Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

"But the Russians were doing it and might use it against us in war!"

I think projects like this are the logical outcome of a society or entities which constantly look forward to the next war instead of seeking to spread peace through cooperation. It's also a statement of trying to win a war through subterfuge instead of straight-up defeating your enemy in combat should it come to that. Either way, I think it reeks of pusillanimity.

View on HN

> Either way, I think it reeks of pusillanimity.

It does, but "courage" is something you tell your troops they should have, to get them to kill and die for you. Tactics and strategy are all about cheating and seeking unfair advantage as much as possible (manipulating your own troops with tales of courage is such cheating too).

Telling troops that they must be courageous is fairly obvious and transparent, I find it much more interesting how the impression of primarily seeking cooperation is communicated to the general public, while what's going on behind the scenes is often (but not always) counter to that....and how effective it is, to the degree that the very same people who advocate cooperation passionately refuse to recognize counter behavior when it is pointed out to them. An example I would give is the "diplomatic" actions of the US with countries along the Russian border.

War profiteers make money not by looting enemy cities, stealing their land, and selling their women into slavery, but from their own government spending.

Indeed, numerous US billionaires have made their fortunes that way, and are now out of reach of prosecution.

  War is Peace
  Freedom is Slavery
  Ignorance is Strength

It is not pusillanimity. If you are the lone society that tries to cooperate and spread peace you will be eaten out. It is rational and logical behaviour to survive.

If your goal is ideal world you must for a while be non-ideal to survive until you reach closer and closer to that ideal state. Which I would say we are doing currently.

Isn’t this exactly the rationale used by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to commit mass genocide in the name of a more ‘ideal’ future state?

Just because some type of reasoning was used in order to justify something bad happening does not mean the reasoning itself is bad or wrong. If your goal is an ideal peaceful world you might have to be patient in order to reach it and take some non-ideal steps to have any chances at all reaching it.

And this is how fascism spreads. Thanks EstoniaTechLead for trying to seduce people into giving up their morality.

These are bad actions but for "the greater good"? You don't get to have it both ways. Protecting yourself without torturing people is 100% feasible and your argument should only be heard in a war crimes tribunal from the defendant'a lawyer to ease their sentence.

Morality isn't hard, but the implementation can be.

You're correct but these examples mean extreme caution and mistrust are warranted against anybody advocating any such steps.

I deleted my previous comment, that assumed you reasoning is devoid of ethics. I don't know what "ideal world" or "non-ideal steps" you were implying, so I won't get into that. However, I can't stress enough how dangerous your line of thinking is. "The end justifies the means" is the poster-child for how tyrants justify atrocities.

Are we even moving closer to an ideal state? Lots of people make that claim but I think many that do have reason to defend the status quo even though many people today suffer from the status quo.

"If you are the lone society that tries to cooperate and spread peace you will be eaten out."

Of which society do you speak of? The US?

Any of them.

This is not an either/or decision. You need to simultaneously prepare for war while pushing diplomacy as far you can take it. The carrot does not work without the stick and the stick shouldn't be used without trying the carrot first.

Sadly, diplomacy can only go so far, and some actors will require being neutralized to solve to problem (see Hitler).

I think the classic example of this is the UK in World War II. They honestly did everything they could to prevent WWII with Hitler including making concessions they probably shouldn't have in the diplomacy phase before resigning themselves that they would have to kill him to solve the problem.

Hitler had strong support at top levels in the UK government, as in the US government. They did not consider him a problem, but a solution. It took a long time for enough of those people to be overcome before anything concrete could be done, and by then the fire was raging.

We are in the same condition today, vis-a-vis worldwide fascism, with (e.g.) an advocate in the US White House, aligned with counterparts in, e.g., Russia, India, Brazil, Philippines, Hungary, Turkey, and Israel.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com