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Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

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Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#81

We live in a world where we punish for incorrectly jumping to conclusions. But we don't punish for not stating correct conclusions when things happen. Which seems to be a fault in the way things work. People who go with cowardice, of lets not talk to soon, or don't speculate, or just tow official lines rule. It's why we had Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's why Science has the replication issues. It's not a small thi…

Your comment reads like a Seth Godin blog post.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#82

It's interesting that for once, the immediate rumor take within an hour of the event (e.g. in the HN thread about the video) was simply correct.

The "engine failure" claim was simply unreasonable. Considering the altitude and the weather, there were a few ways that the aircraft could just suddenly go down without warning:

1. bomb on the aircraft

2. missile strike

3. collision with an aircraft larger than a hobby drone

4. metal fatigue

5. evil in the cockpit

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#83
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because that's the way nuclear deterrent theory works." The theory is that the US has committed to blowing up...Japan, say...if North Korea should succeed in missiling San Francisco?

See point on attribution. How do we know the weapons originated from North Korea, and not Japan, or the UK, or some other unlikely source? Because we saw the missile radar tracks? What if it was a shipping container or UUV bomb? This is why huge sums of money have been spent on post-detonation nuclear fingerprinting with high accuracy. Absent a high likelihood of correctly attributing the source, one must default to…

You're saying that assuming a nuke goes off and nobody knows where it came from, that logic dictates the US or anyone else will nuke the whole world. I utterly don't believe that this is a thing that is planned or arranged to happen.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#84
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think MAD was an effective strategy when you had one and only one sure adversary. Only one other country that was willing and able to come at you with nukes. Today’s world - say someone nuked Moscow - who would the russian nukes be set to fire on? USA, China, Germany? If it was a single nuke it most probably is from a terrorist / under cover organization from one of the smaller nations Russia has wronged in the pas…

We know thanks to 9/11 that if the US is attacked it will retaliate against it's historic regional enemies without bothering you wait for confirmation or proof. I bet if the US were nuked they would say it was Iran and North Korea working in sync and try to find confirmation in the ruins of a devastating counter strike.

Perhaps, so in that case, why would you expect the world to be blown to pieces?

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#85
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People shoot down civilian airliners "all the time". Nobody shoots down all the airliners in the world . If you destroy the world after being nuked, that is strictly worse than not destroying the world after being nuked, so nobody would do it. Since nobody would do it, and that is obvious, there is no such thing as holding the world hostage as a deterrent. If you maintain that some person or group is insane enough to…

> If you destroy the world after being nuked, that is strictly worse than not destroying the world after being nuked, so nobody would do it. Possibly. But it is also strictly dominating (in the time before nuclear exchange) to make everyone else believe with absolute certainty that you're willing to destroy the world after being nuked. Therein lays one of the quandaries of nuclear weapons policy.

[deleted]

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#86
post #67
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this isn't well done. It took them three days to say this. How did it take them three days to realize they shot a missile? Especially since they had a denial campaign going on for three goddamn days. This was just external pressure on Iran forcing them to do this. If this flight wasn't an international one it would've been swept under the rug.

A possible explanation might be that the guys who actually fired the missile have spent three days trying to avoid blame, and that it's taken that long for the truth t make it's way up the leadership ladder. I suspect if I was an army grunt who'd fired of a shoulder launched missile only to realise just too late that it was a civilian airliner, I'd be AWOL and in hiding for _way_ longer than three days...

It was a large vehicle launched missile. That ordinance is individually tracked and multiple soldiers would know about any firing.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#88
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People shoot down civilian airliners "all the time". Nobody shoots down all the airliners in the world . If you destroy the world after being nuked, that is strictly worse than not destroying the world after being nuked, so nobody would do it. Since nobody would do it, and that is obvious, there is no such thing as holding the world hostage as a deterrent. If you maintain that some person or group is insane enough to…

> If you destroy the world after being nuked, that is strictly worse than not destroying the world after being nuked, so nobody would do it. Possibly. But it is also strictly dominating (in the time before nuclear exchange) to make everyone else believe with absolute certainty that you're willing to destroy the world after being nuked. Therein lays one of the quandaries of nuclear weapons policy.

The result of that strategy is irrelevant because it's obviously impossible. Sane people wouldn't destroy the world and insane people can't be relied on to do anything with certainty.

Any analysis of a game that relies on impossible moves is meaningless.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#89
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was glaringly obvious from the first report considering the ongoing missile strike.

Yes, it was. Planes are very reliable. What's the odds there's a crash in Iran hours after they attach the US and are on high alert for a counter attack? It's a safe bet.

Not a “safe bet.” Reasonable assumption yes but no more. An American Airlines planet crashed only a few weeks after the September 01 attacks, but it was just an actual accident.

Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says

#90
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it was. Planes are very reliable. What's the odds there's a crash in Iran hours after they attach the US and are on high alert for a counter attack? It's a safe bet.

I'd assume the odds of a country shooting down an aircraft that took off from their own airport ought to be pretty low as well.

Most major airlines suspended flights to and from Teheran on that day, so the odds were a bit higher than normal.
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