> Learning the language of a nation where a significant percentage of population supports war and killing is not something I'd consider.
Are you a european/white supremacist who doesn't consider the victims of the anglosphere to be human, or are you historically illiterate, even of extremely recent history?
I don't see a third option here since you learned english also, would appreciate an explanation for this special pleading rather than furious downvoting when identifying basic empirical discrepancies in the face of what looks to be materially false claims.
You're really deep into painting everyone with the same brush, aren't you?
Define russian federation first. Am I it? Is it land? Is it government? Is it those zombie mercenaries who execute criminal orders? Is it those who got jailed after protests against war? Is it those who got conscripted? Those who fled the country to avoid that? Those who struggle to meet ends? Those cruising aboard 150 meter yachts?
It's pretty simple, actually. Do you hold a Russian passport? You're Russian.
If you "don't support" the invasion and killing, either start changing the system, or get rid of the passport. Yes, it's inconvenient. So are the missiles and bombs falling on the heads of people in Ukraine for them.
> start changing the system, or get rid of the passport
Right after you, my friend, as soon as you singlehandedly stop the US special military operation in Venezuela and extrajudicial killing of people off its coasts, or jail the commanders and mercenaries of EU forces in Syria, Afghan and Libyian war, depending on your passport. Or get rid of it.
And before you deploy your strawman about "terrorists" - that's exactly the same term that has been used by the kremlin to excuse the invasion into Ukraine.
Your illusion of possibility to change the system shall pass soon, rest assured.
This kind of historical blindness and hysterical hypocrisy has never ended well.
Is HN becoming a place where we should expect people to lie to us and promote trivially disprovably rationales in order to foment cultural and racial hatreds based on current political conveniences?
"Never believe they are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. By giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert."
When the russian military fired missiles and drones at my house, I should just accept it because some of my distant ancestors persecuted brown people. Is that your take?
Also, russia’s war against Ukraine enjoys popular support in russia today. Is your argument that the majority of UK and/or US citizens are eager for their respective countries to engage in war against former colonies today?
I think that if you clicked on the links and reviewed the original claim, you'd see that you removed every single word and concept and overwhelmingly mutually agreed upon fact and then replaced it with nonsense.
Russian and English are both languages of empires that have engaged in countless acts of violence and aggression. They are not equivalent, but to deny this or heavily qualify it (like dismissing acts of war and violence that happened literally yesterday as "distant") in either direction is inherently hypocritical and dehumanizing.
Honestly, I am starting to suspect you are a Kremlin agent designed to make europeans opposed to their war look so crazy that global opinion shifts against the Ukrainians by tying them to denial of and advocacy for the worst acts of europeans.
People who alienate the 90-92% of the non-white/european global population against Ukraine by repeatedly asserting that only white european lives should have any kind of moral impact or even be remembered at all are feeding into Putin's international propaganda operation. Could it be by accident? Perhaps, but it fits so perfectly with the Kremlin's diplomatic strategy to win over the rest of the world...
Perhaps you're right and I just don't want to believe that the goons in the Kremlin are telling the truth about how ignorant and mendacious the worldview of many of their (very real victims) are.
> Honestly, I am starting to suspect you are a Kremlin agent
Ok, I'll clarify my position, for the avoidance of doubt.
The terrorist state of russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and ongoing genocide is the darkest chapter in European history since the Holocaust. The putin regime has no regard for human life, and russian soldiers brag about raping women, and murdering children, sometimes by shooting them in the head at point-blank range. Many of these rapes and murders are even encouraged by the wives of russian soldiers — thousands of kilometres away from the front lines. We have it all on tape.
While I am not a soldier, I have two medals from the Ukrainian military for volunteering, and I will continue to help Ukrainian soldiers protect civilians in Ukraine, and to put russian invaders in the ground where they belong.
Unfortunately that just leads to more questions, since you did not answer the previous ones at all, and personally volunteering is what most double agents and saboteurs do in order to be in a position to cause more harm by first gaining trust.
Numerically, the numbers of civilians killed are far greater and we have substantive evidence of rape as military policy along with the murder of children.
In order to clear things up, you need to explain if you believe that either:
A) Those lives less valuable by some measure? Ie, did they deserve it, is it all a hoax and no one died, or is there something about them that makes those lives inherently worth far less than yours?
B) You have reason to believe the Ukrainian government is lying about the casualty figures and that over 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers and over 200,000-500,000 Ukrainian civilians including ~50,000 Ukrainian children have already been killed.
Is it A or is it B?
If you can tell me if you agree with statements like this made by Ukrainian officials about Indians and Chinese being inferior races of lesser intelligence, I think that would clear things up also: https://www.livemint.com/news/world/ukrainian-official-says-...
> Those lives less valuable by some measurement you need to explain
I do not believe the lives of different races/ethnicities of humans are of different intrinsic value.
What an incredibly fucked up, sick question.
> Numerically, the numbers of civilians killed are far greater and we have substantive evidence of rape as military policy along with the murder of children.
Comparing death rates numerically like this is also incredibly fucked up, and you should be ashamed of yourself. I am disgusted by this.
> You have reason to believe the Ukrainian government is lying about the casualty figures
Where are you getting your figures? I have strong reason to believe that it's near enough impossible to determine accurate figures since so many civilians were slaughtered by russian soldiers and then buried in mass graves on territory that russian soldiers are still occupying. That, and the Ukrainian government explicitly does not divulge how many military casualties they've taken.
> If you can tell me if you agree with statements like this made by Ukrainian officials about Indians and Chinese being inferior races of lesser intelligence, I think that would clear things up also
I do not agree with this racist statement by one Ukrainian politician.
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Nobody should take your geopolitical analysis seriously, since you cite kremlin apologists like Mearsheimer and Sachs. You just don't know what you're talking about.
My claim is that we see the same terrible violence and wars of aggression with subsequent public support (for a time) in both the Russia and the West. Ie, there is a fundamental hypocrisy to either set of alliances to condemn wars of aggression and the mass murder of children. It's quite clear that both sets of elites consider either one to be a policy option if they think it will get them results they want.
And your response is that things should "not be counted numerically" and that it is "incredibly fucked up" to consider human lives to be of equal value.
Altogether, it seems like you can only see things in terms of one ethnically european empire or another as morally righteous, with no other options. You cannot understand or imagine the perspective of someone who considers neither empire to be moral agents who deserve to have their crimes ignored or downplayed.
You have made no argument and your emotional appeal looks identical to eurocentric white supremacy which denies its nature but can only use emotional blackmail and threats when people point out the discrepancies.
It is not disgusting to ask why some raped and murdered civilians are "the worst thing since the holocaust" while others which preceded it that are of a larger scale are not merely forgotten but denied.
All of the current western leaders who forced Ukrainian denuclearization and talk openly about using Ukrainian lives as a "cheap" way to harm Russia are your true friends...
Why did one "Kremlin apologist" argue persuasively that Ukraine must keep its nuclear weapons to prevent a situation exactly like this war, and why did the other do everything he could to make Poland a stronger country? You have left reality behind.
Your "support" is so irrational that when Putin and Lavrov dishonestly argue there is no one credible to negotiate with on the other side, people around the world who want a lasting peace will reluctantly conclude that while they often lie, this time they are telling the truth.
I continue to think you are being paid by Russia or Russian proxies or that you are functionally equivalent to someone who is. Your rhetorical tactics and emotive language are so similar to RT and other Kremlin propaganda outlets that collusion seems more likely than linguistic convergence at this point.
All that said, Russia was in the wrong to invade and as someone with many Ukrainian friends who are now refugees, I hope you can understand why I hope the Ukrainian authorities are able to identify you and access your personal devices and documents.
An investigation seems warranted to find out if you're really this mentally ill or if you're being paid to make it seem like most Ukraine supporters are, especially since you're a decorated volunteer in a military conflict.
This is the most unhinged load of drivel I have ever read on this website. Ever.
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> And your response is that things should "not be counted numerically" and that it is "incredibly fucked up" to consider human lives to be of equal value.
You have very clearly twisted my words.
I do not think it is moral to turn human suffering into a pissing contest.
I very clearly stated that it is incredibly fucked up to compare human suffering in the way that you're doing. In fact, my first sentence was "I do not believe the lives of different races/ethnicities of humans are of different intrinsic value". You are framing your attack as though I said the complete opposite of what I actually said. What you are doing here is dishonest, and frankly, disgusting.
> Meanwhile, people like Mearsheimer … and Sachs … are "Kremlin apologists."
I am not a party to the conflict and I now restrict my efforts to assisting refugees and deserters on both sides. I supported Ukraine's July offensive because it was still capable of changing the strategic balance, and I hoped for a peace with significant russian concessions to be made at the high-water mark.
Now, because of people like you who are bloody-minded and impossibly idealistic when it's not your blood and you can always walk away, it's far too late.
I regard both sides maximal war aims to be impossible in the short and medium term and that all further loss of life is for nothing other than to accelerate the demographic collapse of both Russia and Ukraine in exchange for a few hundred kilometers of nearly worthless and already-depopulated land.
I think you should contact the Ukrainian authorities and ask them if they believe your advocacy is contributing to their goals. Furthermore, you should consider how things will change if there is a peace deal, at which point it seems like you will be someone who will, from a safe location, be working to undermine the Ukrainian government and to restart a losing conflict.
You are part of a larger conflict and you do not set policy, and when it changes, if you don't change with it, you become an enemy of Ukrainian government and the majority of Ukrainians. This majority and the Ukrainian government have stated they would like to have a democratic election without martial law and press censorship in order to decide their future.
Are you against democratic elections? Would you support a coup against a civilian government in order to continue the war?
You said the invasion of Ukraine was worse than the invasion of Iraq, but you reject all quantitative measures. You also have fatal anomalies in your argument you have not refuted by citing opinion pieces that also ignore this information.
Why did John Mearsheimer say Ukraine should keep its independent nuclear deterrent? Because he regarded a war like this as inevitable and that regardless of the outcome, both sides would lose and a large number of people would die, in addition to strengthening China significantly. And so it is.
I care about the average person who is stuck in this geopolitical clash between military blocs that have no regard for russian or ukrainian lives. You seem to care about achieving a military solution with little or no diplomatic consideration.
You are unwilling or unable to comprehend that people in Venezuela and the Middle East are not in fact, members of a lesser race of humans to whom acts of war and the mass murder of civilians "don't count" and don't fundamentally change the way that 90% of people on earth see western claims of moral principle.
I think you should contact the Ukrainian authorities and prove your commitment to your beliefs by volunteering to serve on the front lines: men willing to kill and die for a field are what is most needed now. Being a propagandist trying to get other people to give their lives while refusing to risk your own shows exactly how you feel about things: your life is more valuable than anyone else's and other people's sons, brothers, husbands, should die for your beliefs.
Putin doesn't care how many Russians from rustbelt towns in central asia and small towns get killed and the strategic military balance is in his favor. It is in his interests that diplomacy be seen to fail but not be his fault, because he does care about the willingness of other countries trying to make sense of the current situation to disregard and circumvent western sanctions. So yes, every word you speak and your point of view aligns perfectly with Russian strategy.
Maybe you're simply a dupe and part of an FSB influence operation, but you could make up for it by serving on the front. Anything else is chickenhawk cowardice or a false friend with murky motives.
Age is no restriction, Ukrainian men in their 50s and 60s are on the front lines. Will you fight for the cause you believe is both realistic and a moral necessity? Or perhaps... their lives are worth less than yours?
Why is it appropriate for a Ukrainian man in his late 50s to be drafted (in a way which resembles kidnapping) to kill and die for what you say you believe in but aren't willing to risk your own life for?
If you're working for the FSB you should be ashamed, and if you're not, you should be even more ashamed!
As for myself, I am an enemy of pointless, unwinnable wars, dictatorship, and coercion, so I am an enemy of both governments and a friend of the common person who had no say in this and is trapped between two corrupt cliques that get other people's families killed while vacationing safely in luxury: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/11648
I hope you provide your personal information to a Ukrainian recruiter and put your own skin in the game, because without that, you are functionally identical to an FSB functionary.
Do you mean these fine former civil servants simply making administrative decisions who are now Flock lobbyists, or do you mean current civil servants who are future Flock lobbyists?
You more likely are getting paid something to not understand things if you, in 2025, believe the "bipartisan consensus" with massive donor class overlap is credible to anyone without an emotional need to rationalize.
People pay the mafia protection money because it's cheaper than fighting the mob and it makes the mob go away for awhile, and in the long run, we're all dead. Most mafia-like entities don't have an inexorable existential drive to take it all, they just charge what the market will bear.
And if you think there's a definitional difference between a government, a corporation and a mafia that stands up to any objective measure and isn't based entirely on social cues and special pleading, I think that's an extraordinary claim you have no evidence for.
Go lead a maoist insurgency or don't, but the fingerwagging moral appeal is worse than useless.
> People pay the mafia protection money because it's cheaper than fighting the mob and it makes the mob go away for awhile, and in the long run, we're all dead. Most mafia-like entities don't have an inexorable existential drive to take it all, they just charge what the market will bear.
If I had to guess, the Mafia will have professional economists on payroll telling the bosses about the Laffer curve and emigration.
But in this context, Apple's clearly on the low end of the Laffer curve* because they don't need a million apps, so who cares if the store fees are 15% or 85%, the supply is still there?**; while for emigration, being the least bad of the Apple/Google duopoly is all that is necessary.
* if you take literally that the App store fee is the "Apple tax"
** Answer: Judges in market abuse/monopoly cases because Apple is not actually sovereign; on paper neither is the Mafia, but this is where "monopoly on violence" is a useful definition of a state, in that where anything like the Mafia can exist, the state is de facto not sovereign no matter what it says on paper.
>And if you think there's a definitional difference between a government, a corporation and a mafia that stands up to any objective measure and isn't based entirely on social cues and special pleading,
If we're speaking of democratic governments you usually get to vote (whatever ineffective). And if we're speaking for non monopolistic corporations you also get to buy from another. With mafia there's a single, non-negotiable, option: the one running your area.
And both for goverments and corporations, there are other parties (e.g. courts) limiting what they can do.
How so? In china, app stores are open to market competition as an eventual consequence of a maoist insurgency.
It's fine if you're personally a coward or you just don't think it's worth it. But not only does it work, it is so far, the only thing that has ever been proven to work.
> definitional difference between a government, a corporation and a mafia that stands up to any objective measure and isn't based entirely on social cues and special pleading
Thinking about it. Your post now is also reductionist. Maybe that is your thing?
Using -ist instead of engaging in discussion or presenting any evidence or explanation whatsoever for extradorinaiy claims is in fact a thought-terminating cliche.
If I were to stoop to your level of reasoning and inquiry, I could simply say that you are are a racist and a sexist for disagreeing with me with just as much basis.
To be honest the parent's comment which related to mafia was already a bit streched but comparing it to maoist insurgency feels like the extreme of an extreme.
Can we please discuss how this comment is relevant to the Apple's discussion and how it fits in perhaps too.
Morality being absolute means just that you subjectively consider some moral rules absolute. Doesn't make them so, the way the law of gravity is absolute.
And it doesn't mean that every human society agrees to what you consider "absolute".
All things you consider "absolute", there are whole societies which found them to be just fine, and you'd do too if you were raised in them, including incest, murder of innocents, slavery, torture...
Many things are naturally repulsive, but are indulged out of necessity or gain. For instance Aristotle wasn't opposed to slavery, yet nonetheless in his writings, now some 2400+ years ago, he found himself obligated to lay out an extensive and lengthy defense and rationalization of such, and he even predicted what would eventually end it:
"For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, 'Of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods.' If, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves." [1]
There were millennia of efforts to end slavery, but it's only the technological and industrial revolution that finally succeeded in doing so. But the point is that even though Aristotle was ostensibly not opposed to slavery, he nonetheless knew it was a decision that needed justification because it was fundamentally repulsive, even in a society where it was ubiquitous and relatively non-controversial, thousands of years ago.
This 'natural repulsion' is, I think, some degree of evidence for persistent, if not absolute, morality throughout at least thousands of years of humanity's existence, and I see no reason to assume it would not trend back long further than that.
>Many things are naturally repulsive, but are indulged out of necessity or gain
Most "naturally repulsive" things were accepted just fine in one society or another.
Aristole spent time to defend and rationalize slavery because that was just job, to spend time rationalizing things. Other societies practiced it with no such worries, and found it perfectly natural.
But even if we grant you your "naturally repulsive" actions existing, it doesn't mean they are objectively morally wrong. Just that their moral judgement is not just based on culture and historical period, but also on evolutionary adaptations. These could very well be considered fine in an earlier/later evolutionary stage (in an earlier one, for sure: animals don't have such qualms).
His arguments were generally driven by logic and reason, not rationalization. Rationalization is generally only necessary for adopting views that seem ostensibly inappropriate, which would certainly include these sort of 'naturally repulsive' acts. And indeed his arguments for slavery were some of his weakest precisely because they were uncharacteristic rationalizations.
I completely agree that if you go back far enough in the evolutionary pipeline then my claim becomes invalid. I also think it would not apply to people of a sufficiently reduced IQ. You need to have a minimum of intelligence to understand what you're doing, alternatives, and its consequences on others. But once you have that baseline of IQ then I think morality, and a natural repulsion to certain behaviors, comes as naturally as communication.
>His arguments were generally driven by logic and reason, not rationalization. Rationalization is generally only necessary for adopting views that seem ostensibly inappropriate, which would certainly include these sort of 'naturally repulsive' acts.
I think that's an after-the-fact assessment of what his treatment of the subject was, which we arrive at because of our modern morals.
In his time he, and his audience, didn't think of it as rationalization, but as legitimate use of logic and reason, just like his treatment of other topics.
>But once you have that baseline of IQ then I think morality, and a natural repulsion to certain behaviors, comes as naturally as communication.
Might go the over way around too though: once you go above a certain IQ, it might be easier to treat morality as a fiction naked apes developed, as opposed to something objective, and even discard it entirely.
No, his arguments were materially different in this case. Most of his arguments came from first principles and worked outwards from some baseline; in particular - what is virtue and how virtue, itself, leads to satisfaction in life, and onward to how this can apply to systems and politics in general. But slavery he treated in an entirely different, practically ad hoc, fashion starting from slavery and then trying to shoe-horn in a justification along the lines of what you alluded to already with e.g. natural order and it being an inescapable inevitability.
It was a complete, and poor, rationalization. He even added, almost as a disclaimer, that there was not a complete overlap between 'natural' slaves and legal slaves, giving himself a plausible out to explain the endless examples of the repulsiveness of the institution by applying a no true scotmans fallacy, 'Ahh yes, I would agree with you there. But that is because that is not a natural slave, but merely a legal one.' And this is not my opinion alone. It has long been considered notably weak, especially from an otherwise brilliant man.
And I think that leads into your next issue. I don't think higher intelligence makes it easier to treat morality as a fiction, but rather even average intelligence, without discipline and virtue, makes it very easy to engage in self delusion and cognitive dissonance. Even those conditions are hardly a guarantee - Aristotle certainly had and strived for both discipline and virtue, yet the desire to rationalize what we want to be true, even if we know it is not, is a never-ending struggle that's easy to fail.
Mozilla leadership are quite literally ex-google and current google loyalists, who are paid to create the appearance of a competitive browser landscape for regulators, judges, and lawmakers who started out obtuse and are now increasingly openly bribed.
Mozilla's job is to go through the motions of competing for regulatory obfuscation, not to ever actually compete. That's why the salaries at this non-profit keep going up as Mozilla marketshare keeps going down.
If they wanted to actually compete they could integrate with LMStudio or similar to give their non-technical users locally running open models, that would be maximally opt-in and privacy preserving. It wouldn't even take that long.
Instead, we get another resume-padding fake "product" for someone to put on their resume before it's quietly forgotten, all for a browser with 3% marketshare and plummeting.
This may be too far of an obscure historical reference, but is there really nothing specific to German history and nothing within german civic education and contemporary national identity formation that might make this potentially more controversial?
Hint:some of these events involved spheres of influence and control over resources in eastern europe!
I think the much bigger issue is that the older generation (those who, say, turned 18 in the 70s) told the younger generation lots of really nasty stories about the cruel trials people had to endure who wanted to do alternative national service (Zivildienst) instead of military service. These formed the value system of many people in at least two generations ("Soldaten sind Mörder" [soldiers are murders]).
EDIT: If you understand German, here is a song from 1972 about these brutal cross-examinations:
> Franz Josef Degenhardt - Befragung eines Kriegsdienstverweigerers
Additionally, the participation of Germany in the first aggressive wars in Yugoslavia in 1999 and then in Afghanistan from 2001 on (before citizens were told that the Bundeswehr is only a defense army, and would never participate in an aggressive war) lead to a radicalization of another generation against the Bundeswehr - and yes, this generation eagerly listened to the above-mentioned horror stories of the older generations. It is even rumored that this next generation's radicalization against the Bundeswehr indirectly lead to the suspension of the compulsory military service in Germany in 2011.
> about the cruel trials people had to endure who wanted to do alternative national service
Tbf, at least in West Germany people had a choice. In East Germany you ended up as 'Bausoldat': https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bausoldat, and you could forget about any 'carreer opportunities' for the rest of your life.
And as former East German who then went the 'Kriegsdienstverweigerer' path in unified Germany during the 90's I cannot complain about any discrimination or incorrect behaviour, all communication was perfectly correct and respectful and I didn't even have to show up anywhere in person (in hindsight it was a silly decision - but in the 90s it really looked for a little while like the Cold War might be over and armies would no longer be needed in Europe).
> And as former East German who then went the 'Kriegsdienstverweigerer' path in unified Germany during the 90's I cannot complain about any discrimination or incorrect behaviour, all communication was perfectly correct and respectful and I didn't even have to show up anywhere in person
In the 90s, the situation was already very different - doing alternative national service (Zivildienst) instead of compulsory military service got a lot easier (possible exception of which I heard: you were very athletic - it was rumored that then they still made it much more inconvenient to refuse to do military service).
For good reasons, my references were from older generations - the trauma that they had to endure if they wanted do alternative national service (Zivildienst) instead of compulsory military service exactly did lead to the situation that it got much easier in the 90s to do alternative national service instead.
That's certainly some nuance there! I had in mind a more basic concept which due to legal restrictions in Germany maybe make thinking about it as part of German history and a geopolitical conflict likely to naturally reoccur is part of a Denkverbot.
But I think you should legally be able to answer if you can think of anything between 1914 and 1945 that is taught to Germans in schools that might cause younger Germans to feel some aversion towards preparing to fight a land war against russia in eastern ukraine? Anything that maybe resulted in the premature deaths of millions of young german men, initially volunteers who were solicited at the secondary school level?
Massive political differences and ultimate outcomes aside for each conflict, Germany becoming increasingly militarized has a poor track record when it comes to not getting extremely large numbers of teenage german boys killed in eastern Ukraine.
I disagreed with some points and agreed with others based on my experience and the data I have available, but the last few sentences really weakened the overall point.
> Giga AI, a company building AI customer support agents, claims to have sworn off the "forward deployed engineer" model of custom software favored by many other successful startups, in favor of software that customizes itself—only possible because of coding agents.
Giga AI is not a publicly traded company and they have zero legal liability or possible downside for lying, and massive upside for lying. They also don't have real customers and are not in positive revenue. The trend is that everyone who has said this was lying.
When there's tangible evidence of this, I think it will be an important part of the discussion. Until then, saying "claims" and "but I don't really know" but then paraphrasing their press release without analysis is about as sophisticated and as honest as tweeting "people are saying."
The author should take their own advice and wait six months when these claims will be easier to substantiate and support the analysis far more strongly.
Are you a european/white supremacist who doesn't consider the victims of the anglosphere to be human, or are you historically illiterate, even of extremely recent history?
I don't see a third option here since you learned english also, would appreciate an explanation for this special pleading rather than furious downvoting when identifying basic empirical discrepancies in the face of what looks to be materially false claims.
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