Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

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How is that "nice"? The fact that 3 years in we are still collaborating with Russia on the ISS and in other scientific programs is deeply disturbing. I get that the ISS is a special circumstance and a difficult knot to unravel. That's an extremely unique situation and it's not worth digging into at length for this situation. Life support onboard for all occupants relies on a continuing collaboration.

Beyond the ISS situation we should have completely cut all ties with Russia. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. Stolen children, assaulted women, and killed Ukrainian elderly and children. Not even digging into their internal recruitment policies, but the way they drag innocent Russian civilians into supporting their invasion is worth its own war crimes investigation.

Yes, this experiment is interesting and it's intriguing to me. But it's not "nice" when a few physicists are getting results at the expense of all the collective suffering going on right now.

I'm generally pragmatic about things, but in this situation cooperation is entirely uncalled for.

Meanwhile the US ignores joint efforts with China. They (China) have some interesting things going on right now. For an international space station, it's awful that a Chinese crew hasn't even been invited to the ISS despite allowing numerous rich folks going up for a week long vacation.

To be clear, I'm NOT supporting China. Their government is antithetical to a free society and is deeply partnered with Russia, N. Korea, and other states hostile to the EU and US.

But they are a major player in humans in space, and it's important to engage them at that level. Again, the ISS is a unique scenario.

The problem is these joint scientific efforts were and continue to be effective tools to diffuse more dangerous possibilities.

In case you have forgotten Russia is still the 2nd largest nuclear power and their arsenal is enough to eliminate pretty much all life on Earth.

The war in Ukraine is terrible but don't underestimate how much worse things could get. If things do get worse it's back channels like space collaboration/UN/other symbolic things that can keep people talking enough to not end up cleansing the Earth in nuclear fire. Just because those things are ineffective at stopping a proxy war doesn't mean they aren't worth doing.

For the same reason I also agree that China should be welcomed into the international space community. They are flying state of the art rockets and have their own modern space station... you couple that with the fact they too are an increasingly powerful military nation then more collaboration rather than less is the way to go.

Glad we agree on China at least.

I highly disagree about Russia being a modern nuclear power. China and Israel are really the only countries that have the modern infrastructure required to maintain significant nuclear presences other than the US. Russia today is mostly living off of the remnants of pre-1985 Soviet energy infrastructure investments.

They have some nuclear capability, but it's far, far below what the US still maintains. Sadly even a reduced capacity is still far above what's needed to mess things up.

a) This isn't true, quite the opposite.

b) The shilling for "#yolo, let's start nuclear war with Russia" is a bad idea. Trust me. You don't want to go there.

Living in the world as a hostage to nuclear weapon yielding crazies is a fate worse than death for some free-minded people.

Shame about those free-minded people; everyone else understands that it's how the world works and why everything isn't on fire. MAD is the foundation of international politics; everything else is role-playing on top of it.

> MAD is the foundation of international politics

MAD is a religion-like fiction by-for people who emotionally need it. People armed with nuclear weapons are coming for us, whether it's emotionally convenient for you or not. And it doesn't matter whether we have nukes, too.

> b) The shilling for "#yolo, let's start nuclear war with Russia" is a bad idea. Trust me. You don't want to go there.

Russia already went there. We're already there.

No, the constant shilling of the idea that "don't worry, Russia won't do anything anyways" isn't coming from Russia's side.

Eh, I wouldn't discount India and France so fast.

They’d have no issues producing a dozen Tsar Bombas even today, no question.

Plenty enough to ruin everyone’s day.

Tsar Bombas aren’t realistic weapons.

Russia is having trouble producing modern tanks and planes. Its ships are being blown up by radio controlled boats with explosives on them.

Russia absolutely excels at one thing: the relentless use of its human meat grinder. Nothing fundamental has changed since Stalingrad.

Russia also excels at MAD. And suffering.

Suffering yes -- to an extend that we here in the US have little understanding the depths of.

But re: MAD, my point may have been the emperor's new clothes.

The depths of... so far.

This isn't the choice or will of the citizens, the government just uses fear of death to exercise control.

I have no idea what you’re trying to say.

I don't care?

Good for you.

> I highly disagree about Russia being a modern nuclear power

Look, I'm as pissed at Russia as anyone but it doesn't change the facts. They are indisputably a modern nuclear power, and they have ramped up their spending in recent years. It's practically the only thing in their defense they haven't starved of funds.

> They have some nuclear capability

They don't have "some" nuclear capability. They are equal first or near enough.

> China and Israel are really the only countries that have the modern infrastructure

Israel!?? Now I'm really questioning your source of information. Whoever told you tiny Israel was anything other than dead last was leading you quite astray, I'm afraid. In fact some would say that Israel's nuclear capability is behind some other countries who don't even possess the weapons.

>their arsenal is enough to eliminate pretty much all life on Earth

Lol, not even close.

I hate the russian regime and what its doing to ukraine too.

Still there is something comforting about putting aside our differences, petty and otherwise, to do science.

After all, its not like the Russian scientists involved personally ordered the invasion.

Everyday Russians, including scientists, should feel consequences for their government's murders.

Except for the ISS (complicated, as noted), I'm astounded that anything goes in or out of Russia: people, goods, services, atoms, electrons.

For non-restricted goods, it's still the fastest non-air transport route from China to Germany.

We'll have to at least pay for the track maintenance and electricity usage caused by that, so why should we listen to a country that isn't affected? BTW the next best option would be to send war ships to the red sea and put the shipping corridor under effectively European control, would that be preferred?

There aren't many "innocent" countries out there. In your opinion we should all focus our energy on shunning and hating each other because of it?

No I don't.

This situation is acute, and will spread.

The only way Germany was stopped in 1945 was by a collective decision to defeat them militarily, by multiple participating countries.

That won't happen this time around, because WWIII is all but unthinkable.

The only thing left is for Russian citizens to be motivated enough to stop it. That's a hard lift, but if they feel it long enough, they might get it.

In any case, after arming Ukraine, it's about all we have.

I'm a US citizen, and I recognize my country has done some terrible things, but I shouldn't have to personally feel the consequences for those things.

At the same time, I wouldn't want random Russian citizens to have to feel the consequences for things their government has done.

Your bad argument is the same one that spurs Islamic terrorists into stabbing random people.

Our government is doing some terrible things. I voted for this government and I feel I should take some responsibility for it. I accept that there may be consequences, potentially awful ones.

I am afraid we are about to vote in a government that will do even more harm -- including to me personally. I think that a lot of people are choosing that harm deliberately. But even worse is a lot of people who are willing to accept that harm to me but without feeling any responsibility at all.

The world is difficult. We make hard choices to live together. We do our best, or at least most of us do. I wish there were more empathy, and I accept that this means I feel guilt.

The Russians are not really a democracy and their understanding of the world is severely warped by their media. And even those more clear on the situation can do only a little. But the more they individually feel a responsibility, the sooner they can collectively do something.

Did you ever consider that USAians are not really a democracy and their understanding of the world is severely warped by their media? It is 100% true, by the way.

Of course. But I'm as certain as I can manage (in an epistemologically challenging world) that we're closer to those goals than Russia is.

I'm not especially interested in false equivocation as an argument. It's cheap and boring.

> I'm generally pragmatic about things

Not nearly pragmatic enough. Of course the war is terrible and of course Russia is to blame. But the world doesn't stop moving and high level co-operation still needs to continue. Russia is still a big, powerful, important country and we can't just cancel everything in a fit of spite.

I mean, even Ukraine, even while it's being brutalized by its neighbor, still maintains high level connections to organize prisoner transfers. There's regular communication between the RUAF and NATO to deconflict and identify each other's assets to avoid misunderstandings and accidents. All of this continues, war or not, because everyone knows the alternative is just that much worse.

It's no different for the scientific cooperation. War or not, everyone knows it is in everyone's best interest for cooperation to continue. The scientific ties long predate the war, and will continue long after everyone has forgotten it, too.

And I'm surprised you then completely contradict your moral point - which I disagree with, but it is a point - by suggesting the West engage with China, a prospect against which almost the exact same argument can be made. Of course, taking the "we only co-operate with partners with sparkling moral rectitude" line even further, you could argue that no-one should be co-operating with the USA, with its two disastrous recent wars, either. See where this goes?

I see it more simplistically. If there's two guys love neutrinos, neutrinos is they passion, one happens to be born in Russia, one in US (neither one chose to be born there), and they want to work together to understand life, the universe, everything, then so what? What matters more, life, the universe, everything, or some years-long dramatic squabble, years long on the scale of a 5 billion year old planet and millions year old species and perhaps tens of thousands of years old civilization.

The "ideal" of science is that there should be this purity, this honesty, etc. Deviations do occur, politics are common in science itself, data falsification, etc, but we must not let that deny the purity ideal. In the same way, I believe the idea here is to acknowledge that purity over political differences as something transcendent to politics. But yes, such collaborations do have political value in terms of being a "relationship". And yes of course I don't want to poo-poo politics. Whereas it's true that politics is as inescapable to the human condition as say language, perhaps we shouldn't let political constraints guide and dictate scientific work just as we shouldn't let linguistic barriers limit science, both part of the human condition, both miniscule in the face of the work being done.

> The fact that 3 years in we are still collaborating with Russia on the ISS and in other scientific programs is deeply disturbing.

Do you think Putin cares about scientific programs enough to stop killing people?

All the "we won't talk to Putin, but will buy Russian gas reexported by another murderer Aliyev" is very nice and emotional, but it did not have any positive effect.

If instead of all of this theater with sanctions, EU and US gave more weapons from the start, and removed regulations to drop oil prices, Ukraine would have won at the end of 2022, and at a much smaller cost than damage to the EU economy already caused by sanctions.

This project highlights the complexity of the real world. Not all of russia is evil. So why should the good be isolated, starved, punished? True, people in power can cause irreparable harm to neighboring nations, or even their own (Stalin?) Do we therefore obliterate all contributions of Soviet math, science and engineering and expunge them from our internet?

In the face of injustice caused by politicians and corporations, we must privately support those individuals doing good work.

As far as I can tell the US is fully, and I mean fully, on Israel’a side, even though the genocide now happening in Gaza is a very real thing.

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