The Chilcot Inquiry

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Which is essentially a complete contradiction of the moral utilitarian arguments you've made previously regarding Iraq and brexit?

No it isn't. As I said, you use these simple thought experiments to determine your principles and then you apply these principles to complex real world problems. There isn't a contradiction in that.

For example, I was trying to use these simple thought experiments to see if John thought there was a moral difference between some bad things happening or a lot of bad things happening. Once we determined that, then we could move on to how that applies to the complex issues of economics, sovereignty, democracy, etc. that were encompassed in the referendum.

No contradiction there.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
I’ve been getting into a debate on dissensus pretty much every week this past month or so. I want to cool off for a bit, so hopefully we can get this one done today.

Here are my points, I’m not saying I totally believe all these things, but they are questions I have:


1) There can be a different moral judgment made for someone’s decision-making and what actually happens. For example someone could invent a chemical for domestic use. 150 years after they die, that chemical could become weaponised and kills many innocent people. So you could say 1) the inventor bears no moral responsibility for the deaths, but 2) it would have been better if the chemical was never invented. Similarly you could say 1) Blair should be condemned for not exhausting peaceful options (if the inquiry is to be believed) for the goals he wanted to achieve, but 2) knowing what we know now from the Arab Spring there is a distinct possibility that the Iraq war was for the best (of course, there is still the distinct possibility it was for the worse).

2) The Syrian situation is worse than the Iraq situation. When using the same methodology, the fatalities in the Syrian conflict are higher than in Iraq. Similarly there are more refugees in the Syrian situation than the Iraq conflict (I think?). Per capita these disparities are even greater.

3) Iraq may well have had a Syrian-style conflict during the Arab spring. This would likely result in more deaths than the Iraq war.


Again none of this is rationale for the decision making, as it is based on what we know now and not what they new at the time.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Your question was a complete mischaracterisation of what happened in China.

Oh come on man, give poor li'l old Mao a break, eh? How could he possibly have known that ordering millions of peasants to leave their rice harvests rotting in the paddy fields and go and work in steel mills instead might result in a teensy bit of a famine?
 

droid

Well-known member
Here are my points, I’m not saying I totally believe all these things, but they are questions I have:


1) There can be a different moral judgment made for someone’s decision-making and what actually happens. For example someone could invent a chemical for domestic use. 150 years after they die, that chemical could become weaponised and kills many innocent people. So you could say 1) the inventor bears no moral responsibility for the deaths, but 2) it would have been better if the chemical was never invented. Similarly you could say 1) Blair should be condemned for not exhausting peaceful options (if the inquiry is to be believed) for the goals he wanted to achieve, but 2) knowing what we know now from the Arab Spring there is a distinct possibility that the Iraq war was for the best (of course, there is still the distinct possibility it was for the worse).

2) The Syrian situation is worse than the Iraq situation. When using the same methodology, the fatalities in the Syrian conflict are higher than in Iraq. Similarly there are more refugees in the Syrian situation than the Iraq conflict (I think?). Per capita these disparities are even greater.

3) Iraq may well have had a Syrian-style conflict during the Arab spring. This would likely result in more deaths than the Iraq war.


Again none of this is rationale for the decision making, as it is based on what we know now and not what they new at the time.

Its retroactive moral justification and those are simply not credible claims. Anything could have happened. You cannot also disentangle the Arab spring from the destabilisation caused by Iraq. Without Iraq there may not have been any civil war. One thing we do know is that the actions that were taken resulted in a predictably huge loss of life and destabilisation - as wars almost always do

911 was an appalling act of terror and set in motion a chaotic sequence of terrible events, but given that the US has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths prior to this, and that 911 seems to have set the US on a downward spiral of military and financial overstretch and inevitable collapse, by your logic it was the right thing to do.

Are you familiar with chaos theory, Lorenz and the butterfly effect? Do you read alt-history? The fundamental premise, articulated by everyone from the odious Niall Ferguson to the sublime Kim Stanley Robinson, from military historian to sci-fi author is this: The further away you get from an event the more difficult it is to extrapolate likely outcomes.

Perhaps a sum over histories had bunched the probabilities. Is this likely? We don’t know. We are particles, moving in a wave. The wave breaks. No math can predict which bubbles will appear where. But there is a sum over histories. Chaotic systems fall into patterns, following the pull of strange attractors. Linear chaotic figures look completely non-repetitive, but slice them into Poincaré sections and they reveal the simplest kinds of patterns. There is a tide, and we float in it; perhaps it is the flux of the cosmos itself; swim this way or that, the tide still carries us to the same destination. Perhaps.

The basic premise of Blair's argument is fatally flawed. It is morally, logically and practically bankrupt. You need to read this as soon as possible:

http://www.baen.com/Chapters/1597801844/1597801844___6.htm

I’ve been getting into a debate on dissensus pretty much every week this past month or so. I want to cool off for a bit, so hopefully we can get this one done today.

lol. Come back to me in ten years. ;)
 

droid

Well-known member
No it isn't. As I said, you use these simple thought experiments to determine your principles and then you apply these principles to complex real world problems. There isn't a contradiction in that.

For example, I was trying to use these simple thought experiments to see if John thought there was a moral difference between some bad things happening or a lot of bad things happening. Once we determined that, then we could move on to how that applies to the complex issues of economics, sovereignty, democracy, etc. that were encompassed in the referendum.

No contradiction there.

Keep saying it, mantra-like - who knows?

Maybe you'll convince yourself.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
No it isn't. As I said, you use these simple thought experiments to determine your principles and then you apply these principles to complex real world problems. There isn't a contradiction in that.

For example, I was trying to use these simple thought experiments to see if John thought there was a moral difference between some bad things happening or a lot of bad things happening. Once we determined that, then we could move on to how that applies to the complex issues of economics, sovereignty, democracy, etc. that were encompassed in the referendum.

No contradiction there.

The problem with this is that you simply asserted that Remain was a case of some bad things happening and Brexit was a lot of bad things happening. We didn't agree that.
 

droid

Well-known member
Oh come on man, give poor li'l old Mao a break, eh? How could he possibly have known that ordering millions of peasants to leave their rice harvests rotting in the paddy fields and go and work in steel mills instead might result in a teensy bit of a famine?

No matter how you swing it this is not what happened. The famines of the great leap were the result of collectivisation, agricultural reforms and bad weather - not primarily because of a lack of workers or manpower, though that was a factor.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
The problem with this is that you simply asserted that Remain was a case of some bad things happening and Brexit was a lot of bad things happening. We didn't agree that.

That's fine. The point I was making to droid is that it's false to claim there is a problem in using simple thought experiments to apply to complex, real world problems.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Droid with regards to your big post.

I'm not using this argument as retroactive justification for the decision to go to war (as the 1st point in my big post explained).

It seems to me we are both trying to avoid getting into a long, convoluted analysis of the likelihood of various counterfactuals (or at least I am). So maybe it's best to leave it for now, I'm sure we'll come back to it at some point in the future.
 

droid

Well-known member
So essentially:

Bad things are worse than good things so we should try and make good things happen.

+

There is a problem with applying simple moral principles to Cuba or China because they are too complex, but its OK to apply them to Brexit and Iraq.

Can you see why i'm having trouble with this?
 

droid

Well-known member
It seems to me we are both trying to avoid getting into a long, convoluted analysis of the likelihood of various counterfactuals (or at least I am). So maybe it's best to leave it for now, I'm sure we'll come back to it at some point in the future.

Im happy to let it lie, but the point Im trying to make is that it's your entire approach here that is flawed, not the specific argument.

You should read that Kim Stanley Robinson essay, he explains it better than I ever could.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
There is a problem with applying simple moral principles to Cuba or China because they are too complex, but its OK to apply them to Brexit and Iraq.

Can you see why i'm having trouble with this?

There's nothing wrong with applying moral principles to a complex situation. The more complex a situation is, the harder it becomes to work out the best way to apply those principles. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to apply these principles.

So you should apply moral principles to Cuba and China, all I was saying is that the way you posed the questions wasn't an accurate reflection of what actually happened in those countries.
 

droid

Well-known member
My point is, it is extremely rare to find a case that is simple enough to make these elementary principles useful, and one mans inaccurate reflection is anothers gospel truth.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Im happy to let it lie, but the point Im trying to make is that it's your entire approach here that is flawed, not the specific argument.

You should read that Kim Stanley Robinson essay, he explains it better than I ever could.

I'll read it. Again, I'm not retroactively justifying Blair's decision.

I'll also say again, counterfactuals are inherent in everything in which a decision is, was or will be made. They are unavoidable if you want to make a judgement on pretty much anything that happened, is happening or will happen. To say you are against something is to say you are for something else and vice versa. Those "something else's" are counterfactuals. We can asses likelihoods to prioritise which counterfactuals we give most credence to.

Being against the Iraq war (as distinct from the decision to go to war) is based on the counterfactual of what would of happened had we not gone to war.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
My point is, it is extremely rare to find a case that is simple enough to make these elementary principles useful, and one mans inaccurate reflection is anothers gospel truth.

In that case you're making an argument amoralism.

Let's use your principle that it is wrong to take a human life without justification. Due to the complexities of the real world, it is often difficult to determine what is justified. That doesn't mean that your principle should not be applied to complex situations, it just means that it is difficult to do so.
 

droid

Well-known member
Being against the Iraq war (as distinct from the decision to go to war) is based on the counterfactual of what would of happened had we not gone to war.

No, its based on the moral position that it is wrong to go to war without justification - as it is the supreme crime, from which all the other evils of warfare spring.

And you claim not to be retroactively justifying iraq, but you are using precisely the same arguments as Blair, who is.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
No, its based on the moral position that it is wrong to go to war without justification - as it is the supreme crime, from which all the other evils of warfare spring.

I separated the decision to go to war, with the war itself in my statement.
 
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