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Thanks, that is good advice. Honestly hadn't thought of that - oh well. Errare humanum est and all that...
Hi everyone.
I've already posted a couple of pieces - probably should have visited this page first, especially before posting my last piece. Well, such is life.
I headed over to LessWrong because I was/am a bit burned out by the high-octane conversations that go on online. I've disagreed with some things I've read here, but never wanted to beat my head - or someone else's - against a wall. So, I'm here to learn. I like the sequences have picked up some good points already - especially about replacing the symbol with the substance.
Question - what's the ettiquette about linking stuff from one's own blog? I'm not trying to do self-promotion here, but there's one or two ideas I've developed elsewhere & would find it useful to refer to them.
I was wondering why it got downvoted so much. Did you mean the post over at my blog, or this post here? I'm really not sure what's so inflammatory about this post - I was just trying to explain an idea.
Yes, as a matter of fact. He often travelled in Kurdistan, had Kurdish "comrades" as he called them, and championed Jalal Talabani.
I should have made it clear - when I was referring to the articles on the Hitch, they were usually from respectable news organizations such as The Guardian or Salon - and so on.
In case it wasn't clear (reviewing the article) I was quoting Conservapedia as an example of this kind of bad arguing, bad reasoning.
Could be two different uses of the word rationality. There are certainly those who call themselves "reality based" or whatever and therefore assume that everything they assert is rational and scientific. But if you invest yourself in "doing rationality" rather than "being rational" you might do better.
Could you expand on that? I'm not sure I follow...
Thanks - you're quite right. That is the study I was thinking of, and 79% is still horrifyingly high - sorry for getting that wrong, and thanks for the correction!
Just to take your last point, my response is that this is both a strawman and an argument from intimidation. Take this:
"you make the claim Hitler's sole motivation was killing Jews"
Did I? Where? I said that Hitler's motivation was his fanatical racism and that the desire to murder the Jews was a large part of that - was, in fact, an inextricable part of that. His racism wasn't the result of the war, it was the cause of the war. As you admit towards the end.
"You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place."
Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary "The Führer recognizes the enormous opportunity that the war provides". Hitler needed the night and fog of war, not to mention the hysteria that war brings, to carry out his plans.
"What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? "
Well, quote something from the book rather than just drop its title.
"he slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. "
The mass murder of those considered racially inferior was purely tangential? Well, if that's the way you think, then that's the way you think. There is a simple answer to this: the Wahnsee decision was to exterminate the Jewish people, and then the Slavs (there is some evidence that Hitler wanted to depopulate Africa after Europe was conquered), and there were camps that were purely devoted to the business of mass murder, no slave labour involved - Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka. The Nazi camps were not like the labour camps of the Soviet Union, they were murder facilities. To argue that the mass murder in the east is tangential is completely ahistoric.
Since the civilized tone of debate has become strained here, I think I will leave it there.
You don't... but others do. Dinesh D'Souza has written a book detailing the "root causes" argument, but with a twist - the quotations and other evidence he amasses are from a socially conservative perspective. That is, he makes exactly the same, fully backed up "root causes" argument, but differs on the root causes in question.
Again, I am trying to make the point that what you find obvious isn't at all what others find obvious. People change radically across time and space.
"No doubt they disapprove of many aspects of the American lifestyle, but mostly they are interested in signalling to their fellow Muslims the purity of their opposition to US power in the middle east."
But why do they object to US power? They object, in their own words, to US power because it dilutes the purity of Islam. They are not struggling for national liberation, but for theocracy. Their explicit goal is the establishment of a vast theocractic empire - the attack on America was a part of that, to rally the faithful to their cause. Take Palestine, for example - Al Qaeda doesn't even think Palestine should exist, except as a province of the Caliphate.
What is "meddling in local affairs" in this context? According to what they say, it is as much American pop culture and the spread of "decadence" (liberalism) as it is the support of certain tin-pot tyrants.
That isn't to say there aren't objectionable US policies. But please don't confuse why you might object to a US policy with why an Islamic fanatic might object to it.
May I make an assumption? I'm guessing you're American - it's that phrase about "right wing Christianity". The problem is that America doesn't have anything like real Christian fanaticism. It has some people who are upset about gay marriage and evolution and that's it.
Europeans, on the other hand, have had the real thing in living memory. We're not talking about "the Moral Majority" here, but the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or the Falange. This is the real thing, real fanaticism, and what you learn is that true faith, true belief does indeed inspire war.
This is what I mean when I say you cannot assume that other people think the way you do.
One line disproof: There have been a grand total of zero terrorist attacks on the United States from Vietnam, easily the most destructive and wicked war the US has ever waged - if people whose kids are still being born with birth defects don't decide to fly planes into buildings, I think it is safe to say that something else is going on.
Again, this ignores the stated intentions and demands of Al Qaeda, to recreate the lost caliphate and enforce the most fanatical Islamic rule within it, a global Taliban style rule. It also ignores things like Al Qaeda's stated support for the genocide in East Timor or Darfur.
On the other hand, you get exactly that impression by reading... what the actual Nazis said, all the way to the top, and the experiences of people living through that period. During the height of the second world war, they insisted on using scarce resources like trains and troops to keep up the Jew killing - they were willing to risk their own war aims to complete this task.
You keep citing these books but you don't give any evidence from them.
The entire program was to saturate society with racial hatred and frenzy. Children in school were terrified by long harangues about racial purity and so on.
There seems to be nothing that I can say that will convince you, no piece of evidence from the entire action and behavior of the Third Reich that could possibly indicate to you that they meant what they said. The very idea of a Nazi empire was to establish lebensraum for "pure" Aryans to repopulate. Racial ideology wasn't window dressing in that empire, it was the very cause and basis of that empire.
If you start an eastward invasion in June, you end up in Russia in Winter. Which is what happened. Which is why Hitler's generals were against it. It's not difficult to work out - Napoleon did the same thing.
See above - Hitler's armies didn't invade Russia until winter.
There's no problem there whatsoever - Hitler always intended to march against Russia, not least to wipe out or enslave the Slavs. The pact just allowed him some breathing space.
That's a common misunderstanding. Barbarossa begins in June, but the push into Russia proper does not happen until the winter. Which is what was predictable if you start such an invasion in June.
This is all said long before Hitler was even a lunatic fringe candidate, though I repeat myself. Was Hitler always obsessed with race and Jew-hatred? Yep. Did his actions seem in accord with this? Amazingly so.
Take your comment on the USSR - why did Hitler insist on breaking the pact and invading Russian in winter? The answer is that he regarded Communism as "Judeo-Bolshevism", a Jewish plot against the Aryan race. Again, why did Nazism never take in the East when people began by welcoming the Wehrmacht's advance? Because in Nazi racial theory, Slavs were untermenschen. The whole course of the war is completely explicable by thinking that the Nazis actually believed what they said.
This is what I mean about some people not being able to understand that others have a radically different view of the world. You need to explain away just about everything about the Third Reich to imagine that its animating principle was something other than fanatical racism. You have to explain nothing if you make the contrary assumption.
What do you think animated Hitler? For that matter, what do you think animates jihadis?
"Bin Laden himself may or may not have theocratic aims" - May or may not?
"My point was that without the political grievances, he just becomes some fanatic spouting rhetoric. With political grievances, he has supporters and recruits." Once again, this assumes that his supporters and recruits think in a way that follows yours. I have to just say [citation needed]. Let's take one example: 99% of Afghans think that the punishment for apostasy should be death. The assumption that there is not a large support for theocracy is unwarranted, at best.
"I call it superficial because it just so happens to align perfectly with our own interests. "
First of all, that's a non sequitor. It is in my interest to think that the water from the tap is healthy. I still haven't been sick yet. It's in my interest to think my employer will pay me at the end of the month. Never failed yet.
Second, however, - who is this "our" in that sentence? And what interests? From my perspective, if Islamic jihad has a goal that is at least understandable to us, something like the Basque ETA or the IRA, then that's something we can deal with. On the other hand, if its goals are like those stated by Hassan Nasrallah - "We want nothing from you, we want to eliminate you" - that's another matter entirely. I would far, far, far rather deal with the first kind of an enemy, rather than the second.
To the subject of the bin Laden list of grievances, one of them is that the United States helped free East Timor from Indonesian rule, and end the genocide of the Christian nation there. To the Islamic fanatics, this is outrageous, because it is a matter of doctrine that no conquered infidel nation may ever be freed from Islamic rule.
Aiyaiyai - I take twenty four hours break and I am knee deep in responses! My answer is simple: there is an explicit call for genocide laid out in a book called Mein Kampf, as well as an explicit racial theory that holds that Aryans are becoming polluted through interbreeding - that unless drastic action is taken, the Aryan will vanish from the world. This book, and similar incitements and theories, long predate Hitler even being a lunatic fringe candidate.
Ah, sorry, it was a little unclear and we were talking past each other there.
"From your perspective the point is to make the dhimmi feel subdued, but I don't think you have shown that's the point in that particular passage."
I could cite source after source of Islamic jihad scholars who explain that this is the purpose of the jizya and the surrounding institutions of degradation and subordination that make up dhimmitude - but this comment is, sadly, not large enough to hold it. So if I might suggest you take a look into the doctrines and history of dhimmitude and see how it was used.
Good discussion, but sadly I need to be travelling now, and hope to continue at a later date.
That comment rather illustrates the mistake I mean. Take that last point about neo-Nazis, it is exactly like what Orwell said, that there are people who do not understand that others can be motivated by racial frenzy. Some of Hitler's early backers were simple crooks who thought they were using him for relatively prosaic political ends, but Hitler had his own ends that he pushed through with some force.
Similarly you say that when bin Laden condemns American decadence or depravity from an Islamic perspective, that's just propaganda to advance a political cause. What if it is the other way around? What if bin Laden instead invokes political grievances to advance a religious agenda? You assume that it cant possibly be that, but: Look at that document again - bin Laden goes into the usual rap against America and the West, but what he asks for is submission to Islam, to Shariah. His aim is, in his own words, explicitly theocratic.
Take the obvious parallel of Hitler. Yes, you can point to the role of inflation, mass unemployment etc. as allowing his rise. But you cannot draw a line from those to the genocide of the Jews. Even if you ditch morality, a global conflict and the mass extermination of one of your most productive minorities is lousy business sense. The whole thing is completely inexplicable unless you turn it around. The aim was, always, the genocide of the Jews and global conflict, and the problems of Germany allowed Hitler a chance to implement that program. So it is with bin Laden.
You make my point when you say that " bin Laden objected to the presence of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia." But why did he object? Those weren't an occupying army, they were there at the explicit request of the Saudi monarchy to prevent Saudi Arabia from being invaded. There was nothing like, e.g., the IDF in Gaza for him to point to.
The reason is simple: there's an Islamic hadith that makes it clear that while People of the Book may be kept in subjection elsewhere, it is not permitted to allow any infidels into Arabia, the holy Land of the Two Mosques. It's an explicitly religious motive.
This is what I mean that sometimes you just can't see the box, cannot understand that other people see the world in a radically different way, that their hopes and desires are not like yours. You call this description of bin Laden's motives "superficial". Why? Because it isn't one that is morally intelligible to you. But why should that mean that those motives are wrong? Isn't it the exact opposite of superficial to think that people are capable of radically differing, and that not everyone is alike?
I never said bin Laden shows "moral deprivation", I said he had a morality that had nothing in common with that of the West. Again, in his list of demands, the first thing, the very first, is a call to submit to Islam, next to abolish usury, homosexuality etc., next to admit that the US is "a nation without principles and manner", and then, and only then, to stop supporting Israel in Palestine, or India's claim to Kashmir.
The jizya isn't just a tax, it is an integral part of the system of subordination and degradation of the dhimmi. The point is to make the dhimmi "feel subdued" - a parallel would be the institutions of segregation in America to prevent blacks from "getting uppity". You may want to examine the state of live is for infidels living under the Shariah.
The context is that Saudi scholars wrote an article saying "how can we coexist". Bin Laden answered that the idea that Muslims and Infidels could coexist as equals was flat out heretical, and contrary to Islamic teaching. Islam must rule, and who doesn't convert must either die, or - if he belongs to the "people of the book" - become a dhimmi.
Re:context, I can only suggest that you look at the Harris quote in context.
Sorry if this wasn't clear, but the whole document is called "Why We Are Fighting You". And I think that you have missed the following line at the end:
"If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation"
"All these conditions". Not some. Not just Palestine or support for autocrats in the middle east. All these conditions, and in writing the first one as the submission to Islam, bin Laden is in tune with centuries of similar thinkers.
I was quoting from a book called "The Al Qaeda Reader", and I wasn't aware that that particular letter had been put up online. Sorry, if I'd know, I'd have included a link. Bin Laden elsewhere says "There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya, thereby physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword - for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die."
And also:
"The West is hostile to us on account of Loyalty and Enmity, and [Offensive] Jihad.... What the West desires is that we abandon [the doctrine of] Loyalty and Enmity, and abandon [Offensive] Jihad. This is the very essence of their request and desire of us. Do the intellectuals, then, think it's actually possible for Muslims to abandon these two commandments simply to coexist with the West?" - Here he is attacking those Islamic intellectuals and others who seek coexistence. He's very clear - war to extend Islam is mandatory, unless and until the infidel converts or submits.
N.B.: When bin Laden curses the Arab dictators, he isn't cursing their tyranny, but their heresy. Elsewhere Zawahiri makes it clear, in so many words, that a ruler's lack of faith justifies rebellion, a ruler's tyranny does not. So when bin Laden rails against oppression in Palestine or the Mubarak dictatorship, he isn't in favour of freedom as you and I understand it, but in favor of absolute theocracy on the Taliban model.
" War was not so costly in human lives and suffering when it was about a tribe raiding another with arrows and bows." I simply cannot agree. If you make the adjustment for per capita deaths, then the kill rates of primitve tribes are far higher than that of modern armies. The Mongols only had ponies and bows and arrows, and look at what they did. When Tamerlane lead an Islamic jihad of the Indian subcontinent, he may well have killed 5% of then existing humanity.
Could it be the high barrier to entry? I'm not an expert, but I have the impression that the biomedical field is regulated up the wazoo. I've been thinking about what it'd take to get a basic company off the ground, and the main trouble that occurs to me is the regulation upon regulation that is required to do anything with human cells - let alone medical procedures!
That is... pretty impressive.
First post for me here, but I've been following this technology for the last ten years. This is an interesting idea, well worth following up on. I would have to say that the best thought here is that, if others aren't doing it, to do it yourself. I'm stealing this idea for my idea for a company, if you don't move on't first. Sound good?