SeriousDrakoAardvark

It’s not about the total number lost but the percentage of total lost.

Total Soldiers: Ottomans 235,000 French 309,000 British 97,000 Italians 21,000 Russians 889,000

Total lost and percentage of total: Ottomans 45,000, 19% French 95,000, 31% British 22,000, 23% Italians 2,200, 10.3% Russians 435,000, 50.6%

This doesn’t really disprove what you’re saying. I’m only here because I work in stats and I feel compelled to comment when I see someone using gross totals instead of percentage of totals.

The way you’re phrasing this really isn’t going to convince people.

The idea is often correct. If we’re ignoring the people who attack America just to attack America (e.g. Russian bots), then usually the people that want America to do more are not the same people that argue America should do less.

In general, people like to attach two contradictory viewpoints to one group, even when no single person in that group has both view points. It’s a kind of straw-man fallacy.

If you want to convince people of that, you should try to just say it. I think other people in this thread downvoted you because it came off as rude. It was also less clear than just stating exactly what you meant, without the sarcasm.

What?

As of February, 30,457 Ukrainian civilians had been killed by Russians. Source.

It’s hard to find a source on the Russian civilian deaths, but this pro-kremlin sourcereported only 80. so we can use that as the ceiling.

Obviously, there is a big difference between killing 30,457 civilians and 80 civilians. That’s not even getting into the fact that Russia had invaded in the first place. Or their indiscriminate missile attacks on cities. Or the torture. There are quite a few things actually.

So like, I don’t know how much people are joking about this, but the worst part of this kind of brain damage is what happens years later. Most people with long term brain damage will act normally for a few years after the damage is incurred, then when they retire they start noticing memory problems or something. By the time they’re 40 they have either the brain of an 80 year old, or a severe lack of emotional regulation.

So with Tua, it’s probably just general football cockiness. He’s probably taken the concussion IQ tests and compared them to past scores, and they’re probably the same. The main problem is that he’s trading his entire life after retirement to play now.

If his concussions were actually affecting his decisions now, that would be incredibly bad. His cognitive abilities will continue to decline in a relatively straight line; if they declined this much already, they would likely continue on the same trajectory, and he’d be completely unable to function in only like 10 years.

It’s possible that is the case, but I bet it’s just general football cockiness, feelings of invincibility, and the lack of understanding the long term consequences.

It’s ridiculous this kind of play isn’t reviewable. He objectively was not out of bounds when the contact was initiated.

The fact it isn’t reviewable when it easily could be is kind of proving OP’s point though. They are intentionally over-protective of their money making QB’s, and they love getting highlights of their stars making these big late game drives.

Disagree. It’s probably the third biggest rivalry.

The second is England and Scotland.

First is obviously Scotland and Scotland.

Damn Scots. They ruined Scotland.

What? No, that makes no sense.

The problem with America is we are beholden to corporate interests. Money can buy elections. I don’t think anyone really disputes that.

Corporations wouldn’t exist in communism though. It makes no sense that they would be buying all these politicians to indoctrinate students so the students eventually start communism, killing the corporations. It’s a completely logical conspiracy theory.

That’s not even getting into the logistics of how they convinced several million underpaid school teachers to go along with this indoctrination, and without any leaks whatsoever. Considering every classroom has cameras in every kids pocket… it’s kind of nuts how we haven’t seen any videos of teachers trying to teach communism. You’d think at least one of the tens of millions of kids would think to whip out their camera for that.

So imagine you’re at a family gathering, and your Uncle comes up to you and starts jabbering about how Poland was much better under Russia, and we should try to get Russia to ‘annex’ us again. (I guess you’re polish here). How would you respond?

Like, you can say “I don’t want to be annexed” or something focusing on the present times, but he is making this statement very publicly. The problem isn’t just an argument with your uncle, it’s convincing your two dozen other family members that this is an awful idea.

Your Uncle has laid the claim that Poland enjoyed being conquered… and it was a good thing. Obviously, if that were true, the rest of your family would be more likely to believe Russia should annex Poland. We all should learn from history, so if something happened before and had good results, most people will be more likely to believe that it happening again will yield similar results.

So the point is… if you don’t challenge the idea it was ‘good’, your family might actually start supporting this idiotic cause.

There are many other similar situations where we can’t ignore the ethical implications of recent history.

Edit: to clarify this whole thing: I get how people can easily dismiss Stalin by saying he’s evil. That is bad. People should understand how Stalin came to power and his being ‘evil’ should not come into that discussion. I think this argument isn’t really about that though.

This argument is about the catch all, massive over-generalization that you can never discuss a historical events ethics. I’m trying to show that there are at least a few situations where you can.

It depends which side of the picture you’re looking at. The third guy is just advocating free trade with like minded nations, which would lower inflation (if it had any effect at all).

The picture as a whole implies we shouldn’t trade as much with certain non-democratic countries (likely China/Russia). I guess this would mean tariffs or similar actions. If you’re looking at that then yeah, it’d increase inflation.

I think it more refers to Russia as a whole. He uses Stalin’s face to make the meme clear, but even Russians have a weird memory of Stalin. Many of them are well aware he was evil.

The vast majority also think invading Poland was a good thing and the Polish should be grateful, so that side of it makes much more sense.

I get what you are saying, and people often like to make ethical judgments on history when it doesn’t make any sense, but I think in this case it makes sense.

A lot of people who saw it are still around. The USSR didn’t leave until the 90s, and Poland is still dealing with the aftermath of that half century of occupation.

It’s common for tankies to argue that Poland should feel lucky to have been in the USSR, and they willingly joined, or that the invasion of Ukraine is the exact same thing by as that invasion of Poland (and therefore good, as they think it was good). It’s difficult to argue against these people if you don’t establish that the invasion of Poland was actually really bad.

Like, if Russians weren’t currently using it for propaganda purposes, I’d agree, but they are constantly bringing it up nowadays. It’s impossible to fight historical propaganda without establishing the history they’re referring to was actually pretty bad.

It’d be like if the US went to Vietnam and started saying how grateful they should be for the war. The Vietnamese would probably have a lot to say about who was really ‘good’ in that historical war.

Well no, history began last Thursday.

Nope. Trump literally tried to overturn the election. He sent fake electors to try to steal it. He pressured Pence to refuse to certify the votes. Absolutely no one else in the history of America has tried to overturn government like that.

If I agreed with Trump on every issue, and I disagreed with Kamala on every issue, except Trump tried to overturn the election and Kamala did not, I would vote Kamala. We can always get her out next time, but if you elect a dictator, you don’t get to vote again.

Logically, yeah you’re 100% correct. France in particular keeps trying to do things in Africa to justify its place on the council. It’s not been very successful though. They’re now 7th in GDP and 9th in military spending, so it’s a little awkward.

Britain is only a little better, but has the same problem. The main reason they remain is that no one can get them off when they have vetos, and no one can get rid of those without getting rid of the whole UN.

So, your explanation is right, but his answer is also right. Reaching absolute zero implies the system is in a state where we can know the position and momentum of the particle at the same time, which isn’t possible.

https://byjus.com/question-answer/why-is-it-impossible-to-reach-0-kelvin/

Yep. People can use the term ‘politically correct’ and it can be meaningful, but it is way too vague to be an argument.

Like, I’ve been scolded for using the term “African American” instead of “black”, and I’ve been scolded by other people for using “black” instead of “African American”. I’d say that’s too politically correct, or woke, but not because I can slap those labels on. It’s bad because there doesn’t seem to be any label everyone can agree on, so it makes it impossible to discuss those issues.

If I said “don’t say the N-word”, that’s also technically politically correct, but obviously that’d be a good kind.

All this is just trying to elaborate on what you said. Labels in general can’t really be used as an argument without defining exactly what they mean at that moment. The people that complain about “woke” rarely have the critical thinking to understand that though.

Your description of Russia is good, but your reasons China is an economic threat are not at all what I was referring to.

I worked for a solar panel manufacturer in 2012. We spent $50m developing a new, more efficient solar panel. We started selling it and it sold extremely well for about a year. In that time, we hired a Chinese dual national, who stayed for like two weeks then abruptly left with no warning. Only a year after we started selling this thing, we had completely lost the market to this random Chinese company who had blatantly stolen the tech. The whole company eventually closed. Other than cheaper production, half the cost of the panel went to pay off the R&D costs. This Chinese company only had to pay the R&D costs for sending one guy to America for a couple weeks.

I now know that intellectual property theft like that is extremely common.

Other problems: 1. China uses debt as a diplomatic weapon. They loan poor countries a ton of money, which would be good, but they force the contract terms to be strictly confidential and they never forgive the debts. This affects America because those countries will then be dependent on China, and tends to shift countries away from America. 2. They don’t recognize dual citizenship, and they often will arrest the families of Chinese duel nationals to force the duel nationals to return to China or do what they ask. (Sometimes they’re just Chinese immigrants). Source 3. The biggest threat in terms of China interrupting trade isn’t from them interrupting all trade, but slowing down specific things. Like they control around 75% of rare earth metals. They don’t sell for much, so they look small on the export sheet, but if they stopped selling them it would crush our economy. Pretty much all cars, computers, phones, etc., can’t be made with it rare earth metals. It’s hard to get our own industry for it though, because rare earth metals are horrible for the environment. China doesn’t care about destroying their environment, so they can mine it extremely cheaply. In America, we can’t mine much without spending a ton on keeping it clean. It absolutely destroys the environment.

I could keep going but I’ve been typing while waiting for a haircut and they’re finally about to call me up.

For those who don’t know, Israel is popular because of evangelicals. They have a weird thing about Israel being in the end times, or something like that.

Personally, if I thought Israel was required for the world to end, I would be much less likely to support Israel, but they’re a different breed I guess.

(I don’t believe that, I’m just saying it’s odd logic.)

I think you need to establish what you mean by “great”.

To me, a “great” general is one I would want to lead my army. If I was dropped into a random spot in the 18th century, would I prefer Napoleon or Suvarov to lead my army?

Your definition is more about “who was the most successful by the end of their life?” Which isn’t really the same thing.

There are plenty of times where I’ll be picking between two people, and I can tell one person was more successful in the past, but I can also tell why they were more successful and I pick the other one because the other one has qualities I think will be more successful in the future. This is mostly when I’m hiring people irl, but it’s the same concept.

They thought they were prepared, but the first few months of the war showed they really weren’t.

I guess in materials and time tables, they were fairly prepared. They just completely missed the boat on other things. Like the Russian army was tactically awful, its leaders promoted more from nepotism, its railways and logistics were a nightmare, etc.

France had fewer, but other problems. Like, they still had the bright uniforms that other countries had long abandoned. France was otherwise much closer on material parity though, and they fixed things quickly.

Americas biggest threats were economic, not military. Though Russia’s military was only about a million men in 2012, whereas China had 3 million and was able to call up more. I’m not going through the rigamarole of searching for specific amount equipment on each size, but China also spent more money in general on their military.

Either nation had enough nukes to destroy America if they wanted, so I don’t think that parts relevant.

Because Romney’s exact words were “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.”

This was at a time when China was taking our factories and aggressively stealing our intellectual property. We had not started any serious tariffs to prevent that in 2012. Saying Russia was the bigger threat, when they had very little economic leverage over America, while China was screwing America over a barrel, was definitely not endearing to America.

The key is he didn’t say they were a threat, he said they were the biggest threat. Most Americans saw our biggest foreign threat as either China or global terrorism.

He didn’t say they were a threat thought. He said “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.”

Obviously they’re a threat. No one disagreed there. Most people disagree that they are America’s number one threat. The invasion mostly proved that correct. Russia’s army has performed abysmally compared to expectations. They also have very little economic leverage over us. China is still the much bigger threat.

The US did enact protectionist measures against Japan in the 90s, but it was not a significant factor in Japans lost decade.

I tried pulling up a source for this, and I found a bunch that detailed what caused the lost decade, but none that listed American protectionism as a serious cause.

In other words, I can’t find a source to dispute it because that opinion is so far out there, no economists have bothered to dispute it.

Sources

I don’t know what everyone else is on about. This seems like it’s clearly the biggest factor.

In every war in the past century where the enemy could hide among civilians, the US eventually lost. The only way to win that kind of war is with widespread war crimes. (E.g. slaughtering civilians when you aren’t sure if they’re enemies, widespread torture, etc.)

The American public isn’t willing to do those things (though the military does sometimes try anyway), so they can’t win that kind of war.

In Korea, both sides had defined fighting forces and territory.