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Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

nytimes.com

591–599 of 599 posts

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#591
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would suggest that maybe Russia knows that, they dealt with a serious insurgency in Chechnya. I would also suggest that the slow progress is in part intentional in order to maintain defined battlefield lines and avoid such insurgencies. They know it costs more in Russian lives but that is price they are willing to pay. People who want to fight them can go out and meet them on the battlefield. Oh, you're either ve…

They also said they would not invade and then they did. You don't tell people what you're actually going to do for a whole raft of reasons and it would be foolish to do so. Also, did they say they would take it in 3 days? That was General Milley (US) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39155605 . That's the problem with trusting Western media. The West ascribes these metrics and then judges the Russian results by th…

> Russia has been planning for this war since before 2008 it is ridiculous to think that they thought it would only take 3 days, if they did they would have started the war much sooner. They knew there were in for the long haul and had already made steps to prepare their economy for long term sanctions. There were not completely prepared but prepared enough.

I know you're probably Russsian or identify strongly with Russia, so it doesn't matter what I say, but think about it...

Why would Russia get themselves involved into a protracted multi-year war meatgrinder? They know what happened in Afghanistan.

Also, if they were planning a long war, why would they throw paratroopers at Hostomel airport right outside of Kyiv? Why would they throw multiple brigades attacking Kyiv and getting stuck in a traffic jam? Look at a map, Kyiv is not far from the Belarus border, and the capital, but any such attack would be extremely isolated and risk being cut off. Also, the Ukrainian government could just run away to Lviv and coordinate the fight from there, so Kyiv would be little more than a symbolic victory if they managed to capture it.

It's obvious they were hoping to capture Kyiv quickly and have Ukraine fall apart. They weren't ready for a prolonged fight.

> They also said they would not invade and then they did

> That's the problem with trusting Western media

The same western media that called it that Russia will invade?

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#592
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suicides do not just happen due to being in extreme, incurable pain. People commit suicides due to emotions which seem powerful immediately(failure in love life, academics, career etc.) but would not seem as such a big deal if they were to look back on it afterwards either due to the passing of time or due to finding something else which made life worthwhile. This also is the problem with the autonomy argument - this…

No, this is wrong in both ways. Painful emotions are painful and not necessarily transiet and transiency is irrelevant to autonomy anyway. In fact, any argument that doesn't underminde the assumption of the right to bodily autonomy is trumped by autonomy. People with temporary problems have a right to bodily autonomy and so do irrational people. Everyone does and doesn't need to justify themselves to anyone. The only…

> transiency is irrelevant to autonomy

If you are allowing transient decisions for giving away a life, then transient decisions would be allowed for lesser stakes too.

Most societies are debating even something like unrestricted access to drugs. There are people who would take drugs as a conscious/long-term plan for whom the transiency distinction is irrelevant but there are also those who hate it while succumbing to it and would gladly sign a contract to stop access to consumption, if that were practically possible to enforce.

Contracts often involve trading away autonomy of a future self whether for the good or the bad. Signing such a contract is often not legally valid if the person is in a disturbed mental state.

A more common example, children are not allowed to buy alcohol or consent to a sexual relationship with an adult.

The issue being that the immediate decision of the child can be something they would reject if they have more experience and had the ability to make a more informed choice. Of course, the problem of impulsive bad decisions doesn't go away as an adult, but considerations of intrinsic freedom and the problems of giving power to a state become much bigger.

When a criminal commits a crime, a premeditated/planned action is treated more severely than an impulsive action which in turn is treated more severely than an action caused by a mental illness.

Taking one's life is a much more drastic step than drugs or signing a contract.

> not necessarily transient

Not assuming this, chronic examples don't rule out the existence of large families of cases where things can and do look better due to time and a change in circumstances.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#593
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is wrong in both ways. Painful emotions are painful and not necessarily transiet and transiency is irrelevant to autonomy anyway. In fact, any argument that doesn't underminde the assumption of the right to bodily autonomy is trumped by autonomy. People with temporary problems have a right to bodily autonomy and so do irrational people. Everyone does and doesn't need to justify themselves to anyone. The only…

> transiency is irrelevant to autonomy If you are allowing transient decisions for giving away a life, then transient decisions would be allowed for lesser stakes too. Most societies are debating even something like unrestricted access to drugs. There are people who would take drugs as a conscious/long-term plan for whom the transiency distinction is irrelevant but there are also those who hate it while succumbing to…

This is such a terrible argument. "People might regret things, therefore we should abolish freedom." I guess we should have the state make all decisions for people, just in case. Wouldn't want anyone to ever change their mind about anything and have negative feelings*. Good thinking.

* Dead people don't even have feelings and can't regret anything. Your argument isn't even applicable. There are literally zero consequences for the person.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#594
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> transiency is irrelevant to autonomy If you are allowing transient decisions for giving away a life, then transient decisions would be allowed for lesser stakes too. Most societies are debating even something like unrestricted access to drugs. There are people who would take drugs as a conscious/long-term plan for whom the transiency distinction is irrelevant but there are also those who hate it while succumbing to…

This is such a terrible argument. "People might regret things, therefore we should abolish freedom." I guess we should have the state make all decisions for people, just in case. Wouldn't want anyone to ever change their mind about anything and have negative feelings*. Good thinking. * Dead people don't even have feelings and can't regret anything. Your argument isn't even applicable. There are literally zero consequ…

This is an obvious strawman('We cant deregulate X when we are heavily regulating Y which is much weaker than X' -> 'The government should regulate every aspect of life '), So bye.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#595
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I’ve heard from people in artillery is that the brass hardly cares about occupational safety. If they need to get rounds down field they get rounds down field first and make sure you have proper ppe for that second. And what ppe they do have is seen as improper. Not much you can even do when the issue is local blast damage and the gun design demands you to be so close to it.

Because if the rounds don't fly down field they'll fly back. Shock damage from firing a gun might be bad, damage from incoming shells is much worse.

When is the last time the US faced an artillery force with similar range capabilities though? Desert Storm?

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#596
post #532
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel tried it some time ago. I don't agree women are weak per se, yes their peak in strength and stamina are lower as proven by literally any professional athletic sport, but this doesn't matter that much as before in current combat. What went wrong - in fubar situations, men instinctively lunged for protecting women, instead of rationally estimating situation and acting accordingly. We men are simply still too muc…

Resistance movements, notably in Europe during WW2 or the 'civil war' in Darfur, have commonly deployed women in combat roles. It might be interesting to think about what sets them apart from regular armies, which have often had trouble in this area.

The only requirement of a resistance movement is knowing to aim a gun and pull a trigger because you are desperate for a force at all. History is littered with such groups enlisting children who meet that criteria.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#597
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resistance movements, notably in Europe during WW2 or the 'civil war' in Darfur, have commonly deployed women in combat roles. It might be interesting to think about what sets them apart from regular armies, which have often had trouble in this area.

The only requirement of a resistance movement is knowing to aim a gun and pull a trigger because you are desperate for a force at all. History is littered with such groups enlisting children who meet that criteria.

I think you ought to meet some people in such a movement, the one in Rojava for example, and read about irregular, guerilla, warfare.

You're confusing the requirements and needs with regular armies.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#598
post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also said they would not invade and then they did. You don't tell people what you're actually going to do for a whole raft of reasons and it would be foolish to do so. Also, did they say they would take it in 3 days? That was General Milley (US) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39155605 . That's the problem with trusting Western media. The West ascribes these metrics and then judges the Russian results by th…

> Russia has been planning for this war since before 2008 it is ridiculous to think that they thought it would only take 3 days, if they did they would have started the war much sooner. They knew there were in for the long haul and had already made steps to prepare their economy for long term sanctions. There were not completely prepared but prepared enough. I know you're probably Russsian or identify strongly with R…

Not a Russian, don’t particularly like Russia, my criticism focuses on the West because that’s my home and I want to clean house. That ad-hominin attack on my intention does not make sense. This tautological notion that because I disagree with your framing I must be Russian and therefore wrong.

Russia is worried they will be Balkanized by the west and that is clearly against the interest of the Russian leadership. To not understand that Russian are willing to pay an enormous cost to do so is to not understand Russian history, beyond Afghanistan where they really didn’t want to be there in the first place.

As a policy I would rather see Russian tanks turned around and go into China. The West courted China in order to undermine Russia but underestimated China and overestimated Russia. Russia was successfully turned against Germany in WWII and if the west was smarter we would swallow our pride and do that again for WWIII. Having your enemies engaged in destructive conflicts is a big part of realpolitik and an essential part of remaining a dominant hegemon.

I’m repeatedly bemused by those who emphatically declare that Russia will fail because it is corrupt as if they have discovered something that the Russians themselves are not aware of. Russia has taken a learn-by-doing approach which is the only way of improving war-fighting capability in such an endemically corrupt country. This externalizes the negative signal for bad ideas, those failed excursions having died are no longer able to make future decisions. The average intelligence of those who remain has gone up. To paraphrase Napoleon; we mustn’t teach our enemies to fight by fighting them too often.

The media is telling the truth when it’s in their interest to do so. I’m not sure how you are trying to generalize this to them always being right when clearly they contradict themselves on so many matters. In the weeks before the invasion I was telling right wingers that they are about to look like fools when Russia really does invade. US intel provided proof by noting the movement of blood supplies to Western Russia which would only be done in preparation for a war as opposed to the exercises that was claimed.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#599
post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should certainly work out a system where you have enough money to live on.

I do. But it's not fair is it, that others get to spend more on holidays, when I do "the same work" (just for shorter periods).

Do you not get more holidays every week than others?
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