Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

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> a difference between genocide and war

It's frankly unclear to me that there is. The definition of genocide seems to have expanded from its historical roots, and I haven't seen the pro-Palestinian faction in America make a credible claim that Israel is fighting this war materially differently from how every other war has been fought in the past decades by each of the U.S., Russia and China. I think the war should stop. But because war is horrible, not because it's in a special moral bucket.

But! I haven't done extensive research on this. So I'm really not claiming to know one way or another, just that I've put the whole thing into the same bucket as the Uyghurs, Sudan, Eritrea, North Korea and the other horrific places on the planet that I don't have much control over.

> calling it your “pet” war shows you aren’t serious

I mean, yes. I'm also about as serious about it as these folks were. Namely, I haven't had much of a tangible effect on either war for years. It's not a pet war if you do something effective about it.

(I did help with getting some...erm...stuff into Ukraine in 2023, but that's two years ago. I'll also dare to say that's a hell of a lot more I did for that war than someone mouthing off at a conference has done.)

They sacrificed their jobs to protest genocide. You are nothing like them.

> They sacrificed their jobs to protest genocide. You are nothing like them.

Right, the emphasis is on their sacrifice. Hence why I called it self indulgent. I had about as much effect on the wars I followed as they've had on this one.

You might want to look up the definition of sacrifice if you think it's synonymous with self-indulgent. It's literally the opposite.

> might want to look up the definition of sacrifice if you think it's synonymous with self-indulgent. It's literally the opposite.

It's orthogonal to self indulgence; what defines that is the effect. And it's inherently subjective. I'd argue most religious animal sacrifices are self indulgent. Obviously, the believers think otherwise. (Nobody asks the animal.)

In this case, they absolutely made a sacrifice. But the main effect is the fact that they sacrificed something. The sacrifice didn't actually do anything. Contrast that with e.g. putting yourself at risk to save somebody. That is more than performative.

Just because you had no reaction to it, it doesn't mean it didn't do anything. I know people at Microsoft and now they're talking internally about this.

> because you had no reaction to it, it doesn't mean it didn't do anything. I know people at Microsoft and now they're talking internally about this

I mean yes, we're all talking about it. I forgot what the protesters at Google who locked themselves into offices were specifically protesting, but everyone I know at Google talked about that, too. (Huh, it was also Israel [1].) This sort of outburst has basically never been an effective form of protest.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/18/google-terminates-28-employe...

And yet according to your own posts, support for Israel has never been lower.

Yeah, they’re bombing kids. Even if it’s legally a military target, you’re not going to win hearts and minds bombing kids. My point is these protests seem to be more about the protesters doing their thing than trying to think about being effective. They’re voicing frustration, not agitating support. That’s fair. But it’s important to see it clearly for what it is, especially if someone wants to do something that’s more than performative.

They gave up six-figure jobs to take a moral stand. Calling that "self-indulgent" is just an attempt at character assassination, and it doesn't even make any sense.

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