Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

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> In this setting war is fun for one side (protagonist is taking photos! just for the kicks) and life-death situation for other side.

I think your comment is distorting reality on several levels.

First of all, you take the fact that one side had a journalist and jump to a conclusion that the war was "fun" for them. How does "taking photos" entail "just for the kicks", exactly?

But the second distortion, which does not pop out that much, but is much more serious, is to measure different side's moral stance in a war by their suffering. You, implicitly, say that the side that suffers the most is by default on the moral high ground.

Is it your honest opinion on ethics of war? That suffering is the measure of morality?

I'm asking it because this kind of logic entails several very curious conclusions. For example, the moment one side gains the upper hand and the other loses it, they immediately switch places, bad guys become good and vice versa. Also, the weaker side can start conflicts and break armistices and will remain a "good guy" as long as it ensures that it has higher casualties, especially civilian. And, of course, any technology that would make my soldiers or civilians safer, and, therefore, leads to less suffering on my side, makes me less moral - and, therefore, is immoral on it's own.

There is a rule of thumb for judging morality in wars: If you are fighting in your country and the other side it's not, then, normally, you have the moral high ground.

As all rules of thumb, it not always work but it normally does.

A consequence of this rule is asymmetry, because you only go to another country if you have the upper hand and something to win; And a consequence of force asymmetry is more suffering for one side than the other.

So, yes, suffering is, even if not a direct one, a good proxy for moral stance.

>There is a rule of thumb for judging morality in wars: If you are fighting in your country and the other side it's not, then, normally, you have the moral high ground.

Yes, normally. One example where it does not apply is when you are in your country and are executing a genocide. Then we can argue that an invading party with the intent to stop the genocide has higher morality.

Except when it is not really genocide but counter-activity to a local minority initiative with the intent to play a victim such a that another country where they have large majority could send in their forces.

Etc etc.

"Then we can argue that an invading party with the intent to stop the genocide has higher morality."

Barring a few, normally not very successful, Blue Helmets interventions, I can't think of instances of that.

Surely, when a foreign power decide to use the force, against a less powerful country, the real reasons have little to do with stop genocides or injustices.

World War II?!

Can you expand on that? As far as I know, no major power in WWII used prevention of genocide as their reason to join the war.

But why do we have to stick to rules of thumb and causation links?

This rule has a glaring hole in it: according to it, the moment allies landed in Normandy and Soviet Union moved the fight into mainland Germany, Nazi Reich became more moral than the adversary. Can't we at least come up with better heuristics than this?

(Yes, about Godwin's law: WWII is just a classical example that has an ethical consensus about it. If it makes you more comfortable, you can replace it with Gondor's armies storming the Black Gate.)

I think it was Borges that said 'all the discussions are about semantics.':

I could argue that the Second World War was about, you know, the world, not about Germany. They were fighting in all Europe, that in that moment the fight was in Germany was due to the development of the war but it was, yet, a global war.

We need heuristics because when somebody tell us something that goes against a developed heuristic we should be surprised and examine the evidence more carefully. A kind of comprehension algorithm if you want. Maybe it's another way of saying that if you are invading a country the burden of proof is on you.

For instance, Russian intervention in Ukraine was about protecting ethnics Russians, USA intervention in Iraq was about spreading democracy or defensive intervention or something like that.

That goes against my heuristic, so I should stop to examine the evidence more carefully.

I don't think either of those are counterexamples to your heuristic. Your heuristic just highlighting your biases around those two conflicts.

I can see now how adding a 'supposedly' in the 4th paragraph would make my point more clear. Sorry about that.

> We need heuristics because when somebody tell us something that goes against a developed heuristic we should be surprised and examine the evidence more carefully. A kind of comprehension algorithm if you want. Maybe it's another way of saying that if you are invading a country the burden of proof is on you.

That is an excellent point.

However, I too often see people treat heuristics as a rigid rule instead; case in point: original comment. Treating heuristics as heuristics and digging deeper requires untypical intellectual honesty, especially when talking about politics - where most of the arguing is an emotionally charged aggression towards out-group rather than search for the truth.

Therefore, while I perfectly understand usefulness of heuristics as a concept, I think that in this kind of topic it's useful to abstain from heuristics altogether.

Speaking of distorting reality, you say:

- 'journalist' while article says 'an enlisted man in the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade'

- 'just for the kicks' was sense I got from this paragraph of the article: 'Hensinger, sensing an opportunity, stuffed his Nikon camera, ...' and 'He timed his appearance for guard duty to make sure that he would be assigned to the watch tower with the widest view of the mountain and base.'

- Suffering is to some extent measure of morality. For example, recent US military operations heavily used drones. It is one thing to fly drone using XBox gamepad and kill for <insert noble cause here>, and another to shoot soldiers who invaded your country using some primitive gun. First is more similar to video game than to war. Second is more moral, and includes more suffering, no matter what mental acrobatics you use against it.

> Suffering is to some extent measure of morality.

Can you actually back this statement up? Because what you write about drones is just a description of one particular example, which still doesn't explain the exact link between suffering and ethics.

You, implicitly, say that the side that suffers the most is by default on the moral high ground.

Sadly this is very common: more Arab lives are lost than Israeli - seems line Israelis are more evil.

While the reason is very straighforward - Israeli put nore effort into defending their citizens while the other side shoot rockets out of civilian neighborhoods seemingly to attract fire and international sympathy :-/

I feel more sorry for the Arabs for they have bad leadership and is punished again and again for it. But moral high ground? No way IMO.

Their leadership fulfills their goals perfectly. It just so happens that these goals have nothing in common with the desires of the people, but it's typical for dictatorships.

So sad for the actual humans who live there.

Suffering is better than nothing to measure morality. Higher suffering implies more helplessness to avoid it. Lower suffering implies you have the freedom to fight less.

Yes, if the balance of power suddenly changes, the morality can too. See the firebombing of Dresden, for instance. To maintain morality, you'd have to quickly scale back your attacks to match your newfound power instead of killing everyone because now you can.

> Suffering is better than nothing to measure morality.

You seem to imply that "something is better than nothing". I don't agree: IMO, it's much more useful to honestly say that you don't know something than to cling to a bad substitute for knowledge.

Also, "nothing" is not the only alternative here. Humanity has been figuring out ethics for a long time; there are plenty of alternative measures. Can we start with mens rea, for example?

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