Hacker News Reader

Comment by bragr | Hacker News Reader

>There was a time in the 1960s when the oceans were considered to be as important to explore as space.

Arguably a lot of that was just cover for cold war military submarine/anti-submarine research. Seabed hydrophones for tracking soviet subs, undersea mapping for submarine navigation, DSVs for recovering intelligence from wrecks, etc. Famously the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic was just the cover story for exploring submarine wrecks in the Atlantic.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/13/us/titanic-discovery-classifi...

View on HN

That is just fine with me. I realize our current national politics leave a lot to be desired.

That sucks.

But, as long as we are advancing and stuff bleeds out to where mere mortals can access them, game on!

I am not here to wish it were better.

And I do want that, hope for that and am, when life permits, an activist to those ends.

We all get a free ticket to this place. It is amazing!

And we only get one.

I plan on loving, living, building, doing, playing and all manner of things we find ourselves willing and able to do

That is why I am here.

And ideally, I leave it better than I found it. Well on track for that to be true right now which means I am here to take the risks I can manage.

It is by no means perfect, but it is somewhat defensible POV.

Well it’s great… except for all the credibility the US lost abroad after claiming for several decades to not be doing many of those things under cover.

Trading away what took over 200 years to build up, and will need another 200 years to regain to the same extent, isn’t smart.

Do you have an objective metric that suggests the US has lost (or is losing) credibility? I don't see any signs of it.

UN voting patterns. e.g. In the 1990s General Assembly it was far from certain that the US would lose most of the contenious ones involving the US, every year, except maybe the annual Cuba vote.

Whereas in 2023-2024, well you can check yourself. A lot of the time even countries like Norway or Ireland or Mexico vote against the US.

Do you have a link to anything that shows the data analysis on our voting patterns having less international backing in recent times? I see the data and can plot out a trend myself, but if someone has already done better analysis I'm curious to read more about what you're talking about.

edit: I did a simple chart over all the UN votes sorted by date and the amount of votes that match USA votes seems to increase over time, but the real issue is that the vote data only went through 2021. At a quick glance the only data I can find does not match what you're suggesting.

Huh? I clearly see the General Assembly voting results on their website starting way before 2021?

We will see signs over the next Presidential term. And frankly, some from the current one.

And we have a couple generations, maybe a few --probably a few, some of age and ready to take the reigns of governance, who feel the US has things to answer for.

Whether they will act is another discussion.

A diminished US credence is a logical consequence of our policy choices.

A big one was actually 9/11. We were a different people before that time. The change has been brutal for those of us able to hold on to enough to see it for what it is.

We were handed a genuine opportunity to actually lead the free world, and that meant more then to more people, but I digress.

We, and by that I mean our government we chose to lead, and our inaction about it all, squandered that opportunity to pursue a war of choice for oil while at the same time abusing legitimate shock and awe for the purpose of passing surveillance legislation haunting us to this day. Among other things.

We lost serious credence then. Most of the world was anxious to see us walk our talk in the face of terror and we just didn't.

Now, there are many events, governments toppled, resources secured, business moved or changed, and more that all holds similar potential.

I am not saying we will be held to account on all that today. Of course not!

But, I am saying what we do, the attitudes we hold dear actually do really matter to a whole lot of people who may or may not be inclined to act on it.

There is our credence and reputable nature as seen by our own people, other nations and their leaders and people, and finally by elite people, essentially able to accumulate such wealth and power as to be ungovernable, free in the most basic of ways.

These will all play out in subtle ways. One will need a serious stretch of time to see a meaningful impact.

> We will see signs over the next Presidential term.

Maybe, maybe not. People who actually know what the future holds stand to make a lot of money simply with market speculation. As it turns out, very few people are capable of beating the market while many claim they know what will happen in the future.

I'm very skeptical of anyone who makes bold claims about the future. Especially while ignoring the question to whether any objective metrics exist today that show our credibility is in decline.

Objective metrics are very hard. I expanded my comment above to explain why.

And to your point, these things are glacial. As they should be.

Finally, I will point out this dynamic is "signed" in the sense of say benefit of the doubt as opposed to a direct punitive action. Call the latter a negative and the former a positive.

Opportunity costs are another way to think about all this.

We do not have a perfect history to draw from. There goes your objective metric right there.

We do have assessments and expectations that may or may not align, or be met, and those are how I generally evaluate these things.

Be secure in your skepticism! I am of my own.

The major impact may well be a shift in basic trust, changes in expectations.

Things like the petrodollar seeing change and or there being alternatives really matter! A

> Objective metrics are very hard.

I agree, but without them we all fall victims to our own blinding bias. Is there much of a point in making predictions or holding opinions when you don't have objective metrics to draw from? Sure, someone has to do it, but not the people in the comment sections of a social media site where we're all trying to learn more.

Nope.

We fall victim when we fail to understand one another and have meaningful exchanges with a diverse body of critical thought.

This means actually having those chats across the "asile" as our politicians like to say.

My circle includes a broad swath of people. Sometimes I catch some crap from "those people" because I refuse to hate or shun "those other people" and that sucks.

But, it can be managed and so I do.

It also helps to talk with people from other parts of the world. I cultivate these and those conversations have been rewarding.

"All trying to learn more."

Sure seems to me like you have a conflict in your process you don't need.

Are we all here to learn more?

Nope.

I largely am, but more about what?

For me, better understanding other points of view is a big one. We are having one of those very high value exchanges right now! Great.

More about the topics linked here? Sure!

And then there are those voices of experience, back stories, info bits hard to find otherwise, advice given and, and, and...

I submit your ability to use this resource to potential is hobbled by your perception of it's purpose.

I would give that some thought. I did when it was written to me quite some time ago.

Peace, and all that. Live well.

There is a type of person I don't bother engaging. The type of person who has no qualms spending a lot of time talking, but is less interested in sharing the facts that inform their worldview. I hope you aren't one of those people and I hope even more strongly you're not content with being that type of person.

I am quite happy sharing many things.

Facts are great! When I got 'em, happy to share them.

Ways to reason or more generally think are of great interest as well. We have many modes of thought here. Was considerably less diverse some time back, and very early on, many here flat out tried to shout me down.

Worldviews are meh.

Experiences are much better, particularly when they apply to a process or task or even advocacy of some kind.

As for time. Well, that depends on our input and output speeds.

How about we settle for verbose? Hope that works.

I have no qualms regarding exchange sizes.

Frankly, my top preference is that others be as real as they can, even when that means I won't like it all that much.

I tend to avoid personal judgements. Those are generally unnecessary.

Out of curiosity, what has the US claimed it isn't doing, but has been doing, that other countries haven't also done?

While they certainly have lost trust, have they lost more trust than any other govt in the modern day where govt narratives are routinely exposed?

Why is credibility a good thing?

For example, the US has credibility that it will defend Europe. What is the consequence of this? Europe slacking off on its own defense. This has socked the US with large expenses for decades.

I get the impression credibility is sugarcoating the idea that the US should do what others want, not what is in the best interests of the US.

There's a lot to be said for incredibility: doing things that no one expects or even believes possible.

Are you not asking two questions?

Credence is a good thing because others can understand websay what we do and do what we say.

This is high value! Expectations can be set and met with confidence. So much depends on that being solid!

Your other question, "Is the expectation the US will defend Europe a good thing?"

Frankly deserves and would be a good discussion I would read with interest.

We are in an adversarial relationship with everyone else, even allies, because our interests are not identical.

Game theory says there's value in unpredictability. Optimal strategies in games can involve randomness. To the extent we are credible, this reduces our unpredictability.

In the specific example of defending Europe, our credibility enables Europe to adopt a strategy of sponging off the US. Arguably the US would be better off if there was more doubt in Europe about whether we'd actually follow through on commitments.

The moon landing was also a highly politically motivated project - spreading the dream of space exploration was just a means to an end. But it's a great dream, even with that context.

I would have preferred a healthcare financing system, personally. But I guess we got technology instead.

Indeed, the moon landing wasn't the universally-lauded come-together moment people like to portray it as. MLK had been assassinated the previous year and the Vietnam War was in full swing; there were a lot of things on people's minds (and greatly varying opinions on what the government ought to be spending money on). The common memory of the event can mostly be chalked up to a combination of propaganda and the people who tend to be able to get their writing about it published (white Baby Boomers).

We spend far far more on healthcare than space or sea exploration already.

Yea, because we have a completely ass-backwards way of funding it.

Anyway what I'm referring to is the spending of political capital in the context of the 60s. The rest of the world got socialized healthcare; we got a space program.

I don't really see this as a problem, frankly. Space and sea exploration has little value compared to health care.

Similarly, a lot of radio astronomy funding was Cold War cover for stuff like surveilling Soviet radar reflected from the moon.

Maybe, but the 60s are also the start of recreational scuba diving and that probably played a big part in it as well. All of a sudden there was this big unknown world that became accessible.

Maybe, but at least we dared to dream.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com