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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have made these accusations without any evidence. Be responsible and ethical and show us something real

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You have made these accusations without any evidence. Be responsible and ethical and show us something real, if you have it. (note: I am not taking sides.)

bunderbunder 13y ago
There's really nothing extraordinary here; it's just boring old business-as-usual American politics. Consider reactions to the idea that we cancel the Joint Strike Fighter program. Long story short, every politician who had a contractor working on the project in his constituency started making noise about all the jobs that would be lost if we were to shut down the program. No secret conspiracy; that was an open debate that happened in the public sector, and which many Americans were talking about over dinner. Even the actual influencing of decisions to engage in hostilities is so everyday as to be unremarkable. For example, the big defense contractors spent a whole lot of money lobbying members of Congress to convince them that the 2009 Afghanisatan surge was a good idea. I think some wonks wrote columns about it in Foreign Policy magazine, but otherwise the news was barely even noticed. As for how that leads to a sort of "continuous warfare" policy where we're always on the lookout for new enemies. . . I think that just emerges. If you've spending billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money on some new toy, then at some point someone's going to start asking why. And of course if your job is tied to a project, the very last thing you're going to say is, "No reason, actually this is a pretty silly lark if you ask me." So folks start coming up with hypothetical adversaries, and starts inventing war games and conducting exercises built around these hypotheses. And things just sort of roll along from there.
- cscurmudgeon 13y ago
  We know that people go after profits. Nothing extraordinary here. What is extraordinary is the assertion that people acted unethically and (probably) also illegally.
  - willvarfar 13y ago
    What part is illegal?
    - d23 13y ago
      I'm guessing cscurmudgeon is arguing that it isn't.
      - bunderbunder 13y ago
        Which, in my opinion, isn't necessarily a terribly useful question. When it comes to where the law belongs in relation to pragmatism and ethics, I'm inclined to say that the cart belongs firmly behind both horses.
  - baddox 13y ago
    I don't really care if it's unethical or illegal. I personally just don't want to be taxed to pay for it.
  - rdtsc 13y ago
    I don't think direct written orders have been issued to bomb civilians. What I believe is that it is left to be decided verbally or via other non-verbal signaling. Ex. "Make sure the job gets done well, wink, wink". Or just pay more per missions flown, and don't really bother punishing past mistakes. Pretty often "mistakes" become routine. Those in the chain very quickly assimilate incentive structures.
  - peterashford 13y ago
    Wall street traders were confronted with the proof that their speculation on produce futures was causing famine and actual, real deaths. They were aware, they just didn't care. People acting unethically for profit is pretty much the American way, isn't it? It seems to me that if there's a buck in it and it's not illegal (or you can get away with it) it's pretty much justified in the US.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  > things just sort of roll along from there “They actually like deploying. So when you go visit them in Afghanistan, in the western Pacific, you don't get questions like, ‘Oh, shoot, what's sequester going to do to me?’ They know how to spell it, but that's about it. They want to know, ‘Hey, Commandant, you know, is this going to be the last deployment I'm going to get on, or am I going to actually be able to go to combat again or be able to go to WESTPAC (western pacific) again,” Amos said. “So our morale's pretty high right now, and I think it's going to stay high as long as we give them something to look forward to. The reorientation to the Pacific has just reenergized a lot of Marines as they think about Afghanistan: ‘My gosh, we're coming out of there in 2014. What's left?’ Well, we talk about Darwin, Australia. We talk about Japan. We talk about Guam. And their eyes light up.” http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/11/after-war-budget-cuts-top-brass-worry-troops-are-bored/73478/ http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/11/after-war-budget-cut...
glesica 13y ago
It's a simple economic analysis. People tend (this word is important) to follow their incentives. If a person on welfare faces a high effective marginal tax when they start working (due to paying taxes plus losing benefits) they will not start working. If a CEO is compensated exclusively based on short-term share price, they will ramp up the share price even if they have to hurt the company to do it. We have seen mountains of evidence that people follow their incentives even when those incentives lead to perverse, counter-productive behaviors. It's basically what the entire "Freakonomics" franchise is built on, for example. We also know that the incentives faced by the military establishment are pushing toward more war, more violence. This is obvious, just look at the early '90s when we thought the world was going to be more peaceful. We cut back on military spending, military contractors howled and screamed. So, while we have no direct evidence that anyone in the military establishment is willfully disregarding civilian casualties, we do have extremely strong inferential evidence that some people in the military establishment are likely to do so, now, in the past, and in the future.
- cscurmudgeon 13y ago
  Arguments like this are logically wrong. I am glad you are not a judge in real life (hint: why is racial profiling wrong?)
  - cglee 13y ago
    Why is this logically wrong? I think it's a given that people/corporations follow economic incentives. We even have a legally binding phrase for that to protect shareholders. No one is making explicit accusations, just pointing out that privatizing certain industries (prisons, military, etc) can lead to perverse incentives.
  - crpatino 13y ago
    Yes, the argument is logically wrong... but logic is not the only mental resource we have to make sense of the world. By example, if we agreed that the truth can only be called "truth" if it is derived by "logic", there would be no scientific method, and we would still be killing each other with swords because there is no logical way to figure out, let alone unmanned flying devices, but any sort of flying machine heavier than air. Instead, you would be arguing that it is "illogical" for a simple peasant to be able to kill a noble knight that has been training in the art of war for his whole life... so those damned crossbow mercenaries are cheating and ought not to exist. And for the example you offer, judges' very job description require them to narrow down on a case by case basis, and to make a decision based on the evidence available, beyond reasonable doubt. The ethical principle that requires this to be so is that the asymmetry of power between the individual and the State is so big that it is most fair for the whole process to start with a bias in favor of the individual. Other situations require a different kind of analysis. And the consequence to apply this level of precision to political analysis is that no analysis (and no criticism to the de-facto policies that are guarantied to emerge anyways in this vacum of knowledge) is ever possible.
crbnw00ts 13y ago
> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For how many years were people dismissed as nutjobs and "conspiracy theorists" when they talked about NSA spying? Now we know it was all true. Would you like to make a bet as to whether or not the US military-industrial complex acts in its own self-interest when comes to the "War on Terror"? When it comes down to it, there is nothing particularly "extraordinary" about these claims. > You have made these accusations without any evidence. The evidence is circumstantial and based on past behavior patterns of the US government. Read "Decent Interval" and its follow-up "Irreparable Harm" by Frank Snepp, or "State of War" by James Risen (for something more recent) to get started on this history. Again, there is nothing "extraordinary" about the previous poster's claims.
- aroch 13y ago
  >For how many years were people dismissed as nutjobs and "conspiracy theorists" when they talked about NSA spying? Now we know it was all true. Just because it is true, doesn't mean those people aren't nutjobs or conspiracy theorists.
  - toki5 13y ago
    It's also not at all logical to say: [Unlikely thing X] came true! Therefore, [unlikely thing Y] will, too! Even if X and Y were incredibly similar -- in this case they aren't, at all -- that's still not a logical assumption. It's not even evidence toward Y.
    - cdash 13y ago
      There is your problem, you think unlikely thing x came true when in truth it was likely.
  - baddox 13y ago
    I'm curious what your definition of "nutjob" is, given that you would apparently apply it even to people who are correct about all of their theories.
RyanZAG 13y ago
Blowing up a wedding is not extraordinary? 'Not taking sides' doesn't cut it - you're either doing your bit to end drone strikes like these, or you are morally bankrupt. There is no fence sitting when civilians are being blown up.
- nickff 13y ago
  Civilians are blown up in every war, drones did not create this problem, and eliminating UAVs will not end it. If you want people to be "doing your bit to end drone strikes", you should consider that the probable counter-factual is not an end to non-combatant (civilian) deaths; civilian mortality may increase, decrease, or stay the same, depending on what tactics are chosen to replace drones.
  - gldalmaso 13y ago
    Weddings are not war zones.
    - nickff 13y ago
      I never said they were, and I do not understand how you could think I did.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Weddings are not war zones. But they can take place in them, and, more to the point, the problem that needs to be addressed in the legalities of modern war is that modern wars, increasingly, don't have "zones" at all.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    Sorry - by drone strikes I was actually incorrectly implying the broader picture. I mean end attacks on civilians in countries you are not even at war with. There really is no moral justification for blowing these people up. Even if they were terrorists, there is no way they could have done as much damage as the slaughter of a whole wedding. The 'cure' is far worse than the illness.
rdtsc 13y ago
Well we'd need someone like Snowden that might leak or expose the decision process. We bomb people in countries we are not even at war with. We sentence people to death, and we keep tight control over how we do it. There is no public trial happening, no jury. It seems to me that the incentives structure rewards a continued War On Terror. Everyone directly involved in it, tends to profit from maintaining it. Also I refuse to blindly believe in the inherent goodness or extraordinary purity of heart of those involved. You ask for extraordinary evidence that they are incentivized to kill. Ok, I can also turn it around and take the point that those involved are by default bad, don't have pure motives, are evil and are motivated by money or desire to inflict pain and require extraordinary evidence to prove the opposite. We have seen them lie time and time again. To the people, to Congress. At this point they have the burden of proof that their have good and pure motives at the core of their decision making. Sorry, they lost the confidence that once might have been placed in them.

bunderbunder 13y ago

There's really nothing extraordinary here; it's just boring old business-as-usual American politics. Consider reactions to the idea that we cancel the Joint Strike Fighter program. Long story short, every politician who had a contractor working on the project in his constituency started making noise about all the jobs that would be lost if we were to shut down the program. No secret conspiracy; that was an open debate that happened in the public sector, and which many Americans were talking about over dinner. Even the actual influencing of decisions to engage in hostilities is so everyday as to be unremarkable. For example, the big defense contractors spent a whole lot of money lobbying members of Congress to convince them that the 2009 Afghanisatan surge was a good idea. I think some wonks wrote columns about it in Foreign Policy magazine, but otherwise the news was barely even noticed. As for how that leads to a sort of "continuous warfare" policy where we're always on the lookout for new enemies. . . I think that just emerges. If you've spending billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money on some new toy, then at some point someone's going to start asking why. And of course if your job is tied to a project, the very last thing you're going to say is, "No reason, actually this is a pretty silly lark if you ask me." So folks start coming up with hypothetical adversaries, and starts inventing war games and conducting exercises built around these hypotheses. And things just sort of roll along from there.

cscurmudgeon 13y ago
We know that people go after profits. Nothing extraordinary here. What is extraordinary is the assertion that people acted unethically and (probably) also illegally.
- willvarfar 13y ago
  What part is illegal?
  - d23 13y ago
    I'm guessing cscurmudgeon is arguing that it isn't.
    - bunderbunder 13y ago
      Which, in my opinion, isn't necessarily a terribly useful question. When it comes to where the law belongs in relation to pragmatism and ethics, I'm inclined to say that the cart belongs firmly behind both horses.
- baddox 13y ago
  I don't really care if it's unethical or illegal. I personally just don't want to be taxed to pay for it.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  I don't think direct written orders have been issued to bomb civilians. What I believe is that it is left to be decided verbally or via other non-verbal signaling. Ex. "Make sure the job gets done well, wink, wink". Or just pay more per missions flown, and don't really bother punishing past mistakes. Pretty often "mistakes" become routine. Those in the chain very quickly assimilate incentive structures.
- peterashford 13y ago
  Wall street traders were confronted with the proof that their speculation on produce futures was causing famine and actual, real deaths. They were aware, they just didn't care. People acting unethically for profit is pretty much the American way, isn't it? It seems to me that if there's a buck in it and it's not illegal (or you can get away with it) it's pretty much justified in the US.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
> things just sort of roll along from there “They actually like deploying. So when you go visit them in Afghanistan, in the western Pacific, you don't get questions like, ‘Oh, shoot, what's sequester going to do to me?’ They know how to spell it, but that's about it. They want to know, ‘Hey, Commandant, you know, is this going to be the last deployment I'm going to get on, or am I going to actually be able to go to combat again or be able to go to WESTPAC (western pacific) again,” Amos said. “So our morale's pretty high right now, and I think it's going to stay high as long as we give them something to look forward to. The reorientation to the Pacific has just reenergized a lot of Marines as they think about Afghanistan: ‘My gosh, we're coming out of there in 2014. What's left?’ Well, we talk about Darwin, Australia. We talk about Japan. We talk about Guam. And their eyes light up.” http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/11/after-war-budget-cuts-top-brass-worry-troops-are-bored/73478/ http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/11/after-war-budget-cut...

glesica 13y ago

It's a simple economic analysis. People tend (this word is important) to follow their incentives. If a person on welfare faces a high effective marginal tax when they start working (due to paying taxes plus losing benefits) they will not start working. If a CEO is compensated exclusively based on short-term share price, they will ramp up the share price even if they have to hurt the company to do it. We have seen mountains of evidence that people follow their incentives even when those incentives lead to perverse, counter-productive behaviors. It's basically what the entire "Freakonomics" franchise is built on, for example. We also know that the incentives faced by the military establishment are pushing toward more war, more violence. This is obvious, just look at the early '90s when we thought the world was going to be more peaceful. We cut back on military spending, military contractors howled and screamed. So, while we have no direct evidence that anyone in the military establishment is willfully disregarding civilian casualties, we do have extremely strong inferential evidence that some people in the military establishment are likely to do so, now, in the past, and in the future.

cscurmudgeon 13y ago
Arguments like this are logically wrong. I am glad you are not a judge in real life (hint: why is racial profiling wrong?)
- cglee 13y ago
  Why is this logically wrong? I think it's a given that people/corporations follow economic incentives. We even have a legally binding phrase for that to protect shareholders. No one is making explicit accusations, just pointing out that privatizing certain industries (prisons, military, etc) can lead to perverse incentives.
- crpatino 13y ago
  Yes, the argument is logically wrong... but logic is not the only mental resource we have to make sense of the world. By example, if we agreed that the truth can only be called "truth" if it is derived by "logic", there would be no scientific method, and we would still be killing each other with swords because there is no logical way to figure out, let alone unmanned flying devices, but any sort of flying machine heavier than air. Instead, you would be arguing that it is "illogical" for a simple peasant to be able to kill a noble knight that has been training in the art of war for his whole life... so those damned crossbow mercenaries are cheating and ought not to exist. And for the example you offer, judges' very job description require them to narrow down on a case by case basis, and to make a decision based on the evidence available, beyond reasonable doubt. The ethical principle that requires this to be so is that the asymmetry of power between the individual and the State is so big that it is most fair for the whole process to start with a bias in favor of the individual. Other situations require a different kind of analysis. And the consequence to apply this level of precision to political analysis is that no analysis (and no criticism to the de-facto policies that are guarantied to emerge anyways in this vacum of knowledge) is ever possible.

crbnw00ts 13y ago

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For how many years were people dismissed as nutjobs and "conspiracy theorists" when they talked about NSA spying? Now we know it was all true. Would you like to make a bet as to whether or not the US military-industrial complex acts in its own self-interest when comes to the "War on Terror"? When it comes down to it, there is nothing particularly "extraordinary" about these claims. > You have made these accusations without any evidence. The evidence is circumstantial and based on past behavior patterns of the US government. Read "Decent Interval" and its follow-up "Irreparable Harm" by Frank Snepp, or "State of War" by James Risen (for something more recent) to get started on this history. Again, there is nothing "extraordinary" about the previous poster's claims.

aroch 13y ago
>For how many years were people dismissed as nutjobs and "conspiracy theorists" when they talked about NSA spying? Now we know it was all true. Just because it is true, doesn't mean those people aren't nutjobs or conspiracy theorists.
- toki5 13y ago
  It's also not at all logical to say: [Unlikely thing X] came true! Therefore, [unlikely thing Y] will, too! Even if X and Y were incredibly similar -- in this case they aren't, at all -- that's still not a logical assumption. It's not even evidence toward Y.
  - cdash 13y ago
    There is your problem, you think unlikely thing x came true when in truth it was likely.
- baddox 13y ago
  I'm curious what your definition of "nutjob" is, given that you would apparently apply it even to people who are correct about all of their theories.

RyanZAG 13y ago

Blowing up a wedding is not extraordinary? 'Not taking sides' doesn't cut it - you're either doing your bit to end drone strikes like these, or you are morally bankrupt. There is no fence sitting when civilians are being blown up.

nickff 13y ago
Civilians are blown up in every war, drones did not create this problem, and eliminating UAVs will not end it. If you want people to be "doing your bit to end drone strikes", you should consider that the probable counter-factual is not an end to non-combatant (civilian) deaths; civilian mortality may increase, decrease, or stay the same, depending on what tactics are chosen to replace drones.
- gldalmaso 13y ago
  Weddings are not war zones.
  - nickff 13y ago
    I never said they were, and I do not understand how you could think I did.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Weddings are not war zones. But they can take place in them, and, more to the point, the problem that needs to be addressed in the legalities of modern war is that modern wars, increasingly, don't have "zones" at all.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  Sorry - by drone strikes I was actually incorrectly implying the broader picture. I mean end attacks on civilians in countries you are not even at war with. There really is no moral justification for blowing these people up. Even if they were terrorists, there is no way they could have done as much damage as the slaughter of a whole wedding. The 'cure' is far worse than the illness.

rdtsc 13y ago

Well we'd need someone like Snowden that might leak or expose the decision process. We bomb people in countries we are not even at war with. We sentence people to death, and we keep tight control over how we do it. There is no public trial happening, no jury. It seems to me that the incentives structure rewards a continued War On Terror. Everyone directly involved in it, tends to profit from maintaining it. Also I refuse to blindly believe in the inherent goodness or extraordinary purity of heart of those involved. You ask for extraordinary evidence that they are incentivized to kill. Ok, I can also turn it around and take the point that those involved are by default bad, don't have pure motives, are evil and are motivated by money or desire to inflict pain and require extraordinary evidence to prove the opposite. We have seen them lie time and time again. To the people, to Congress. At this point they have the burden of proof that their have good and pure motives at the core of their decision making. Sorry, they lost the confidence that once might have been placed in them.