Well it’s certainly hard to tell sometimes. People will bring up Russia out of nowhere just to point out that it’s not any worse than the US.
Russia: Other countries do bad things too!™
Russia: Other countries do bad things too!™
Your comment reads like “whatever, shut tf up” and nothing else. What you expect from that?
1. This other empire/country invades countries (BAD). It would be weird for them to philosophize about “a philosophy for hard times”—that’s like a cold-blooded murderer trying to find a philosophy for the mental anguish that killing causes him, for those “hard times” (okay we’re two similes/metaphors down here maybe time to stop)
2. Likewise people shouldn’t be surprised and react with negativity[1] when someone points out that this empire/country does it (America)
Instead they seem to have interpreted in this backwards, roundabout way:
1. We’re talking about America and the military
2. The main topic is not even how the military kills people, btw (that’s just the backdrop)
3. Russia enters out of left-field: Hey America invades countries so therefore it’s okay that Russia did it!
Quite bizzare.
[1] When I replied that reply was downvoted and at the bottom of the thread
I’ll take the explanation though.
A good writer predicts and suppresses associations in advance, but it’s not always feasible. The main issue itt is that skewed associations are its own topic.
But in this case it’s also the literal meaning. You can’t say (or imply) that A is just as bad as B without also saying that B is no worse than A. Call it the anti-symmetric property of partial orderings if that helps.
Wrong on two counts.
1. These kinds of comparisons hone in on the thing the two things have in common. Invading places. This goes back to my “salient commonality” point. Which you rejected. But now you’re back to claiming that a comparison makes things equal. They don’t. They show that two things have two specific things in common.
2. “You’re saying both those things”, referring to my second thing “it’s okay that Russia did it!” (the wrong interpretation). Somehow you’ve gone from “these two things are just as bad” (covered by (1)) to “therefore Russia doing it is okay”. I still can’t make sense of that.
> Call it the anti-symmetric property of partial orderings if that helps.
Dressing it up in fancy language doesn’t make it true.
I can’t coax your interpretation into the correct lane. Even when they are so obviously wrong.
Have you stopped beating your wife? I don’t care if you’re a wifebeater, no judgement. I’m just randomly curious.
Saying that someone is both a Russian and pro-Invasion (by your faulty interpretation) has a well-deserved stigma.
And other people think this is a bad way to think.
I wonder if one approach is better than the other. I suppose it depends on one's goals, and perhaps on some other things.
That’s what is at the heart of it.
> People will bring up Russia out of nowhere just to point out that it’s not any worse than the US.
Like most people who yell “whataboutism” as if it is an argument you don’t make the effort to parse the salient commonality between these two countries: they both invade places.
Being worse or better in some greater picture has got nothing to do with it.
The reason they need to keep doing that is because it seems necessary to counter/deflate the relentless "hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hyprocrisy" tide of thinking that tends to dominate what passes for discussion on the topic (backed by a lot of broken or distorted narratives about what actually did happen).
And also, because in fact there are substantial differences between the current aggression in Ukraine and what the US has done in most of it recent adventures (the Iraq invasion the one notable exception). So while there are commonalities between what these countries do, by and large they really aren't that "salient". To suggest that they are is, well, whataboutism.
I understand if you think it’s tedious to bring up America’s war efforts on tangentially related topics. There’s a time and place for everything. I used a more subtle hint in my first comment on this submission[1] while also addressing Stoicism (or stoicism). But I didn’t like when someone was downvoted for simply saying that going into self-made conflicts on the other side of the world might make someone question if the team they were fighting for had righteous reasons to fight.
> They don't "yell" whataboutism, they kindly point it out in context.
:)
Since you refer to them and not you I can say that this point (non-argument) is brought up to shut down the conversation since whataboutism is (in their minds) basically a fallacy.
It’s not “kind” but so are non of the conversation points on such a topic. So that’s whatever.
> And they already know that the US invades places, and have fully "parsed the salient commonality" that you seem to think is so elusive to them.
No one would presume that people have been living under a rock for half a century or so. That would be daft. Everyone knows that the US invades places. And plenty of people think that’s either good or that it’s bad but it was done with good intentions, so therefore no one is to blame.
> The reason they need to keep doing that is because it seems necessary to counter/deflate the relentless "hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hyprocrisy" tide of thinking that tends to dominate what passes for discussion on the topic
Counter it with what?
Your “deflate” is quite on point. Why have an argument when you can do a whataboutism-deflate? Then you don’t need to provide any arguments.
But then the other thread participants need to be on board with the thinking that it’s a slam-dunk. Which wasn’t the case this time.
> (backed by a lot of broken or distorted narratives about what actually did happen).
With that? It’s actually different?
> And also, because in fact there are substantial differences between the current aggression in Ukraine and what the US has done in most of it recent adventures (the Iraq invasion the one notable exception). So while there are commonalities between what these countries do, by and large they really aren't that "salient". To suggest that they are is, well, whataboutism.
See the original comment:[2]
> > What scientists call the “are we the baddies?-syndrome”
It’s never quite the same when the aggressor is “us” (the US or whatever else). Then any such comparison is obviously wrong and not nuanced.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41724980
[2]: Which is from a skit, probably not a researched symptom. Right?
I think not. And in particular, I find the the position that "hypocrisy, or rather weakly supported insinuations of hypocrisy, in regard to a certain evil is a vastly more vital and pressing topic than the actual evil happening on the ground itself" (to sum up these discussions in a nutshell) to be especially non-worthy of protracted discussion and "nuanced" debate.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, such as debates and counter-debates about whataboutism on HN.
I can’t keep up with your trains of interpretation.
Whatever the actual evil happening on the ground is, it can’t be about the submission since that’s just about lounging in a lecture hall and talking about philosophy. So I’m at a loss as regards the thing we’re being distracted from.
> God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, such as debates and counter-debates about whataboutism on HN.
God, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, such as people responding to me on a topic that I myself started.
Doesn’t sound as reasonable in that formulation.
Right, not the original submission but the reference to the Russo-Ukraine war, mid-thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41748747 - and in reference to which, pointless/vacuous accusations of hypocrisy tend to emerge with depressing regularity. Judging by the volume and tenacity of their output, a lot of people do seem to feel that the topic of Western hypocrisy is vastly more important and interesting than that of the genocide/invasion itself, basically.
If it were just about people lounging in a lecture hall, I wouldn't have chimed in at all.