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Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

Great, cohesive, and clear essay! Hear hear.

One thing that I think is underappreciated in our current times, that gets lost on both the left and the right sides -- an individual is more important than their identity.

- A specific trans person can also be an asshole.

- A specific white man can also be a saint.

Extremists on both political sides will scream about the reasons one or the other of those statements is wrong, but doing so lumps all possible individuals of an identity into a "them" category to which blanket statements, positive or negative, can be applied.

That reductionism feels incredibly insulting to our shared, innate humanity.

Are there all kinds of subconscious and societal biases that seriously influence our perceptions of others on the basis of their identity? Sure!

But it doesn't change the goal of treating the person standing in front of you, first and foremost and always, as an individual person.

Be curious. Be courteous and respectful. Be a normal, nice goddamn human to human across the table from you.

(And maybe, if you feel so inclined, have some compassion about what they did to get to that table)

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Good thought. The only change I'd make, to make your neutrality explicit, is to say

- A specific trans person can be an an asshole. A specific trans person can be a saint.

- A specific white man can be an asshole. A specific white man can be a saint.

Yes, the also implies that there is a default.

> Be curious. Be courteous and respectful. Be a normal, nice goddamn human to human across the table from you.

The unintuitive thing is that both this article and pg's essay are both advocating this! They're each complaining about another group being mean.

Paul Graham's essay doesn't mention anything about LGBT people or issues. It doesn't really say what specific events he may have in mind, but it complains that woke people are being intolerant, sometimes bullying or ostracizing people for their beliefs, and trying to enforce allegiance to their side over honesty.

The author of this essay is reading between the lines and assuming pg is a bigot who might discriminate against a trans person. They say actions like pg's are "mean", "unkind", and "malicious".

I think a lot of this has to do with people being polarized and viewing every political statement in terms of which team it supports: if someone says something against your team, that means they must be on the other team, and are therefore evil. But regardless of the reasons, these uncharitable assumptions (on both sides) cause way too much conflict between people with similar core values.

I don't think either author would discriminate against anyone based on their sexuality or gender. One can disagree with pg's criticisms without calling him a bigot.

Be curious. Be courteous and respectful. Be a normal, nice goddamn human to human across the table from you.

In general I wholeheartedly agree. But if the person in front of you has done or advocated for things that cause harm or is themself a horrible person then I disagree.

Fair, but in our current times using someone's identity as a justification to act like an asshole to them is a sith's whisper.

We all have our less enlightened moments. Better we not afford ourselves easy intellectual justifications for being our worst selves.

As the quip goes: the greatest evils are perpetrated by those most assured of their own righteousness.

Edit: Or in video form. Beginning summary: "brick suit guy" was apparently an extremely aggressive heckler of the media at Trump rallies. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fRSIv7alUZ8&t=95s

In normal times I would agree with you. At present in the U.S. I’d not agree with this sentiment. People who support electing a known racist, thief, con man, and felon are deserving of ridicule and ire. They don’t deserve respect in my opinion.

When the politics of a nation shift so far in one direction we get into a situation where supporters of that shift don’t deserve respect. Stalinist Soviet Union is an extreme example of this.

So what lengths do you think you're justified going to against individuals you disagree with?

And how do you feel about them feeling the same about you?

Mutual righteous hostility is why ethnic and religious wars simmer forever, because there's always a convenient justification for acting violently towards others (and them towards you).

… justified going to against individuals you disagree with?

I don’t do anything at this time. But I understand why there are those who do have vitriol for supporters of a rapist who lusts after his own daughter. There are times when a nation’s society fractures as the social cohesion evaporates. We are beginning to be in such a time in the U.S. Well, it appears that way to me. Only time will tell.

Then you don't agree at all. Every single adult in the world has "done or advocated for things that cause harm". It's inescapable.

Great harm then? I’m not morally obligated to to treat Putin with respect. Most people agree that there are people who are so reprehensible that they don’t deserve respect.

There are obvious bad/evil actors in the world. When people talk about engaging with other humans respectfully, they're generally not referring to the Putins of the world.

And it's pretty rare to have so much clarity about a person to know they're in the "obviously reprehensible" bucket.

I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but I often see people argue like this:

1. There are obviously bad actors in the world

2. Nobody would argue those bad actors should be given respect

3. So I won't respect people I come across who disagree with me

The fallacy is in the jump from 2 to 3, and the assumption that the existence of bad actors means the person I'm interacting with right now is one of them. The vast majority of people aren't Putin, nor can they be judged so quickly/clearly. And setting aside whether or not someone like that deserves respect, there's also a clear difference between respecting someone for who they are vs. behaving in a respectful manner out of self-preservation. The latter may ultimately keep you alive.

Herein lies the crux of the matter in my view. The jump from 2 to 3. When Bob Dole ran for President I wholeheartedly agreed with the position about being respectful to those you disagree with. Politics was still normal in the U.S. at that time. But now we in the U.S. elected a known rapist. A felon and a con man. He can’t run a charity in New York due to his misdeeds. He lusts after his own daughter. We have entered into an era where supporters of one party’s President deserve the assumption of being terrible people.

Now obviously there are many people who disagree with the above. But this is how I see things and I act accordingly. The call for civility comes from those who hold terrible beliefs. We are well into the Paradox of Tolerance situation in the U.S.

> The call for civility comes from those who hold terrible beliefs.

Oof, that's a lot of assumption.

"over 50% of the country i live in are irredeemably terrible people" is obviously hyperbole -- if it were true, the onus would be on you to start taking action against those terrible people. but my guess is you don't actually think they're so terrible, because you're still working your 9-5 for your terrible-person boss, getting paid like every other schmuck, and you're happy to let those irredeemably terrible people deliver your DoorDash, teach your children at public school, and keep your electricity and water running.

"over 50% of the country i live in are irredeemably terrible people"

A large majority of the people did not vote for Donald Trump.

but my guess is you don't actually think they're so terrible,

People who support Donald Trump are, in general, terrible people. They aren’t evil people doing evil things so why would I have an obligation to take action against them?

It is a fact of life that we all must live amongst people who we think are terrible human beings. Of course I haven’t the slightest idea what a person’s views are for almost everyone I interact with. I give everyone the assumption that they deserve respect until proven otherwise.

Given the context of the thread it’s ironic that you don’t seem to understand what it means to give the assumption of respect to people. I think you edited your disparaging remarks to me. It was hilarious to read those remarks given the context of the discussion at hand. Feel free to put them back. I don’t mind them.

> People who support Donald Trump are, in general, terrible people

This is not true, and that shows your narrow mindset. To give you the benefits of the doubt, can you explain why Trump supporters are not only wrong, but generally "terrible people"?

I have no desire to change anyone’s mind about their political views. Anyone who supports a known rapist and felon and who openly takes bribes can not be convinced of anything. I don’t engage in political discussions with such people. There is no consistency in their beliefs so no meaningful discusion can be had.

> my guess is you don't actually think they're so terrible, because you're still working your 9-5 for your terrible-person boss

"You continue to labor in order to feed yourself rather than suicide-bombing your neighbors, so therefore you're lying" is a HELL of a take.

To me, the issue boils down to pragmatism and utility.

It’s just human psychology; people tend not to change their minds when someone screams at them and otherwise disrespects them. If the goal is to move society in any particular direction, that requires some degree of successful communication, and throwing respect out the window directly counteracts the goal. If the goal is just to hold some moral high ground for the sake of it, that’s a pointless goal if it doesn’t lead to any underlying change.

Collectively, we don’t need to change the minds of obviously evil people, but we do need to influence the population that can vote them into or out of power. I just don’t see that ever happening if your outlook on life is this extreme:

> We have entered into an era where supporters of one party’s President deserve the assumption of being terrible people

I know many people have convinced themselves that this is true, but this ultimately boils down to the question: so what then is the goal? To push these people deeper into their bubbles?

At some point one has to ask how much of the problem is being directly created by this “they’re all terrible people so I won’t even talk to them” mindset.

My personal view is as follows. American society has reached a point of no return. Something has to give before a new equilibrium has been found. As an extreme example look to Nazi Germany. The repugnant views that were normal in 1939 Germany weren’t normal in 1960 Germany. A similar (though far less extreme) change will happen in the U.S.

For me, my desire is secession. The country needs to beak up. This is an extreme view but will likely be increasingly held by people with similar political beliefs as mine.

Why is the comparison always Nazi Germany?

By the way, the jury explicitly rejected the rape allegation. So you're just making stuff up from your high-horse:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a...

I didn’t compare anything to Nazi Germany. I gave Nazi Germany as an example of how what is socially acceptable can drastically change in a short period of time.

I apologize. He was found liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation. These distinctions are extremely important. He’s not quite as bad as I made him out to be. What about him calling his daughter a nice piece of ass? The other stuff?

The judge said that Trump was guilty of rape, as it is commonly defined.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-car...

> “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Kaplan wrote.

He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Kaplan said New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”

The former requires forcible, unconsented-to penetration with one’s penis. But he said that the conduct the jury effectively found Trump liable for — forced digital penetration — meets a more common definition of rape. He cited definitions offered by the American Psychological Association and the Justice Department, which in 2012 expanded its definition of rape to include penetration “with any body part or object.”

The colloquial definition of rape includes using your fingers, which is what he did. The fact that the specific NY law defines digital violation as a separate offense from "rape" doesn't make using the term improper for the non-NY-lawyers among us.

I'm going to be pedantic for a second, as a sort of dark coping mechanism:

>Anyone who supports a known rapist and felon and who openly takes bribes can not be convinced of anything

Clearly, they can be convinced of something, just not anything you or I might consider good.

In all seriousness, I think the truly disturbing thing about this whole sorry situation is just how many people don't actually hold any durable ethics or morality, just rank self-interest. Pearl clutching over the death of American dreams like economic mobility is a sideshow to the death knell of American idealism. America is not the shining city on a hill we thought it was, and honestly, it never was.

Clearly, they can be convinced of something, just not anything you or I might consider good.

Yeah. I should have been more precise.

The country deserves what is going to happen.

> For me, my desire is secession. The country needs to beak up. This is an extreme view but will likely be increasingly held by people with similar political beliefs as mine.

So, you envision an enormous red country plus about forty or so small nation-states, virtually none of whom can support themselves and would be defeated by the red state's military and agricultural output in days?

Secession is unworkable. Whoever secedes from the most militarily powerful nation in history gets wiped off the map in twelve hours.

Do you realize the exact same things can be said about the President we had for the last four years?

It's really hard to worry about your own guy being a scumbag, when the opposition supports a scumbag too (and then lies about it).

Biden hasn’t been convicted of felonies. He’s not an adjudicated rapist. He doesn’t refer to his daughter as a nice piece of ass. He isn’t banned from running a charity. He hasn’t bribed any porn stars. He hasn’t accepted $30 billion in bribes. He hasn’t taken secret documents to illegally keep in his bathroom. He hasn’t met with Putin alone without an interpreter or any other U.S. official present. He hasn’t made fun of a reporter’s disability. He didn’t appoint his son-in-law to be an advisor who then accepted bribes from Saudi Arabia. He hasn’t engaged in Twitter feuds with 15 year old kids from Sweden. He didn’t threaten to withhold disaster aid to states that didn’t vote for him.

Nothing I’ve said against Trump is about his politics. He, as a person, is narcissistic, self centered, selfish, boorish, infantile, incurious, lustful, and greedy. He’s a despicable person and those who support him are terrible people.

You aren't aware of what was found on Hunter's laptop, or in Ashley's diary (she had to choose her showering times carefully to make sure her father wouldn't join her), or Tara Reed's allegations. To say Biden hasn't accepted $30 billion in bribes, in particular, is laughably funny, and he was caught having secret documents kept illegally in his garage. He is on record threatening aid from Ukraine unless they fired a particular prosecutor who was investigating his son. He has, for all intents and purposes, withheld disaster aid from North Carolina, who didn't vote for him. He has plagiarized speeches several times over the years -- indeed, this is what derailed his first attempt to run for President, back in the 1980s. And he hasn't been particularly nice to reporters, and considering what he is on record saying to constituents, I can confidentially say that the only reason he doesn't engage in Twitter feuds is because he's too senile to be allowed near Twitter.

Biden, as a person, is narcissistic, self centered, selfish, boorish, infantile, incurious, lustful, and greedy. He’s a despicable person and those who support him are terrible people.

Either that, or they are just ignorant -- because the mainstream press has worked hard to hide these kinds of things from us. It is why trust in them has plummeted over the last few years.

Great. We are in agreement that a person who engages in odious behavior is not worthy of support. As such Donald Trump is not worthy of support.

If you want to discuss Biden then start another thread. This one is about Donald Trump.

"If you want to discuss Biden then start another thread. This one is about Donald Trump."

You cannot talk about Trump without putting him in context. The fact is, the reason why we have Trump for President again, is because the person who replaced him was so horrible, that Trump looked better in comparison.

And what's more, conisdering what I said -- and what you are responding to -- I have to bring up Biden, because my entire point is "both sides do it". If you want to bring back honor and decency to the White House, you have to do it with an honorable and decent person. Neither Biden nor Harris fit that bill.

You cannot talk about Trump without putting him in context.

I can. I did. It doesn’t need context. It’s well documented the things he did.

The fact is, the reason why we have Trump for President again…

This is not an established fact.

… Harris fit that bill.

Harris’ moral and ethical failings are nothing compared to Trump. You can do what I did and not vote and not support either candidate. Stand up for truth and righteousness and stop trying to justify your support for a person as shitty as Trump. It’s a choice to defend shitty behavior. When you do so you end up smelling like shit.

"Harris’ moral and ethical failings are nothing compared to Trump. You can do what I did and not vote and not support either candidate. Stand up for truth and righteousness and stop trying to justify your support for a person as shitty as Trump. It’s a choice to defend shitty behavior. When you do so you end up smelling like shit."

She implicitly supported Biden. She was complicit in all the lies that were pushed about Biden, particularly those about his fitness for the position. She endorsed going after political enemies with the legal system -- and then had the gall to claim that Trump would do just that himself.

And then to go on and claim that if you supported a crappy candidate, then those people are crappy too, you have basically condemned the 95% or so who voted for one or the other -- for motivations that are well beyond either yours or my understanding -- this attitude right here is why politics is so toxic these days.

Do you not see how you're part of the problem? You're applying cherry-picked standards that just happen to match what Trump did because you'd already been brainwashed to hate him and his supporters. What if you judge presidents by how many deaths they cause in wars instead of what dirty jokes they made? Wouldn't that be more meaningful measure of badness? No because you're cherry-picking to support your pre-existing hatred that you were driven to by the news and social media.

Cherry picked facts? Ha. Being a rapist is a cherry picked fact?

The difference between me and you is that I consistently apply my morals and ethics. I don’t support rapists and bribe takers for President. I didn’t support Clinton when it became clear what he did and I don’t support Trump. Have a higher standard for yourself. Don’t support bad people.

I do judge George W. Bush for the deaths he caused. Obama too.

Fair enough, they're all bad. Maybe except Biden?

As far as I know, Trump wasn't convicted of rape, so it's maybe a bit of stretch to call him a rapist.

No, I don't really think you're right about this.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. That's a right I wouldn't take away form them even if I could.

They are not entitled to me being nice to them. Fuck that; if they advocate for something that I think is harmful, then I'm not going to be "respectful" to them.

My grandmother in no uncertain terms said that my wife should be deported. She doesn't have any power deport my wife, so she wouldn't fall into the "bad actor" in your definition, but she's made her opinion clear on that.

I could swallow my pride, roll my eyes, and ignore the horrible racist shit she says, but why exactly? The whole point of free speech is the ability to criticize bad ideas, and sometimes that's going to involve hurting a Republican's feelings.

Sure I can support that. The difficulty as always comes with the grey area in defining "great". There are truly reprehensible people in the world, but they're the exception not the norm. I see you did address that in your comment with "in general" so I was a bit strong in my wording, but I do believe the in general case covers >99.99% of people.

It’s like.. incredibly escapable. Nihilism makes for a weak argument

Moral hubris - where one believes all of one's positions are morally correct - is the shortest path to becoming a monster.

Stupid and vapid. Tech is already full to the brim with people with zero moral convictions aside from the things that get them paid. Those are the real monsters

At least someone being paid to make your life worse can often also be paid to stop. I'm more afraid of someone convinced that they're saving the world as they destroy it instead.

Why are you writing in the tone of a Christoper Nolan movie? These hypotheticals have literally nothing to do with real life.

> But if the person in front of you has done or advocated for things that cause harm or is themself a horrible person then I disagree.

the current conflict in the middle east shows why this doesn't work in the long run.

despite what a generation that grew up consuming Marvel films was led to believe, not every conflict is a clearly defined superhero-vs-supervillain, good-vs-evil affair. eventually, you will be the one who, according to some, is advocating for things that cause harm and is considered a horrible person.

Most definitely. Each person decides for themselves where the lines are drawn.

Very underrated comment. Right and wrong are largely a function of culture, not universal law.

> Right and wrong are largely a function of culture, not universal law.

Sure, but then you're handwaving away questions about why cultures align along similar axioms.

[flagged]

according to gedpeck, nearly everyone in Africa and Asia, and every single practicing Muslim, is a horrible person...

I said no such thing.

Do they? Different cultures have widely different axioms. E.g. compare Islam and Christianity. Not to begin with cultures far away geographically from each other.

I dunno man.. When someone advocates for treating another person as "not human" or wants to deny them basic human rights, that's universally wrong in my book.

dehumanization of the other side is one of the most used tools of war propaganda of all sides. Just look at people in the west joking about orcs

But if someone acts inhuman then it’s justified. Russia’s war crimes are well documented and they started the war. When you are the baddies then expect to be called so.

Wait are we still in the thread discussing that it's childish to call one side baddies?

It’s not childish to call bad people bad.

You're still in the goodies-vs-baddies mindset. Western media pushes people into that way of thinking but it's the Marvel level view and is wrong. Also, look at all the people who think Russia is the baddies for starting that war, but Israel is the baddies despite not starting its war. That's an arbitrary standard people invented to justify their simply goodie-baddie view. If you apply a different standard to every war, then it's not really a standard, is it?

It’s mostly about willful acts of violence against innocents. This might be a nuance that is too subtle though. Bad acts and bad actors should be called out. Russia is the bad actor in the Ukrainian invasion. Hamas and IDF are bad actors in their conflict.

Ukraine has also bombed civilians and engages in random/statistical attacks against Russian cities - technically a war crime. We can even stretch out the definition of innocents to include Russians or North Koreans that are forced to fight and have no options. Should Ukraine surrender and let the Russians take over? Clearly the path of least violence against innocents on both sides? All I'm saying is things aren't as clear/simple as you try to present them.

Sometimes violence is unavoidable and often it will impact innocents as well.

I agree bad acts need to be called out but you're casting too wide of a net and that just leads to a loss of clarity/nuance. Is there any war action that doesn't fall under "willful acts of violence against innocents"? Are we talking about "collateral" damage? Are we talking about the Geneva Convention?

Why is Russia a bad actor? Because they invaded? They claim to have legitimate reasons, security concerns, treatment of ethnic Russians or separatists in Ukraine? What if we side with them on the legitimacy of starting the war, does that change anything?

Can you provide specific evidence that Ukraine is intentionally targeting civilians, and not (for instance) flying a drone that gets affected by GPS jamming and hits a building unintentionally?

If you know the Russians are jamming GPS then what's the difference at this point?

There are some examples here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_in_Russia_during_the_R...

or how about:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/18/russia-says-uk...

Just to be clear I'm not claiming the Russians are the good guys and the Ukranians are the bad guys. I'm just pointing out it's not as simple as someone did something bad in a war. You need to look at the totality of evidence and circumstances, challenge your own viewpoints and listen to people arguing the opposite of what you think, reach some conclusions and always be open to adjust to new evidence. Be aware of who is trying to manipulate you and why, what are the biases of the various sources of information etc. Again not that I think Russia are the good guys but things are never black and white. The west did meddle in Ukraine which in my world view is a good thing but unsurprisingly Putin perceived as aggression/attack on Russia's sphere of influence. To me it boils down to Putin being a force against western values that I'm aligned with.

>If you know the Russians are jamming GPS then what's the difference at this point?

"Why even bother if the chance of success is less than 100%"

Ukrainian attacks are very frequently successful despite GPS jamming and air defense. And vice versa.

>Just to be clear I'm not claiming the Russians are the good guys and the Ukranians are the bad guys. I'm just pointing out it's not as simple as someone did something bad in a war.

I have yet to see any videos of Ukrainian soldiers filming themselves laughing while using a knife to slowly decapitate a live prisoner. Or cut their balls off. Or put their decapitated heads on spikes. Or execute a dozen Russian POWs at a time

Ukrainian TV channels don't expound on the need to kill "as many as 2 million civilians" to denazify their opponent the way that Russian TV does fairly regularly. I've not seen any Ukrainians wave around the skull of a Russian killed in Russia live on stage at a metal concert.

I haven't seen those videos which is probably a good thing. Russians are known for their brutality. Doubtless there is brutality on the Ukrainian side as well. Both side have exchanged many prisoners so clearly it's not a matter of policy to execute them. Many Russians have family in Ukraine and vice versa.

It's pretty much a bloody mess. It's also complicated. For me it boils down to the fight between freedom and democracy and oppression and totalitarianism. Putin wants the world to be a worse place for all of us and is willing to have hundreds of thousands of people die for that.

> If you know the Russians are jamming GPS then what's the difference at this point?

Intent?

By the way, one could just as well argue that Russia is putting its civilians in harm’s way by jamming GPS and causing drones to strike off-target.

But then everyone is a bad actor. All the countries supplying arms to Ukraine are perpetuating the war and causing more deaths, so they're bad actors. As is Ukraine itself of course. You can't actually define that in way that has any use. It's ultimately just whatever your cultural influences led you to believe.

People should just be honest and admit they're nationalists, other kinds of ideologists, or just trying to fit in when it comes to opinions about war, because that's really all it is. If it was really unambiguous who was a bad actor, it wouldn't be a war in the first place because everyone would agree.

I think it makes much more sense, and is more productive, to reason about good and bad acts, than people.

Especially with regard to conglomerates of people, like whole nations, or whole governments. Having said that, some people and some groups do fall heavily on one side or the other. But most groups are a dynamic mix of players and situations, not good or bad in any rational or stable way.

But that's still too simplistic. It's certainly not fair to say that every single Russian (or non-Russian!) soldier who is or has been in Ukraine is a "baddie". Some are trapped by their circumstances to fight in a war they don't believe in and don't agree with.

It's easy to say, "well then they should refuse to fight", but you are not that person, and you don't know their struggles or what they feel they are capable of doing.

I think it's reasonable to say that Putin and his war-mongering crones are baddies, but you just said "Russia" and "they started the war". Lumping all people together like that is how we dehumanize people and fail to find common ground that can improve everyone's situation.

OK, but in practice what sort of common ground do you think we can find here? Because it sure seems like the only possible solution is to give Ukraine enough advanced weapons to exterminate all the orcs. If you have a feasible alternative then I'm sure we'd all love to hear it. The real world is an ugly place and sometimes there is no win-win solution.

Are we solving the Russian-Ukraine war in this thread? ;)

- Realistically no amount of weapons the west supplies Ukraine is going to enable them to push the Russians out of Ukraine.

- Putin doesn't seem to care about the number of Russians lost in this war.

- Direct involvement by western armies could lead to a nuclear escalation. NATO could easily push Russia out of Ukraine in a conventional war. Too big of a gamble.

- This is just part of a larger geopolitical struggle between the different powers. Russia. China. India.

We don't really know what Putin wants here but if some sort of end to the war can be negotiated that includes territorial adjustments in Ukraine I think that's the best win the west can hope for right now. The cold war wasn't won on the battlefield, it was won mostly economically. Doubling down right now on a military solution in Ukraine doesn't feel like the right path forward. Stopping the hot war and switching to a colder war is probably the path of least pain for everyone. Even if it seems like a temporary win for Putin. If the west helped Ukraine more in the early days maybe we'd have a different outcome but the west made some bad choices and here we are.

That said if Putin wants to keep fighting then the war will continue. I don't think he does but who knows.

My take anyways.

> Realistically no amount of weapons the west supplies Ukraine is going to enable them to push the Russians out of Ukraine.

OK, general. I wasn’t aware of your military credentials. Russia is about 12 months away from completely exhausting all of its Soviet stockpiles of (tens of thousands of) vehicles and artillery, and their war economy is already unable to sustain production at replacement rates.

On the contrary, it’s only a matter of time.

Source? I thought it was the west that couldn't ramp up and is running out of stockpiles. I'll admit I'm an armchair general but I did serve so I have at least some minimal idea of what war looks like.

EDIT: Also not clear how long the US is going to keep supporting Ukraine now that Trump is in power so that's another factor.

You can track Russia’s stockpiles through open source satellite imagery, here’s a recent video overview: https://youtu.be/TzR8BacYS6U

Ukraine benefits from being on defense, as the attrition rates are significantly in their favor. I’m not sure what will happen after Trump does whatever it is he’s going to do, but it is clear that Russia’s current trajectory is not sustainable beyond a year or so

I agree Ukraine benefits from being on the defense. The question is what are their chances of retaking their lost territory where they need to be on the offense? Russia has higher attrition rates but also has a larger population to recruit from.

I'm not seeing Russia just crumble away under Ukrainian assault. If that's the case how does Ukraine benefit from the continuation of the war?

I would love to see Ukraine kicking Russia out as an outcome but it seems incredibly unrealistic.

Ukraine doesn’t necessarily need to retake its lost territories by force. They only need to keep bleeding Russia out until the war becomes untenable for them. Russia loses like 1500+ soldiers and 100+ vehicles per day, just to move a line on a map a few meters. Their economy is hitting double digit inflation despite a 21% interest rate. Their recruitment efforts are running dry and they may have to resort to mobilization soon to continue to fill their ranks with more cannon fodder.

At a certain point they may have to come to the negotiating table, and the longer this drags out the less favorable their position will be.

Ukraine can't achieve a battlefield victory but with foreign military aid they might be able to slow down the Russian advance long enough for the Russian economy to collapse. Russia is only able to keep their economy somewhat functional through fossil fuel exports. We can give Ukraine long-range missiles/drones and targeting assistance to wreck Russia's key export infrastructure (ports, pipelines, refineries, storage depots). And we can choke off much of Russia's shipping through sanctions and interference with their tanker "shadow fleet". There are also still billions in assets owned by Russian government entities, corporations, and citizens but held in Western countries so we can just straight up steal it all and hand everything over to Ukraine. There are no guarantees but as long as Ukraine is willing to keep fighting it's worth a try.

> it is clear that Russia’s current trajectory is not sustainable beyond a year or so

Those cheering for Ukraine have been saying this from the start. They have been lying again, and again, about everything... The Russian MoD has been on point, again and again. Why should I trust anything camp NATO/Ukraine says?

The reality on the battlefield is that NATO/Ukraine loses badly, while spending much/much/much more money. Donated money.

Sorry bro: it's a lost cause. The russians will be victorious again, fixing Europe's nazi problem again.

Everyone who teaches their kid "Bandera is my papa, Ukraine is my momma" is a nazi to me. And according to my research, that's a lot of the Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians.

> The Russian MoD has been on point, again and again

lol, lmao even

> The reality on the battlefield is that NATO/Ukraine loses badly,

NATO isn't even on the battlefield.

> while spending much/much/much more money.

Yes, western labor has more value per hour, so the $ value of the smaller share of western effort devoted to the support of Ukraine is much higher than the $ value of the much larger share of Russian effort.

> Donated money.

See, you have to decide on your narrative. If your narrative is that NATO is who your Russian buddies are fighting on the battlefield, then it isn't donated money. If your narrative is "donated money", then you have to drop the "NATO/Ukraine" description of the belligerent opposing Russia.

I hope that the Trump administration will continue supporting Ukraine and not try to force them into an unfavorable temporary peace settlement, but the US isn't essential. Other NATO and EU countries are fully capable of keeping Ukraine in the fight, if they want to make it a priority. They might have to cut back some of their social spending and agricultural subsidies to afford it.

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...

Russia will never completely run out of materiel, but they have already exhausted most of their stockpiles of good stuff. At this point they've been reduced to using refurbished armored vehicles built in the 1950s and modified civilian cars along parts of the front.

https://www.youtube.com/@CovertCabal/videos

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/01/19/russias-btr...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/12/24/a-pink-comp...

>I thought it was the west that couldn't ramp up and is running out of stockpiles.

It's worth pointing out that Russia's "production" claims generally include refurbishment. When they say they produced 4 million artillery shells, that sometimes means they produced 400,000 artillery shells and refurbished 3.6 million artillery shells from deep storage.

There is no evidence to suggest that NATO could push Russia out of Ukraine in conventional warfare. The Russians and their allies are WAY better prepared for that war, and it would immediately turn into the third world war, not remain “NATO vs Russia”.

Takes like yours are equally dangerous as the brainless “Ukraine is actually winning the war” ones, even though you appear slightly more neutral and informed.

The actual situation is way more complex still than you claim. You take this weird stance where the Russian heads of state are evil, Ukrainian/US/NATO heads of state are not, Russian soldiers might or might not be, and Ukrainian soldiers are not.

In reality, the invasion phase of the war is justified from the Russian point of view, so their heads of state and soldiers are in the right. Same goes for western heads of state and soldiers. Me and you both live in the west and therefore have our own perspective on the war. People in BRICS states have their own perspective (that I’m quite familiar with due to having actually spent the effort on reading, unlike 99% of western commentators on this war).

Besides, don’t feel bad for Russian soldiers for being victims of the circumstances. Ukraine has been snatching people off the streets against their will for the past months and dropping them on the frontlines. This is happening in the majority Russian speaking cities and towns, not majority Ukrainian ones.

You're already doing it.

There are legitimate arguments on both sides of these issues.

Couching the Outgroup's opinion on X as "erasing" or "killing" or "dehumanising" just precludes understanding.

Religious conservatives do this with abortion for instance. Is it constructive to say that Freedom of Choice advocates actually "support murdering babies"? Does it help, or is it just in-group signalling?

I won't argue that, but there are cultures out there that disagree - so how can it be universal?

What "culture" says it's okay to treat humans as if they are animals?

Whoever it is you think is out there doing it and promoting it. That's why we have phrases like "a culture of harassment", "a culture if lies", etc.

The point is things that appear as universal absolutes are not the same for everyone.

MAGA culture. Often frames people they don't like as "vermin", and it sets up a permission structure to cause violence against them by labeling them as diseased or inherently criminal.

I see lots of people getting hung up on the word "universally" so maybe that was the wrong choice (and also the least relevant part of my sentence but whatever).

I should have just said "wrong", plain and simple.

I think talking about whether it is universally wrong or not is a distraction. It is sufficient to simply _not like it_ without having to get the universe (which almost certainly doesn't care, at least not enough to step in and do something about it) involved.

Personally, I am a moral skeptic - I don't really believe that moral truths exist in the same way that physical truths exist. For me, the only questions are what kind of world do I want to live and and what power do I have to make the world that way?

It only “doesn’t work” if your goal is to appear morally impeccable to everyone.

If instead of this worrying you

> you will be the one who, according to some, is advocating for things that cause harm and is considered a horrible person.

you have a set of morals that centers something more or different than theoretical other people’s opinions, your example of the current “conflict in the Middle East” is still a good example just not for the reason you stated. It is a perfectly valid ethical position to think that genocide is bad and that people that advocate for genocide are also bad. To pivot to “actually the Really Bad Thing would be if you said that and someone somewhere disagreed with you” is weird and hollow.

“The truly wise know that everything is morally equivalent, except for the pursuit of unbounded approval which is Good for some reason, and believing otherwise is the same thing as getting your morals from comic book movies” isn’t a coherent or defensible moral position. The Marvel movie comparison is a thought terminating cliche.

[flagged]

No it's because genocide is too simple and poorly defined a concept to apply appropriately to every situation. It's just the result of people trying to generalize from a few specific events that happened in the past which they already decided were bad for some other reason and ended up creating the label genocide to describe them.

Look at the disagreement people have over whether Israel or Hamas committed genocide in this current war. People can't even agree on the meaning of the word as it applies there. It's a novel situation that doesn't fit the mold of what this word was invented for. Are civilians really civilians if they're complicit in the fighting as in Gaza? Are they really civilians if they've done or are still doing compulsory military service as in Israel? It's just an attempt to draw a line in the sand so people will agree what's bad.

> People can't even agree on the meaning of the word as it applies there.

The fact that your average Joe can't explain it is as material as your average Joe being unable to write a Bash script is to computer science not being a real thing.

Essentially everyone on Earth except Israelis and religious sycophants agree what Israel has done is genocide. It is ludicrous to suggest Hamas has conducted a genocide against Israel because then you'd have to say that slaves in the US conducted a genocide against slave owners.

> There is no ethical requirement, upon seeing something happen in the real world, to entertain a series of hypotheticals so tedious and exhaustive that you have to throw your hands up and declare all things to be equally good and bad. That’s a weird habit!

Yeah, and this is the crux of many philosophies, most notably small-l libertarianism, where it seems like the chief appeal is that it's a simple set of axioms that can be followed to their logical conclusions for any moral question with minimal thought and maximal aesthetic "symmetry" and therefore beauty. It's easy to reason about, and therefore it's good.

It extends quite trivially from that to the so-called effective altruism, which relies on a fundamental assumption that a unit of good done to strangers on the other side of the globe is morally equivalent to a unit of good done to your neighbors. It's beautiful and therefore it's good.

It's the moral equivalent of imagining a spherical cow.

Morality is what you do in practice, not what you invent in your head. Treating him only as a literary figure, the reason Jesus is appealing to so many is not because he said "do unto others" and stopped. It's because he actually fed the poor, advocated for social justice, lifted up the injured, spoke truth to power, and gave his life for others.

>In general I wholeheartedly agree. But if the person in front of you has done or advocated for things that cause harm or is themself a horrible person then I disagree.

I feel like the parent comment is pretending to be deep and meaningful but is really just rehashing the 'both sides are the same' argument with a side of 'everyone is entitled to their own opinion'. It's nice to say that we should judge everyone for who they are, but if who they are is a vocal member of a group that wants to hurt other people, that's all we need to know to judge them. Pretending otherwise is silly.

The difference is between judging an individual for what they themselves say vs what identities you associate with them (or even those they associate with themselves).

>or even those they associate with themselves

I see no problem judging someone for the identities that they choose to associate themselves with.

Over and above their works and words?

Their associations are their works and words. You can't just handwave that stuff away as being irrelevant because you like the parts of their works and words that don't touch on anything you deem to be an association.

I know people of the political party I tend to disagree with who are saints and dedicate the majority of their time to others.

I know people of the political party I tend to agree with who are insufferable selfish pricks and treat others terribly.

Works and words aren't always associations.

>I know people of the political party I tend to disagree with who are saints and dedicate the majority of their time to others.

Except for the part of the time that they are devoting to supporting a political party that is actively harming you and people you love.. you can't just wave that off as not being important just because they are nice the rest of the time.

>I know people of the political party I tend to agree with who are insufferable selfish pricks and treat others terribly.

And they should be negatively judged for the latter behavior.

Both examples should be negatively judged for their behavior, you're just choosing to ignore some of the behavior of the first person.

I'd say what a person chooses to put their time and energy into is more important than their political affiliation.

Otherwise, all we'd have to do to be good in life would be to support political parties on internet forums. ;)

What constitutes "harm"? Is hurting someone's feelings harm? Is misinformation harm? How do you determine intention? To what extent does intention matter? How do circumstances impact the answers to these questions?

When your creed is basically "I only hate bad people", you have given yourself permission to hate anyone and feel righteously justified about it. And you'll never feel the need to empathize because bad people always deserve whatever bad things happen to them.

You don't need to love everyone unconditionally, but clearly more neuance is needed.

I know the answers to these questions…for me. Each person decides for themselves where the lines are drawn. It has always been this way.

My challenge is I can’t even tell if me and someone else are seeing the same facts. Take trump for example. Policies etc I may disagree on but I can see why someone else would support them.

As a person, looking at everything he says and does I can only conclude that he’s a narcissist that only cares about himself. But then there are a lot of trump supporters that are convinced he cares about them and the country. What am I missing that we can come to such dramatically different conclusions?

I call it the "could I share this with my grandmother" test. I don't like things that are supposed to have a point or make a good argument but fail the grandmother test.

> gets lost on both the left and the right sides

It gets lost because of this black/white US perspective on politics. If you were multiparty system there will be less identities in politics.

Also, diffusing the bully pulpit and celebrity between a president, prime minister, and/or ceremonial royalty. Policy > popularity.

> If you were multiparty system there will be less identities in politics.

If only it were that easy. I come from a country that is notorious for having political parties dissolve/new ones forming all the time, and politics are still all about identities and people still treat issues with a very black-or-white perspective.

As many have made the point before, I think this kind of discourse/attitude is more due to the social media echo chambers environment we now evolve in, and that modern societies can't escape it.

India? If so (or otherwise), what do you think a fix would be?

I went down a rabbit hole of Indian parliamentary party history and was fascinated at the level of machination over the decades.

No, that just means the identities split into smaller groups that constantly fight for power within larger coalitions. Instead of Red vs Blue you get racial groupings and all sorts of subdivisions.

Lebanon is a good example of what happens when you try to enshrine smaller subdivisions than A vs B.

I'm so tired of hearing "both sides" though.

Focusing on the individual means dropping the notion of “sides”. Identifying people (or even arguments) by their alleged “side”, instead of taking them on their own merit, is where things go wrong.

Where things go wrong is that the "extremists on both sides" is used to distract from what people on one side do. It is just a shield designed to prevent analysis.

It's not, because there's a difference between 'extremist individuals in a side' and 'a side as monolith.'

It is currently en vogue to use the excesses of specific instances or individuals to tar entire identities, but that's statistically dishonest.

Most people are not extremists, in the sense of 'if you talk to them at 1:13pm on a random Tuesday.'

There is actual political program and actual laws being pushed on. That is the reality. And yes, that political program belongs to that side.

It is OK to blame republicans as such for what Trump or JD Vance does, because they made them big. It is ok to blame them for the for the supreme court politics too, because they knowingly put exactly those people there, knowing they will remove protection for abortion and lied about it.

It is OK to blame democrats for what Biden does.

For the both sides thing however, you need to attribute acts of people who Democratic party actively pushes away to that party ... and to pretend that people voting for republicans have zero to do with what that party does.

I think about it with different divisions.

For politicians (as opposed to people in other professions), they are obviously responsible for the policies their parties support, to the extent that they support their parties. Given not every politician votes in lockstep with their party.

BUT for individuals in the US, their personal positions are often more complex than the binary reductions the two-party system affords us.

Consequently, there are many (most?) dissenters on one issue or another in both parties.

If a person has thoughts on matters, it's therefore more interesting to me to discuss those thoughts, than to derive my interactions with them solely by their D or R label.

I would argue it's currently en vogue to incessantly repeat the argument that "Both Sides" have bad actors, thus commenting on the bad actors of one side is an incomplete argument.

It's tiring and non sequitur to hear such arguments however, as what the opposition to a position does is wholly unrelated to the arguments related to that position.

I'm not making a "both sides" argument: I'm making a "the individuals that support sides are more important than the sides" one.

Haha trying to get around pattern matching by lopping off the word “both” doesn’t really strengthen your argument.

The problem is that you’re pretending like the sides don’t exist now, yet they do.

In reality, the individuals that compose one side are different from the individuals that compose the other side in predictable and problematic ways. Yes, individuals matter, but so too does the trend those individuals embody.

> In reality, the individuals that compose one side are different from the individuals that compose the other side in predictable and problematic ways.

Predictable is where we disagree strongly.

I think there's more diversity than unanimity at the individual level in both parties.

In the sense of what people say they believe around a dinner table, not what they passively nod their heads to at a rally or while watching partisan news.

Which is ironic, given it's increasingly a trope on both sides that the other is sadly monolithic and all marching in lockstop to their leader's tune.

Republicans complain about Democrats being like this; Democrats complain about Republicans being like this.

PS: "Problematic" is a terrible non-word. Surely there's a more descriptive adjective to be used?

Okay, just so I understand, you're claiming there aren't ideological consistencies across members of a political group?

I think your point is what gets missed in this conversation.

Many people just want to go to work and do their job … and not have social topics or politics discussed at work.

That doesn’t mean they don’t care about those topics, they just don’t feel like work is the correct place for discourse.

And the sense I get from recent moves by tech execs is that they simply want employees to focus 100% on work (because obviously they want to get the most productivity out of their paid staff), and anything non-work related is viewed as a distraction. Regardless of what that non-work topic might be.

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