Sodium_nitride

joined 7 months ago
[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 12 hours ago

From thinking that Taylor swift or Operah should host the primary to thinking that Joe Biden dropping out would make him into some kind of hero, the authors of this proposal are almost as delusional as Biden himself.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 days ago

There is no such thing as objective morality. One cannot observe that "harmful acts are objectively wrong". The "wrongness" and "rightness" of an action aren't observable, measurable or even well defined properties. It is possible to measure the duration of an action, the energy transformations of the action, the location of an action, ect, but not the morality of an action. What units would you even measure it in? Or is morality a dimensionless property?

From a basic empirical observation of the effects of harm, one can arrive at a moral system based on objective reasoning.

  1. Is this objective moral system utilitarian? Deontological? There is no "objective" argument as to why morality should be either.
  2. How would your objective moral system weigh against incommensurate harms? Maybe its possible to compare the intensities of 2 different physical pains, but how would you compare physical pain with emotional pain? What about weighing pain between different people?

In this way, ideology can be avoided.

The obsession with being "non-ideological" and reducing everything to base science, also known as "positivism" is also an ideology.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 days ago

The root problem is never ideology, always material conditions. Ideology arises from material conditions and not the other way around.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

If you want another sense of scale, 510 GW of renewable power were added in 2023 worldwide. Source

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

You are saying this after the us literally implemented huge sanctions on all sorts of chinese green tech. While the other commenter's statement is hyperbolic, China derangement syndrome is very real.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 1 week ago

Lol. Lmao even. The biggest military spenders on the planet are saying this. US alone spends more on the military than next 7-9 countries combined. Western governments also heavily subsidised their agriculture to fuck with food markets around the world. During corona times iirc the us forgave literal trillions in loans to business owners. Western governments also throw around sanctions (Cuba) to bully any country that doesn't bend the knee to their totalitarian rule.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 weeks ago

God can there not be a single china article on lib spaces without some fucking brainworms in the comments?

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 3 weeks ago

Russia is winning because it has developed a steady momentum for keeping losses low while attriting Ukrainian forces harshly.

The victory is not by any means a phyrric victory, given that the Russian army is now larger, more experienced and has more material than the start of the war. The Russian economy is also holding up. The only thing that could be phyrric about the war is the loss of life, which is still not too high for russia.

Given the recent offerings, it is obvious that putin does not want to take the whole country of Ukraine. Not only will russia have to pay for the rebuilding, but it will have to face massive amounts of internal resistance for years to come, which is a headache that russia has no reason to deal with as long as they get their demand of no nato membership.

Finally the terms themselves are very generous as I have previously outlined. The loosing side in a war doesn't just get to keep everything with no concessions. That is not how wars work. I have also clearly stated the reasons why a ceasefire now on putin's terms is actually beneficial for Ukraine especially if the war were to flare up again. It would buy them time to recover fighting strength while the Russians would have to unwind their militarization, as maintaining a war economy outside of war would not be taken well by the population.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago

Being against "anti-authoritarians" is not the same thing as being "authoritarian" as these categories are not useful in the first place. No marxist considers themselves to be either category.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Authority as indirect or direct force (essentially the engels) argument is the only logical way of definition authority, as the hexbear post argues using the example of the armed mugger. The definition of authority as blind obedience (as defined by the anarchist) is completely flawed in that it doesn't account for the source of the blind obidelience and isn't easy to measure.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That’s exactly how most social movements, including slavery, evolved, but OK.

Have you ... not heard of the civil war?

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

This is very delusional thinking. Imagine trying to negotiate with the winning side and your minimum negotiating conditions are for the winning side to just abandon all of their gains for no discernible reason. This too while the winning side offers generous terms which still leave Ukraine with access to ports and most of its territory, despite Ukraine being in a desperate situation now.

It is even more farcical when consider that these demands are already the de facto conditions. Russia holds most of the territories it is demanding. There are no current plans for Ukraine to join NATO as NATO doesn't accept members already active in war, and the NATO countries have no actual plan for either shoring up Ukraine's security in the future or even for rebuilding. The closest NATO states got was trying to use $50 billion from Russian funds to loan to Ukraine for rebuilding, which they didn't even go through with because the deal involved the EU taking all of the risk while benefiting the Americans.

In fact, ending the conflict now on Putin's recent terms is more beneficial to Ukraine and NATO than it is to Russia, even if the conflict were to start up again in the future. The returning Ukrainian refugees will restore Ukraine's manpower, and the NATO militaries will gain the time needed to restock weapon supplies, which they need more than the Russians do because Russian (and allied) military production is higher than that of NATO in volume.

I am of the opinion that the terms Putin has offered are cynically generous. He knows that the west won't let Ukraine end the conflict right now, so he can afford to boost his image right now. In later negotiations, he can point back to these terms and tell the Ukrainians that if they wanted better terms, they could have gotten them earlier.

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