I had sort of assumed that if tech skills had to be directly used to help in this situation, it would have to be something like, cyber attacks on Russia. But I never looked closer on that.
I didn’t realize I was inviting these kinds of discussions, nor that I didn’t want them until now. I’d like to keep the comments focused on helping in humanitarian ways, if that’s okay.
It would help if you clarified from the get-go that you care not about maximizing impact, but about maximizing impact subject to the constraint of pretending that this war is some kind of natural disaster.
My goal with this post was mainly to share a model of “it’s better to do little than nothing” in the hopes I’d help someone else give money when they were hesitating. To make that point, I used the retro of the project I happened to be in. This project happened to be a humanitarian one. That it’s about Ukraine is just a coincidence.
Talking about military interventions because of some theoretical higher impact, when in practice very few people will have means to help militarily, is exactly the kind of analysis paralysis that qualifies as “nothing” instead of “little”. So in addition to being about a different domain of help than the case study I was using, this also completely misses the point of the post.
I admit that the comment you’re responding to is fueled by my emotional hesitancy to fund military action, so I thank you for this somewhat charged observation to prompt me into examining myself. Wouldn’t have figured out my unease otherwise. So new stance: Give money to Ukraine’s armed forces if you think that’s a more effective way of helping, but don’t dive into military analysis instead of actually helping.
I’ll keep my current commenting guidelines though, since the ethical considerations of military distract from the points I want to discuss.
This is something I thought about as well in the early days of the war however now I would question the utility of it in steering decision-making. At this point it seems unlikely that such actions could be framed as altruistic (ofc if you simply care more about Ukraine winning than ending the war this probably isn’t valid), as this would be ineffective way of convincing Russian leadership to end the war while harming everyday Russians who have no control over the situation.
Potentially, however one must consider ones own values in this question. Personally I feel that the best case would be to resolve the conflict ASAP and to support this I would certainly accept the new Russian war (stated*) aims-that is the acquisition of Luhansk and Donetsk, if it brought hostilities to end. Also in my estimation it is entirely within reason that Ukrainian Leadership may (begrudgingly) accept this as well in a ceasefire negotiations. Thus any further damage to the Russian war effort would prolong this outcome.
Again I stress this is my own personal assessment of the situation at this specific moment in time and my modeling of the conflict so far has been very poor.
Also of note: any cyber attack action here would result in likely loss of life either by prolonging the conflict or more directly as higher probabilities of industrial/operational accidents. (I realise I have become paralysed)
I had sort of assumed that if tech skills had to be directly used to help in this situation, it would have to be something like, cyber attacks on Russia. But I never looked closer on that.
I didn’t realize I was inviting these kinds of discussions, nor that I didn’t want them until now. I’d like to keep the comments focused on helping in humanitarian ways, if that’s okay.
It would help if you clarified from the get-go that you care not about maximizing impact, but about maximizing impact subject to the constraint of pretending that this war is some kind of natural disaster.
My goal with this post was mainly to share a model of “it’s better to do little than nothing” in the hopes I’d help someone else give money when they were hesitating. To make that point, I used the retro of the project I happened to be in. This project happened to be a humanitarian one. That it’s about Ukraine is just a coincidence.
Talking about military interventions because of some theoretical higher impact, when in practice very few people will have means to help militarily, is exactly the kind of analysis paralysis that qualifies as “nothing” instead of “little”. So in addition to being about a different domain of help than the case study I was using, this also completely misses the point of the post.
I admit that the comment you’re responding to is fueled by my emotional hesitancy to fund military action, so I thank you for this somewhat charged observation to prompt me into examining myself. Wouldn’t have figured out my unease otherwise. So new stance: Give money to Ukraine’s armed forces if you think that’s a more effective way of helping, but don’t dive into military analysis instead of actually helping.
I’ll keep my current commenting guidelines though, since the ethical considerations of military distract from the points I want to discuss.
This is something I thought about as well in the early days of the war however now I would question the utility of it in steering decision-making. At this point it seems unlikely that such actions could be framed as altruistic (ofc if you simply care more about Ukraine winning than ending the war this probably isn’t valid), as this would be ineffective way of convincing Russian leadership to end the war while harming everyday Russians who have no control over the situation.
What about cyber attacks specifically aimed at the Russian war effort?
Potentially, however one must consider ones own values in this question. Personally I feel that the best case would be to resolve the conflict ASAP and to support this I would certainly accept the new Russian war (stated*) aims-that is the acquisition of Luhansk and Donetsk, if it brought hostilities to end. Also in my estimation it is entirely within reason that Ukrainian Leadership may (begrudgingly) accept this as well in a ceasefire negotiations. Thus any further damage to the Russian war effort would prolong this outcome. Again I stress this is my own personal assessment of the situation at this specific moment in time and my modeling of the conflict so far has been very poor.
Also of note: any cyber attack action here would result in likely loss of life either by prolonging the conflict or more directly as higher probabilities of industrial/operational accidents. (I realise I have become paralysed)
Non-Ukrainian cyber attacks on Russian military targets have the potential to invite retaliation on the country from which they are launched.
Does the Russian military even have the tech dependencies that would make them vulnerable to cyber attacks? I think they’re pretty analog.