with any other sectarian dispute.

Arguing about whether the Soviets were “true” Marxists is like arguing about whether the Roman Catholic Church is the “true” “catholic and apostolic church” of the Nicene Creed; at some point everyone who isn’t a theologian taking a break from the equally important “angels dancing on the head of a pin” problem just uses the word “Catholic” to refer to the biggest and most powerful institution that insists on calling itself that.

But, even setting all that aside, all you’ve proven is that finding common ground between two disagreeing viewpoints is insufficient. If you had to find a point of agreement between the US, USSR, and whatever disgruntled Trotskyites you could find, you’d address that point of disagreement as well.

> I know there are Marxists who claim that the USSR wasn’t even properly socialist,

You don't have to be a Marxist to claim that the USSR wasn't properly "socialist." You just have to read whoever you think lays out a clear definition of socialism, and compare it to the government of the USSR as observed.

When your analysis of the facts of the situation values the power dynamics of differing groups of adherents to fringe radical movements over simple observation and checking of requirements off of a list, you're caught up in political drama, not ideological drama.

It's a semantic argument and I'm not attached to any particular definition of socialism. Also, I find that most arguments that "the Soviet Union wasn't actually socialist" are disingenuous attempts by socialists to deflect from the fact that their ideas have never actually worked in practice, but that's beside the point somewhat.

You could have chosen an example that wouldn’t have led to a useless flamewar about the definition of the word “communism.” For example, the USSR agreed with Nazi Germany that Jews were a problem, Poland didn't deserve to exist, etc.

‘Horrible’ epistemology is a bit harsh (signal = approximate measure rather than direct), but this is indeed a valid loophole. Would be interesting to explore if third or fourth groups that do not benefit from the mutually agreed lie could feasibly counter this.

I don't think it's harsh at all. Such an epistemology contributes nothing but false positives because parties with conflicting interests agreeing has zero bearing on truth. It's not even a good rule of thumb; it's just completely useless and irrelevant to knowledge production. Most people believe in some kind of religion or other nonsense like astrology; that they disagree on other things yet agree on that has absolute no bearing on the truth of any of those things. Think about it.

"Nothing but false positives" is obviously over-the-top. Just yesterday they caught a pretty clear one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472161

It's not an epistemic problem. Twitter has to address their users' toxic behavior turning the whole place/world into a dump. Rather that the confrontation taking place in replies and quote tweets and spreading all over the network, it happens in birdwatch (in theory).

I agree that solid epistemology has better specificity and sensitivity for what's true, and that's the idea with independent fact-checker institutions, but it appears none have managed to gain or retain widespread trust.

An approximate correlation is progress here. If you know of a better heuristic I'd be very interested in hearing it.

Also, can we agree on what problem is most important to be solving right now? Is it 1) we haven't reached complete truth across all dimensions of knowledge or that 2) we need to build bridges crossing the massive societal trust schisms?

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