I think another issue that would arise is that if you get “into the weeds,” some topics are a lot more straightforward than others (probably delineated by being rooted in mostly social facts or mostly natural science facts, which all behave completely differently).
The Ukraine issue is a pretty bad one, given the history of the region, the Maidan protests, US history of proxy wars, and, and, and. It seems to me far from clear what the simple facts are (other than you have two factions of superpowers, fighting for different things). I have an opinion as to what would be best, and what would be best for people of Ukraine, and what I think sections of Ukraine undisturbed by US and Russian meddling for the past 30 years might vote in referenda. And at least one of those thoughts disagrees with the others. Add to this the last 70 years of US interventions (see Chomsky for pretty good, uncontroversial fact-based arguments that it has all been pretty evil, and by the standards of the Nuremberg Trials one might execute every president since Kennedy).
On the other hand, Global Warming is pretty straightforward (even allowing for seeming complications like Mars temperature rise, or other objections). We can handle the objections in measurable terms of physical reality for a home-run clear answer.
One of OP’s examples is an entirely social reality and the other is a matter of physics. Let’s face it, in some sense this war is about where we draw squiggly lines and different colored blobs on a map. It’s levels removed from something where we can do measurable tests. If you really made all the truth easy to find, bringing someone straight into the weeds of a social problem like a US/NATO intervention, in many cases the answer will not come out clear, no matter how good your tool is. In fact, a reasonable person after reading enough of the Truth might walk away fully disillusioned about all actors involved and ready to join some kind of anarchist movement. Better in some cases to gloss over social realities in broad strokes, burying as much detail as possible, especially if you think the war (whichever one it is!) is just/unjust/worth the money/not worth the money, etc.
I think Western colonialism was really bad, US wars were really bad, the Nazis were really bad, and so on. But from what I see of Russia’s position, these are excuses. The true reason for the current war is annexation.
Russia could try to get Ukraine away from NATO, remove ultranationalists, protect Russian speakers and whatever else—purely as a military operation, without annexation. Instead, two days after the Maidan in 2014 and before any hostile action from the new Ukrainian government, Russia initiated annexing Crimea. That move was very popular with the Russian population, it wasn’t Putin alone. Similarly in the current war, the stated goals were “demilitarization and denazification”, but then Russia annexed several captured territories, which wasn’t needed for any of those goals.
In fact I don’t know any good reason for these annexations at all. They don’t make Russia richer or more secure. It seems the situation is simple and kinda dumb: Putin and a large proportion of Russians simply want to annex these territories, profit be damned. They decided they want it, and now they want it.
Then let’s say we broadly agree on the morality of the matter. The question still remains if another US adventure, this time in Europe, is actually going to turn out all that well (as most haven’t for the people they claimed to be helping). We also have to wonder if Russia as a failed state will turn out well for Ukraine or Europe, or if this will turn Nuclear if US/NATO refuse to cede any ground, or if the Russia/China alliance will break or not, or for how long the US can even afford and support more wars, etc, etc.
On the other side, do we worry if we’re being Neville Chamberlain because we think every aggressor will behave as Hitler in 1938 if we give an inch, so “We gotta do something?” There may even be merit to the sentiment, but “We gotta do something” is one of the most likely ways to screw any situation up. Also, given the US’s history of interventions, setting aside morality, just looking at the history of outcomes, the response is questionable. Looking down the road, if this conflict or anything else significantly weakens the US, economically, in domestic politics, or leads to an overextended military, then Ukraine might be lost all the way to the Polish border, not just the Eastern regions.
These are mostly practical considerations that are indeterminate and make the US intervention questionable without even looking at the morality. Given perfect knowledge, you would have a probability and risk management problem on your hands, which often fails to result in a clear convergence of positions. And going back to my original claims, this makes this type of thing very different to Physics and Chemistry and their extensions.
EDIT: Perhaps the most important question comes down to this: Russia clearly screwed up their risk management (as your message alludes to). How can US/NATO do far better with Risk Management? Maybe even better than they’ve done in all their wars and interventions in recent history?
Russia was trying peaceful and diplomatic options. Very actively. Literally begging to compromise. Before 2014 and before 2022. That did not work. At all.
Deposing the democratically elected government with which Russia was a military ally was an act hostile enough. And Maidan nationalists have already started killing anti-maidan protesters in Crimea and other Russian-speaking regions. I was following those events very closely and was speaking with some of the people living there then.
This seems to miss the point of my comment. What are the reasons for annexation? Not just military action, or even regime change, but specifically annexation? All military goals could be achieved by regime change, keeping Ukraine in current borders, and that would’ve been much better optics. And all economic reasons disappeared with the end of colonialism. So why annexation? My answer: it’s an irrational, ideological desire for that territory. That desire has taken hold of many Russians, including Putin.
Crimea was the only Ukrainian region that was overwhelmingly Russian and pro-Russian. And also the region where a Russian key military base is situated. And at the moment there was (at least, formally) legal way to annex it with the minimal bloodshed. Annexing it has resolved the issue of the military base, and gave the legal status, protection guarantees and rights for the citizens of Crimean republic.
Regime change for entire Ukraine would mean a bloody war, insurgency, and installing a government which the majority of Ukraine population would be against. And massive sanctions against Russia AND Ukraine, for which Russia was not prepared then.
It’s true that annexing Crimea would’ve been rational in a world where +base and +region were the only consequences. (Similar to how the US in the 1840s grabbed Texas and California from Mexico without much problems.) But we do not live in that world. We live in a world where many countries are willing to penalize Russia for annexation and help Ukraine defend. Russia’s leadership didn’t understand that and still doesn’t. As a result, Russia’s security and economic situation have both gotten much worse and continue to get worse. That’s why I call it irrational.
No such countries. There is USA that is willing to penalize it’s geopolitical opponents for being such. There are USA puppets that are willing to penalize those that USA told them to. They were penalizing Russia for arbitrary reasons before and after Crimea. If Russia would not annex Crimea, it would be penalized about the same, but with another cited reasons.
I see a common pattern in your arguments. Ukraine never did large scale repression against Russian speakers—“but they would’ve done it”. Europe didn’t start sanctioning Russian resources until several months into the war—“but they would’ve done it anyway”. The US reduced troops and warheads in Europe every year from 1991 to 2021 - “but they would have attacked us”. 141 countries vote in the UN to condemn Russian aggression—“but they’re all US puppets, just waiting for a chance to harm us”.
There’s a name for this kind of irrationality: paranoia. Dictators often drum up paranoia to stay in power, which has the side effect of making the country aggressive.
I disagree with the first part, but I’m not sure if this is the right place to discuss the details. We can discuss it in DM if you want.
You are spot on with the second, though. Exploiting fears of real or perceived threats is an extremely effective tool to control people and nations by posing as their protector.
The champion in this regard is the USA, of course. It fuels and exploits Europe’s fear of Russia, Japan’s fear of China, India’s and China’s mutual fear, and so on.
Domestically, the USA’s elites exploit an extremely wide range of fears. Fear of terrorists, fear of Russia, fear of China, fear of Nazis, fear of people of different parties, races, sexuality, and even fear of people who fear LGBTQ+ or specific races.
The USA has been using the “divide and conquer” strategy liberally for at least a century now. This will likely have catastrophic consequences, as a divided world will have much less chance of surviving the acute risk period.
Putin also exploits fears, such as fears of LGBT “propaganda”, Nazis, and the USA. But I don’t think his position before 2022 was so shaky that he would have to resort to war to hold it
I think that the support for hurting Russia is much greater in Eastern Europe than in USA. (Maybe with the exception of Hungary.) That does not seem to match the “they only want it because they are puppets”.
For USA, Russia is some kind of noble ancient enemy. Kicking them while they are down may even feel unsportsmanlike.
For Eastern Europe, it is (for the anti-Russian part of the population) more like: “yeah, kick them while you can, stomp as hard as you can, so that they can never hurt us again”. Many families remember relatives who were raped by the Red Army (no, it wasn’t “only” Germany), kidnapped for Soviet extermination camps, etc. Ukraine is re-living this history right now, for the others this is more like “horrible stories my grandma told me when she considered me old enough to hear it”.
Also, are you aware that Russia was planning to annex Belarus and Moldova next? (Putin actually wrote about his plans with Ukraine and Belarus in 2021.) But even taking the entire Ukraine would already make them my neighbors. I prefer that not to happen.
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That said, perhaps in larger picture, it is completely irrelevant what the Eastern Europeans want to do, if USA decided otherwise.
That doesn’t change the fact that they want it. Definitely not just puppets doing whatever USA tells them. (The example of Hungary actually shows that even the little countries are capable to ignore the American wishes.)
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Sorry for the mindkilling tone, but I find it annoying when people from internet keep telling me that I have no agency, not even my own thoughts and wishes, I just think what the American overlords want me to think. (Unlike people in Russia or USA, who are allowed to be independent thinkers.)
I would point out that Putin’s goal wasn’t to make Russia more prosperous, and that what Putin considers good isn’t the same as what an average Russian would consider good. Like Putin’s other military adventures, the Crimean annexation and heavy military support of Donbas separatists in 2014 probably had a goal like “make the Russian empire great again” (meaning “as big as possible”) and from Putin’s perspective the operations were a success. Especially as (if my impression is correct) the sanctions were fairly light and Russia could largely work around them.
Partly he was right, since Russia was bigger. But partly his view was a symptom of continuing epistemic errors. For example, given the way the 2022 invasion started, it looks like he didn’t notice the crucial fact that his actions caused Ukrainians to turn strongly against Russia after his actions in 2014.
In any case this discussion exemplifies why I want a site entirely centered on evidence. Baturinsky claims that when the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from office 328 votes to 0 (about 73% of the parliament’s 450 members) this was “the democratically elected government” being “deposed”. Of course he doesn’t mention this vote or the events leading up to it. Who “deposed the democratically elected government”? The U.S.? The tankies say it was the U.S. So who are these people, then? Puppets of the U.S.?
I shouldn’t have to say this on LessWrong, but without evidence it’s all just meaningless he-said-she-said. I don’t see truthseeking in this thread, just arguing.
I disagree in two ways. First, people are part of physical reality. Reasoning about people and their social relationships is a complex but necessary task.
Second, almost no one goes to first principles and studies climate science themselves in depth. But even if you did that, you’d (1) be learning about it from other people with their interpretations, and (2) you wouldn’t be able to study all the subfields in depth. Atmospheric science can tell you about the direct effect of greenhouse gasses, but to predict the total effect quantitatively, and to evaluate alternate hypotheses of global warming, you’ll need to learn about glaciology, oceanology, coupled earth-system modeling, the effects of non-GHG aerosols, solar science, how data is aggregated about CO2 emissions, CO2 concentrations, other GHGs, various temperature series, etc.
Finally, if you determine that humans cause warming after all, now you need to start over with ecology, economic modeling etc. in order to determine whether it’s actually a big problem. And then, if it is a problem, you’ll want to understand how to fix the problem, so now you have to study dozens of potential interventions. And then, finally, once you’ve done all that and you’re the world’s leading expert in climate science, now you get frequent death threats and hate mail. A billion people don’t believe a word you say, while another billion treat your word like it’s the annointed word of God (as long as it conforms to their biases). You have tons of reliable knowledge, but it’s nontransferable.
Realistically we don’t do any of this. Instead we mostly try to figure out the social reality: Which sources seem to be more truth-seeking and which seem to be more tribal? Who are the cranks, who are the real experts, and who can I trust to summarize information? For instance, your assertion that Noam Chomsky provides “good, uncontroversial fact-based arguments” is a social assertion that I disagree with.
I think going into the weeds is a very good way of figuring out the social truth that you actually need to figure out the truth about the broader topic to which the weeds are related. For instance, if the weeds are telling you that pundit X is clearly telling a lie Y, and if everybody who believes Z also believes X and Y, you’ve learned not to trust X, X’s followers, Y, and Z, and all of this is good… except that for some people, the weeds they end up looking at are actually astroturf or tribally-engineered plants very different from the weeds they thought they were looking at, and that’s the sort of problem I would like to solve. I want a place where a tribally-engineered weed is reliablymarked as such.
So I think that in many ways studying Ukraine is just the same as studying climate science, except that the “fog of war” and the lack of rigorous sources for war information make it hard to figure some things out.
Okay, I think I understand what you mean that, since it’s impossible to fully comprehend climate change from first principles, it ends up being a political and social discussion (and anyway, that’s empirically the case). Nonetheless, I think there’s something categorically in the physical sciences than the the more social facts.
I think perfect knowledge of climate science would tend towards convergence, whereas at least some Social Issues (Ukraine being a possible example) just don’t work that way. The Chomsky example is Germane: prior to 92, his work on politics was all heavily cited and based on primary sources, and pretty much as solid academically as you could ask for (See for example “The Chomsky Reader”) and we already disagree on this.
With regards Ukraine, I think intelligent people with lots of information might end up diverging even more as to their opinions on how much violence each side should be willing to threaten, use, and display in an argument about squiggly lines on map blobs, given more information. Henry Kissinger ended up not even agreeing with himself from week to week, and he’s probably as qualified an expert on this matter as any of us. I think it’s fair to suggest that no number of facts regarding Ukraine are going to bring the kind of convergence you would see if we could upload the sum of climate science into each of our human minds.
Even if I am wrong in the Ukraine case, do you think there are at least some social realities that if you magically downloaded the full spectrum of factual information into everyone’s mind, people’s opinions might still diverge? Doesn’t that differ from a hard science where they would tend to converge if you understood all the facts? Doesn’t this indicate a major difference of categories?
Another way of looking at it: Social realities are not nearly as deterministic on factual truth as accurate conclusions in the hard sciences are. They are always vastly more stochastic. Even looking at the fields, the correlation coefficients and R2 for whole models in Sociology, at it’s absolute best, are nothing at all compared to the determinism you can get in Physics and Chemistry.
I think that the people who are truthseeking well do converge in their views on Ukraine. Around me I see tribal loyalty to Kremlin propaganda, to Ukrainian/NAFO propaganda, to anti-Americanism (enter Noam Chomsky) and/or to America First. Ironically, anti-American and America First people end up believing similar things, because they both give credence to Kremlin propaganda that fits into their respective worldviews. But I certainly have a sense of convergence among high-rung observers who follow the war closely and have “average” (or better yet scope-sensitive/linear) morality. Convergence seems limited by the factors I mentioned though (fog of war, poor rigor in primary/secondary sources). P.S. A key thing about Chomsky is that his focus is all about America, and to understand the situation properly you must understand Putin and Russia (and to a lesser extent Ukraine). I recommend Vexler’s video on Chomsky/Ukraine as well as this video from before the invasion. I also follow several other analysts and English-speaking Russians (plus Russian Dissent translated from Russian) who give a picture of Russia/Putin generally compatible with Vexler’s.
do you think there are at least some social realities that if you magically downloaded the full spectrum of factual information into everyone’s mind, people’s opinions might still diverge
Yes, except I’d use the word “disagree” rather than “diverge”. People have different moral intuitions, different brain structures / ways of processing info, and different initial priors that would cause disagreements. Some people want genocide, for example, and while knowing all the facts may decrease (or in many cases eliminate) that desire, it seems like there’s a fundamental difference in moral intuition between people that sometimes like genocide and those of us who never do, and I don’t see how knowing all the facts accurately would resolve that.
What you are actually making is something like a “lesser of two evils” argument or some bet on tradeoffs paying off that one party may buy and another may not. Having explored the reasoning this far, I would suggest this is one class of circumstances where even if you beamed all the facts into two people’s minds, who both had “Average” morality, this is one of the situations where there would still tend to be disagreement. This definitely doesn’t hinge on someone wanting something bad, like genocide, for the disagreement. People could both want the same outcomes and diverge in their conclusions with the facts beamed into their minds in this class of situations (which, to my original argument, differs tremendously from physics).
I hadn’t seen old man Chomsky talk about Ukraine prior to your video above. I think though, if you look at his best work, you might be able to softly mollify the impact, but it’s not like he’s pulling his ideas about, say, every single US action in South America and the Middle East being very bad for the people they claimed to help, out of some highly skewed view. Those border on fairly obvious, at any rate, and your video’s recasting him as a “voice of moral outrage” hinges on his off-the cuff interviews, not his heavily cited work (as I mentioned The Chomsky Reader, which is a different man than the one in the video)
Even setting him aside as a reference, looking at the recent history of US war, at the most generous, considering Russian badness and US badness, any “moral high-ground” argument for the US being good in this case will boil down to a lesser-of-two-evils assessment. Also looking at US history, you lose some of the “this is just an annexation” because US proxy war since 2014 would fit the pattern of pretty much everything the USA has done both recently and for the past 100 years.
Your point about also looking at Putin/Russia is fine, and it should be considered as well as practical solutions to the matter. I think we all would call Putin a criminal, this isn’t a question at hand. The question is if another US adventure, this time in Europe, is actually going to turn out all that well, or if Russia as a failed state will turn out well for Ukraine or Europe, or if this will turn Nuclear if you refuse to cede any ground, or if the Russia/China alliance will break or not, or for how long the US can even afford and support more wars, etc, etc. These are mostly practical matters that are indeterminate and make the intervention questionable. In practical senses, they present different good/bad tradeoffs and better/worse odds bets on outcomes to different parties that amount to weighing different “lesser evil” projections in the outcome. They don’t hinge on our moral intuitions differing at all.
(And again, all this differs in category and the way it behaves from Physics)
I don’t know what you are referring to in the first sentence, but the idea that this is a war between US and Russia (not Russia and Ukraine) is Russian propaganda (which doesn’t perfectly guarantee it’s BS, but it is BS.)
In any case, this discussion exemplifies my frustration with a world in which a site like I propose does not exist. I have my sources, you have yours, they disagree on the most basic facts, and nobody is citing evidence that would prove the case one way or another. Even if we did go deep into all the evidence, it would be sitting here in a place where no one searching for information about the Ukraine war will ever see it. I find it utterly ridiculous that most people are satisfied with this status quo.
I think another issue that would arise is that if you get “into the weeds,” some topics are a lot more straightforward than others (probably delineated by being rooted in mostly social facts or mostly natural science facts, which all behave completely differently).
The Ukraine issue is a pretty bad one, given the history of the region, the Maidan protests, US history of proxy wars, and, and, and. It seems to me far from clear what the simple facts are (other than you have two factions of superpowers, fighting for different things). I have an opinion as to what would be best, and what would be best for people of Ukraine, and what I think sections of Ukraine undisturbed by US and Russian meddling for the past 30 years might vote in referenda. And at least one of those thoughts disagrees with the others. Add to this the last 70 years of US interventions (see Chomsky for pretty good, uncontroversial fact-based arguments that it has all been pretty evil, and by the standards of the Nuremberg Trials one might execute every president since Kennedy).
On the other hand, Global Warming is pretty straightforward (even allowing for seeming complications like Mars temperature rise, or other objections). We can handle the objections in measurable terms of physical reality for a home-run clear answer.
One of OP’s examples is an entirely social reality and the other is a matter of physics. Let’s face it, in some sense this war is about where we draw squiggly lines and different colored blobs on a map. It’s levels removed from something where we can do measurable tests. If you really made all the truth easy to find, bringing someone straight into the weeds of a social problem like a US/NATO intervention, in many cases the answer will not come out clear, no matter how good your tool is. In fact, a reasonable person after reading enough of the Truth might walk away fully disillusioned about all actors involved and ready to join some kind of anarchist movement. Better in some cases to gloss over social realities in broad strokes, burying as much detail as possible, especially if you think the war (whichever one it is!) is just/unjust/worth the money/not worth the money, etc.
I think Western colonialism was really bad, US wars were really bad, the Nazis were really bad, and so on. But from what I see of Russia’s position, these are excuses. The true reason for the current war is annexation.
Russia could try to get Ukraine away from NATO, remove ultranationalists, protect Russian speakers and whatever else—purely as a military operation, without annexation. Instead, two days after the Maidan in 2014 and before any hostile action from the new Ukrainian government, Russia initiated annexing Crimea. That move was very popular with the Russian population, it wasn’t Putin alone. Similarly in the current war, the stated goals were “demilitarization and denazification”, but then Russia annexed several captured territories, which wasn’t needed for any of those goals.
In fact I don’t know any good reason for these annexations at all. They don’t make Russia richer or more secure. It seems the situation is simple and kinda dumb: Putin and a large proportion of Russians simply want to annex these territories, profit be damned. They decided they want it, and now they want it.
Then let’s say we broadly agree on the morality of the matter. The question still remains if another US adventure, this time in Europe, is actually going to turn out all that well (as most haven’t for the people they claimed to be helping). We also have to wonder if Russia as a failed state will turn out well for Ukraine or Europe, or if this will turn Nuclear if US/NATO refuse to cede any ground, or if the Russia/China alliance will break or not, or for how long the US can even afford and support more wars, etc, etc.
On the other side, do we worry if we’re being Neville Chamberlain because we think every aggressor will behave as Hitler in 1938 if we give an inch, so “We gotta do something?” There may even be merit to the sentiment, but “We gotta do something” is one of the most likely ways to screw any situation up. Also, given the US’s history of interventions, setting aside morality, just looking at the history of outcomes, the response is questionable. Looking down the road, if this conflict or anything else significantly weakens the US, economically, in domestic politics, or leads to an overextended military, then Ukraine might be lost all the way to the Polish border, not just the Eastern regions.
These are mostly practical considerations that are indeterminate and make the US intervention questionable without even looking at the morality. Given perfect knowledge, you would have a probability and risk management problem on your hands, which often fails to result in a clear convergence of positions. And going back to my original claims, this makes this type of thing very different to Physics and Chemistry and their extensions.
EDIT: Perhaps the most important question comes down to this: Russia clearly screwed up their risk management (as your message alludes to). How can US/NATO do far better with Risk Management? Maybe even better than they’ve done in all their wars and interventions in recent history?
Russia was trying peaceful and diplomatic options. Very actively. Literally begging to compromise. Before 2014 and before 2022. That did not work. At all.
Deposing the democratically elected government with which Russia was a military ally was an act hostile enough. And Maidan nationalists have already started killing anti-maidan protesters in Crimea and other Russian-speaking regions. I was following those events very closely and was speaking with some of the people living there then.
This seems to miss the point of my comment. What are the reasons for annexation? Not just military action, or even regime change, but specifically annexation? All military goals could be achieved by regime change, keeping Ukraine in current borders, and that would’ve been much better optics. And all economic reasons disappeared with the end of colonialism. So why annexation? My answer: it’s an irrational, ideological desire for that territory. That desire has taken hold of many Russians, including Putin.
Crimea was the only Ukrainian region that was overwhelmingly Russian and pro-Russian. And also the region where a Russian key military base is situated. And at the moment there was (at least, formally) legal way to annex it with the minimal bloodshed. Annexing it has resolved the issue of the military base, and gave the legal status, protection guarantees and rights for the citizens of Crimean republic.
Regime change for entire Ukraine would mean a bloody war, insurgency, and installing a government which the majority of Ukraine population would be against. And massive sanctions against Russia AND Ukraine, for which Russia was not prepared then.
It’s true that annexing Crimea would’ve been rational in a world where +base and +region were the only consequences. (Similar to how the US in the 1840s grabbed Texas and California from Mexico without much problems.) But we do not live in that world. We live in a world where many countries are willing to penalize Russia for annexation and help Ukraine defend. Russia’s leadership didn’t understand that and still doesn’t. As a result, Russia’s security and economic situation have both gotten much worse and continue to get worse. That’s why I call it irrational.
No such countries. There is USA that is willing to penalize it’s geopolitical opponents for being such. There are USA puppets that are willing to penalize those that USA told them to. They were penalizing Russia for arbitrary reasons before and after Crimea. If Russia would not annex Crimea, it would be penalized about the same, but with another cited reasons.
I see a common pattern in your arguments. Ukraine never did large scale repression against Russian speakers—“but they would’ve done it”. Europe didn’t start sanctioning Russian resources until several months into the war—“but they would’ve done it anyway”. The US reduced troops and warheads in Europe every year from 1991 to 2021 - “but they would have attacked us”. 141 countries vote in the UN to condemn Russian aggression—“but they’re all US puppets, just waiting for a chance to harm us”.
There’s a name for this kind of irrationality: paranoia. Dictators often drum up paranoia to stay in power, which has the side effect of making the country aggressive.
I disagree with the first part, but I’m not sure if this is the right place to discuss the details. We can discuss it in DM if you want.
You are spot on with the second, though. Exploiting fears of real or perceived threats is an extremely effective tool to control people and nations by posing as their protector.
The champion in this regard is the USA, of course. It fuels and exploits Europe’s fear of Russia, Japan’s fear of China, India’s and China’s mutual fear, and so on.
Domestically, the USA’s elites exploit an extremely wide range of fears. Fear of terrorists, fear of Russia, fear of China, fear of Nazis, fear of people of different parties, races, sexuality, and even fear of people who fear LGBTQ+ or specific races.
The USA has been using the “divide and conquer” strategy liberally for at least a century now. This will likely have catastrophic consequences, as a divided world will have much less chance of surviving the acute risk period.
Putin also exploits fears, such as fears of LGBT “propaganda”, Nazis, and the USA. But I don’t think his position before 2022 was so shaky that he would have to resort to war to hold it
I think that the support for hurting Russia is much greater in Eastern Europe than in USA. (Maybe with the exception of Hungary.) That does not seem to match the “they only want it because they are puppets”.
For USA, Russia is some kind of noble ancient enemy. Kicking them while they are down may even feel unsportsmanlike.
For Eastern Europe, it is (for the anti-Russian part of the population) more like: “yeah, kick them while you can, stomp as hard as you can, so that they can never hurt us again”. Many families remember relatives who were raped by the Red Army (no, it wasn’t “only” Germany), kidnapped for Soviet extermination camps, etc. Ukraine is re-living this history right now, for the others this is more like “horrible stories my grandma told me when she considered me old enough to hear it”.
Also, are you aware that Russia was planning to annex Belarus and Moldova next? (Putin actually wrote about his plans with Ukraine and Belarus in 2021.) But even taking the entire Ukraine would already make them my neighbors. I prefer that not to happen.
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That said, perhaps in larger picture, it is completely irrelevant what the Eastern Europeans want to do, if USA decided otherwise.
That doesn’t change the fact that they want it. Definitely not just puppets doing whatever USA tells them. (The example of Hungary actually shows that even the little countries are capable to ignore the American wishes.)
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Sorry for the mindkilling tone, but I find it annoying when people from internet keep telling me that I have no agency, not even my own thoughts and wishes, I just think what the American overlords want me to think. (Unlike people in Russia or USA, who are allowed to be independent thinkers.)
I would point out that Putin’s goal wasn’t to make Russia more prosperous, and that what Putin considers good isn’t the same as what an average Russian would consider good. Like Putin’s other military adventures, the Crimean annexation and heavy military support of Donbas separatists in 2014 probably had a goal like “make the Russian empire great again” (meaning “as big as possible”) and from Putin’s perspective the operations were a success. Especially as (if my impression is correct) the sanctions were fairly light and Russia could largely work around them.
Partly he was right, since Russia was bigger. But partly his view was a symptom of continuing epistemic errors. For example, given the way the 2022 invasion started, it looks like he didn’t notice the crucial fact that his actions caused Ukrainians to turn strongly against Russia after his actions in 2014.
In any case this discussion exemplifies why I want a site entirely centered on evidence. Baturinsky claims that when the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from office 328 votes to 0 (about 73% of the parliament’s 450 members) this was “the democratically elected government” being “deposed”. Of course he doesn’t mention this vote or the events leading up to it. Who “deposed the democratically elected government”? The U.S.? The tankies say it was the U.S. So who are these people, then? Puppets of the U.S.?
I shouldn’t have to say this on LessWrong, but without evidence it’s all just meaningless he-said-she-said. I don’t see truthseeking in this thread, just arguing.
I disagree in two ways. First, people are part of physical reality. Reasoning about people and their social relationships is a complex but necessary task.
Second, almost no one goes to first principles and studies climate science themselves in depth. But even if you did that, you’d (1) be learning about it from other people with their interpretations, and (2) you wouldn’t be able to study all the subfields in depth. Atmospheric science can tell you about the direct effect of greenhouse gasses, but to predict the total effect quantitatively, and to evaluate alternate hypotheses of global warming, you’ll need to learn about glaciology, oceanology, coupled earth-system modeling, the effects of non-GHG aerosols, solar science, how data is aggregated about CO2 emissions, CO2 concentrations, other GHGs, various temperature series, etc.
Finally, if you determine that humans cause warming after all, now you need to start over with ecology, economic modeling etc. in order to determine whether it’s actually a big problem. And then, if it is a problem, you’ll want to understand how to fix the problem, so now you have to study dozens of potential interventions. And then, finally, once you’ve done all that and you’re the world’s leading expert in climate science, now you get frequent death threats and hate mail. A billion people don’t believe a word you say, while another billion treat your word like it’s the annointed word of God (as long as it conforms to their biases). You have tons of reliable knowledge, but it’s nontransferable.
Realistically we don’t do any of this. Instead we mostly try to figure out the social reality: Which sources seem to be more truth-seeking and which seem to be more tribal? Who are the cranks, who are the real experts, and who can I trust to summarize information? For instance, your assertion that Noam Chomsky provides “good, uncontroversial fact-based arguments” is a social assertion that I disagree with.
I think going into the weeds is a very good way of figuring out the social truth that you actually need to figure out the truth about the broader topic to which the weeds are related. For instance, if the weeds are telling you that pundit X is clearly telling a lie Y, and if everybody who believes Z also believes X and Y, you’ve learned not to trust X, X’s followers, Y, and Z, and all of this is good… except that for some people, the weeds they end up looking at are actually astroturf or tribally-engineered plants very different from the weeds they thought they were looking at, and that’s the sort of problem I would like to solve. I want a place where a tribally-engineered weed is reliably marked as such.
So I think that in many ways studying Ukraine is just the same as studying climate science, except that the “fog of war” and the lack of rigorous sources for war information make it hard to figure some things out.
Okay, I think I understand what you mean that, since it’s impossible to fully comprehend climate change from first principles, it ends up being a political and social discussion (and anyway, that’s empirically the case). Nonetheless, I think there’s something categorically in the physical sciences than the the more social facts.
I think perfect knowledge of climate science would tend towards convergence, whereas at least some Social Issues (Ukraine being a possible example) just don’t work that way. The Chomsky example is Germane: prior to 92, his work on politics was all heavily cited and based on primary sources, and pretty much as solid academically as you could ask for (See for example “The Chomsky Reader”) and we already disagree on this.
With regards Ukraine, I think intelligent people with lots of information might end up diverging even more as to their opinions on how much violence each side should be willing to threaten, use, and display in an argument about squiggly lines on map blobs, given more information. Henry Kissinger ended up not even agreeing with himself from week to week, and he’s probably as qualified an expert on this matter as any of us. I think it’s fair to suggest that no number of facts regarding Ukraine are going to bring the kind of convergence you would see if we could upload the sum of climate science into each of our human minds.
Even if I am wrong in the Ukraine case, do you think there are at least some social realities that if you magically downloaded the full spectrum of factual information into everyone’s mind, people’s opinions might still diverge? Doesn’t that differ from a hard science where they would tend to converge if you understood all the facts? Doesn’t this indicate a major difference of categories?
Another way of looking at it: Social realities are not nearly as deterministic on factual truth as accurate conclusions in the hard sciences are. They are always vastly more stochastic. Even looking at the fields, the correlation coefficients and R2 for whole models in Sociology, at it’s absolute best, are nothing at all compared to the determinism you can get in Physics and Chemistry.
I think that the people who are truthseeking well do converge in their views on Ukraine. Around me I see tribal loyalty to Kremlin propaganda, to Ukrainian/NAFO propaganda, to anti-Americanism (enter Noam Chomsky) and/or to America First. Ironically, anti-American and America First people end up believing similar things, because they both give credence to Kremlin propaganda that fits into their respective worldviews. But I certainly have a sense of convergence among high-rung observers who follow the war closely and have “average” (or better yet scope-sensitive/linear) morality. Convergence seems limited by the factors I mentioned though (fog of war, poor rigor in primary/secondary sources). P.S. A key thing about Chomsky is that his focus is all about America, and to understand the situation properly you must understand Putin and Russia (and to a lesser extent Ukraine). I recommend Vexler’s video on Chomsky/Ukraine as well as this video from before the invasion. I also follow several other analysts and English-speaking Russians (plus Russian Dissent translated from Russian) who give a picture of Russia/Putin generally compatible with Vexler’s.
Yes, except I’d use the word “disagree” rather than “diverge”. People have different moral intuitions, different brain structures / ways of processing info, and different initial priors that would cause disagreements. Some people want genocide, for example, and while knowing all the facts may decrease (or in many cases eliminate) that desire, it seems like there’s a fundamental difference in moral intuition between people that sometimes like genocide and those of us who never do, and I don’t see how knowing all the facts accurately would resolve that.
What you are actually making is something like a “lesser of two evils” argument or some bet on tradeoffs paying off that one party may buy and another may not. Having explored the reasoning this far, I would suggest this is one class of circumstances where even if you beamed all the facts into two people’s minds, who both had “Average” morality, this is one of the situations where there would still tend to be disagreement. This definitely doesn’t hinge on someone wanting something bad, like genocide, for the disagreement. People could both want the same outcomes and diverge in their conclusions with the facts beamed into their minds in this class of situations (which, to my original argument, differs tremendously from physics).
I hadn’t seen old man Chomsky talk about Ukraine prior to your video above. I think though, if you look at his best work, you might be able to softly mollify the impact, but it’s not like he’s pulling his ideas about, say, every single US action in South America and the Middle East being very bad for the people they claimed to help, out of some highly skewed view. Those border on fairly obvious, at any rate, and your video’s recasting him as a “voice of moral outrage” hinges on his off-the cuff interviews, not his heavily cited work (as I mentioned The Chomsky Reader, which is a different man than the one in the video)
Even setting him aside as a reference, looking at the recent history of US war, at the most generous, considering Russian badness and US badness, any “moral high-ground” argument for the US being good in this case will boil down to a lesser-of-two-evils assessment. Also looking at US history, you lose some of the “this is just an annexation” because US proxy war since 2014 would fit the pattern of pretty much everything the USA has done both recently and for the past 100 years.
Your point about also looking at Putin/Russia is fine, and it should be considered as well as practical solutions to the matter. I think we all would call Putin a criminal, this isn’t a question at hand. The question is if another US adventure, this time in Europe, is actually going to turn out all that well, or if Russia as a failed state will turn out well for Ukraine or Europe, or if this will turn Nuclear if you refuse to cede any ground, or if the Russia/China alliance will break or not, or for how long the US can even afford and support more wars, etc, etc. These are mostly practical matters that are indeterminate and make the intervention questionable. In practical senses, they present different good/bad tradeoffs and better/worse odds bets on outcomes to different parties that amount to weighing different “lesser evil” projections in the outcome. They don’t hinge on our moral intuitions differing at all.
(And again, all this differs in category and the way it behaves from Physics)
Maybe if we also included WW2 Germany and Japan to this reference group, the outcomes would be more of a mixed bag.
Then again, the argument might be that American foreign policy became bad after WW2.
I don’t know what you are referring to in the first sentence, but the idea that this is a war between US and Russia (not Russia and Ukraine) is Russian propaganda (which doesn’t perfectly guarantee it’s BS, but it is BS.)
In any case, this discussion exemplifies my frustration with a world in which a site like I propose does not exist. I have my sources, you have yours, they disagree on the most basic facts, and nobody is citing evidence that would prove the case one way or another. Even if we did go deep into all the evidence, it would be sitting here in a place where no one searching for information about the Ukraine war will ever see it. I find it utterly ridiculous that most people are satisfied with this status quo.