Iran can NEVER have a nuclear weapon. Just nope.
Yes. Considering the level of incompetency in Iranian military, the first thing they should do is stop the nuke program and focus on reforming their military.
Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
131–140 of 147 posts
Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
#132So tragic, and I guess credit to the Iranians for admitting their mistake. It's good to see both sides walking back from war. Edit: the voting behavior of this is pretty extreme, but I don't even know why. Do people think it isn't good they admitted it? Or is it simply "Iran should never get credit for anything"? Or is it "of course they had to" (which is clearly not the case, as the MH17 and initial denials around t…
Putin isn't capable of admitting that he needs to use a toilet from time to time, because that isn't the way the KGB does things.
In addition I don't want to credit anybody with doing anything good as it is related to harming civilians. Nothing Iran can do related to that plane should in any way reflect anything but negatively on them, unless they can undo the shooting.
At this point we should seriously ban Anti-Air technology, it has already killed more people in peace time than nukes.
Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
"Sane" is imprecise in the way you're using it.
People who share your morals probably wouldn't destroy the world. But there are absolutely scenarios where logical people would do so.
"Insane" has the same problem.
Logically inconsistent people cannot be relied upon to do anything with certainty. But sociopaths can.
Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You're arguing the same point in another thread, and we're talking about two different things there too.
You're making a moral argument for why it shouldn't be so. I'm making an ammoral, logical argument for why it should.
Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
#135It'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.
I agree it's interesting. But since I haven't seen it mentioned here elsewhere in this thread, I'll bring up the alternate theory that this is a "limited hangout". In this version, Iran starts by professing complete innocence, but eventually confesses to shooting down the plane by mistake, whereas in actuality they shot down the plane intentionally. I have estimate of the likelihood of this explanation, but if it wer…
Yes, fair enough. I think our immediate theories on seeing the video didn't try to establish the level of intentionality, but were still correct about the basic facts known so far ("uh, that plane looks like it got shot down by a missile, probably by Iran").
Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why would all the missiles be launched towards everywhere? Because that's the way nuclear deterrent theory works. If you collapse the game theory calculus down, it turns into "Any technology or action that makes it less likely an adversary will respond with an unacceptable counterstrike on me makes it more likely that I will consider a first strike a viable option." Examples of technologies or activities with this…
"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?
The theory is that the US has committed to ruining things for everyone if bad things happen to them. Otherwise, hostile countries would have an incentive to create false flag attacks, or to incite an enemy to attack in truth. But if Iran knows that North Korea nuking DC means that they get nuked too (along with essentially everyone else on the planet), there's less incentive to make it happen.
Same goes for Russia/China - wouldn't either of them 'love' a world where the US got in a nuclear exchange with the other? No more competition!
Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
Ok, I'm aware of the incident, but that article doesn't support "and blamed it on Iran", so you have a source for that?
To this day, the official US story is that they were acting in self defense in international waters.
Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You're arguing the same point in another thread, and we're talking about two different things there too. You're making a moral argument for why it shouldn't be so. I'm making an ammoral, logical argument for why it should.
No, I wasn't making a moral argument. I was talking about facts as I see them - I don't believe that the US or anyone else will blow up the world in response to being nuked. That is based on my thinking the game theory logic doesn't hold together and never has, but also historical events that indicate it was definitely invalid as of sometime in the 1960s.
Re: Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran state TV says
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"Sane" is imprecise in the way you're using it. People who share your morals probably wouldn't destroy the world. But there are absolutely scenarios where logical people would do so. "Insane" has the same problem. Logically inconsistent people cannot be relied upon to do anything with certainty. But sociopaths can.
I don't think I've expressed moral opinions...? My comments are generally about my expectations for peoples' actions, not whether they should blow up the world.
Regarding your last sentence, logically inconsistent people cannot be relied upon to predict the actions of sociopaths.
Conversely, sociopaths, or just ruthless people with a goal of spreading disinformation, will promote logically inconsistent views, or the idea that trusted people are logically inconsistent.