4 ms·

What I tend to see is mostly an overlooking of one side's actions while condemning the other side, with different people favoring different sides. So you have p

by bigstrat2003 1y ago

What I tend to see is mostly an overlooking of one side's actions while condemning the other side, with different people favoring different sides. So you have people who make excuses for Hamas like "they are just responding to an existential threat" while strongly condemning Israel, and people who make similar excuses for Israel while strongly condemning Hamas. Personally I feel that there are no heroes and everyone sucks in this situation, except for the innocent bystanders on both sides who are being caught in the crossfire.

wredcoll 1y ago
> Personally I feel that there are no heroes and everyone sucks in this situation, except for the innocent bystanders on both sides who are being caught in the crossfire. Wow, what a daring and brave opinion. I'm in awe that you're willing to share it publically! Like, a bunch of my local social media bubble has been talking about "media literacy" and "illiteracy" and related concepts and this is a great example. If, for example, someone is telling you that a publically terrible act of violence by someone associated with palestine is probably a response to previous israeli actions, they are not, in fact, secretly trying to imply that the terrorist is a hero. They're simply trying to explain the likely consequences of actions. One of the things that I find most frustrating in certain types of discussions is the idea that we can't do something that will improve the lives of large numbers of people on the off chance that a bad person won't get punished or someone undeserving will be rewarded. It's entirely probable that the solution that improves the lives of the most people in that region will also involve quite a few awful people not getting punished.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- jrmg 1y ago
  In this and so many things now I fear that we’re discarding the idea that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”.
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    I’m not sure if I’d put the balance there, but certainly not at “it is better that a hundred innocents suffer than than one guilty person escapes”
    - wredcoll 1y ago
      The point of course is that it's not about whether or not guilty people escape. It's about making people's lives better. Improving the world. Increasing the net total happiness. That sort of thing. If you actually apply logic and empiricism with that as your goal you quickly realize that punishing guilty people is frankly orthogonal. This is definitely something I have found to be a major divider among people, in the very literal "there are two types of people" sense. Very frequently having some system of punishments and then applying those punishments has some useful effect towards the ultimate goal of better lives for everyone. But, as should hopefully be obvious, the point is the better life goal, not the punishment part. People get very obsessed with the idea of people "getting what they deserve" and so rarely seem to consider any goal beyond satiating the desire for suffering. Everyone loves the classic "moral dilemma" of torturing one child to provide for millions and similar, but perhaps instead what we should be asking is "would you let an awful evil pedophile go free if it meant a better life for hundreds of other children"? That seems like a fun way to get people's heads to explode.
Aeolun 1y ago
Ok, the big problem in this whole thing is assymetrical nature of the thing. The Israelli military is a military funded and shaped by the US one, and it’s a mammoth in all the ways that matter. Hamas, after years of being supressed, is a group of militants with handguns. The Isrealli response to those terrorist with guns killing and abducting some of their people, was to flatten and impose collective punishment on the whole country that those people came from. I have no issues with them defending themselves, but I do with the disproportionate nature of what has been happening. It’s especially ironic because the jews are one of the few people in the world that should have learned that lesson.
- iN7h33nD 1y ago
  Exceptionally well put. I had to comment that this is exactly my take on this and I couldn’t have put it better in such a palatable few sentences.
- FridayoLeary 1y ago
  Check out Israels geography. If those "militants with handguns" hadn't gotten themselves distracted massacring people at a festival, they may well have reached Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in a couple of hours. As it is it's practically a miracle there wasn't a mass uprising of armed palestinians in the West Bank and Israel proper. Your "assymetrical" point is especially bizzare. Palestinian terrorists have shown nothing but tremendous willingness and enthusiasm for attacking jews with literally anything they can lay their hands on including screwdrivers and vehicles. The total imbalance of forces doesn't deter them at all. Why would they having more weapons or Israel less change anything? The main reason large portions of the strip has been flattened is because Hamas built tunnels underneath it. You say it's disproportionate, but spend a couple of hours reading up israels history and geography. You might arrive at some conclusions about the nature of Palestinian terror (if the parent story wasn't enough). I doubt you could come up with literally any other solution. The only one i can think of is a mass evacuation of the gaza strip. It would have prevented a huge amount of deaths. I think the main lesson jews learnt from the holocaust is not to rely on the rest of the world to help them when they are in trouble. I have absolutely no idea why you would think they must prioritise the moral lessons they learned above their own safety.
ivape 1y ago
There’s objective facts about the two combatants. One weighs more and hits harder. The bigger one argues that a fight is a fight, and should be allowed to use their full fury. In full anarchy, the bigger person is rational. Regardless, the bigger person seeks to make some semblance of a case of why their perspective is not immoral, and they mostly can’t. It’s not both rational and moral (as much as they want delude themselves out of moral accountability), it is simply just rational which means one actor is truly psychopathic.

wredcoll 1y ago

> Personally I feel that there are no heroes and everyone sucks in this situation, except for the innocent bystanders on both sides who are being caught in the crossfire. Wow, what a daring and brave opinion. I'm in awe that you're willing to share it publically! Like, a bunch of my local social media bubble has been talking about "media literacy" and "illiteracy" and related concepts and this is a great example. If, for example, someone is telling you that a publically terrible act of violence by someone associated with palestine is probably a response to previous israeli actions, they are not, in fact, secretly trying to imply that the terrorist is a hero. They're simply trying to explain the likely consequences of actions. One of the things that I find most frustrating in certain types of discussions is the idea that we can't do something that will improve the lives of large numbers of people on the off chance that a bad person won't get punished or someone undeserving will be rewarded. It's entirely probable that the solution that improves the lives of the most people in that region will also involve quite a few awful people not getting punished.

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]
jrmg 1y ago
In this and so many things now I fear that we’re discarding the idea that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”.
- Aeolun 1y ago
  I’m not sure if I’d put the balance there, but certainly not at “it is better that a hundred innocents suffer than than one guilty person escapes”
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    The point of course is that it's not about whether or not guilty people escape. It's about making people's lives better. Improving the world. Increasing the net total happiness. That sort of thing. If you actually apply logic and empiricism with that as your goal you quickly realize that punishing guilty people is frankly orthogonal. This is definitely something I have found to be a major divider among people, in the very literal "there are two types of people" sense. Very frequently having some system of punishments and then applying those punishments has some useful effect towards the ultimate goal of better lives for everyone. But, as should hopefully be obvious, the point is the better life goal, not the punishment part. People get very obsessed with the idea of people "getting what they deserve" and so rarely seem to consider any goal beyond satiating the desire for suffering. Everyone loves the classic "moral dilemma" of torturing one child to provide for millions and similar, but perhaps instead what we should be asking is "would you let an awful evil pedophile go free if it meant a better life for hundreds of other children"? That seems like a fun way to get people's heads to explode.

Aeolun 1y ago

Ok, the big problem in this whole thing is assymetrical nature of the thing. The Israelli military is a military funded and shaped by the US one, and it’s a mammoth in all the ways that matter. Hamas, after years of being supressed, is a group of militants with handguns. The Isrealli response to those terrorist with guns killing and abducting some of their people, was to flatten and impose collective punishment on the whole country that those people came from. I have no issues with them defending themselves, but I do with the disproportionate nature of what has been happening. It’s especially ironic because the jews are one of the few people in the world that should have learned that lesson.

iN7h33nD 1y ago
Exceptionally well put. I had to comment that this is exactly my take on this and I couldn’t have put it better in such a palatable few sentences.
FridayoLeary 1y ago
Check out Israels geography. If those "militants with handguns" hadn't gotten themselves distracted massacring people at a festival, they may well have reached Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in a couple of hours. As it is it's practically a miracle there wasn't a mass uprising of armed palestinians in the West Bank and Israel proper. Your "assymetrical" point is especially bizzare. Palestinian terrorists have shown nothing but tremendous willingness and enthusiasm for attacking jews with literally anything they can lay their hands on including screwdrivers and vehicles. The total imbalance of forces doesn't deter them at all. Why would they having more weapons or Israel less change anything? The main reason large portions of the strip has been flattened is because Hamas built tunnels underneath it. You say it's disproportionate, but spend a couple of hours reading up israels history and geography. You might arrive at some conclusions about the nature of Palestinian terror (if the parent story wasn't enough). I doubt you could come up with literally any other solution. The only one i can think of is a mass evacuation of the gaza strip. It would have prevented a huge amount of deaths. I think the main lesson jews learnt from the holocaust is not to rely on the rest of the world to help them when they are in trouble. I have absolutely no idea why you would think they must prioritise the moral lessons they learned above their own safety.

ivape 1y ago

There’s objective facts about the two combatants. One weighs more and hits harder. The bigger one argues that a fight is a fight, and should be allowed to use their full fury. In full anarchy, the bigger person is rational. Regardless, the bigger person seeks to make some semblance of a case of why their perspective is not immoral, and they mostly can’t. It’s not both rational and moral (as much as they want delude themselves out of moral accountability), it is simply just rational which means one actor is truly psychopathic.