Just reposting this excellent point from lemmygrad

  • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    That arguments even worse, it takes it from “killing the kids solves a current problem” to “killing the kids may solve possible future problems”, and if that’s the standard, then it’s never not justified killing kids, as you can always posit some possible future where some kid is going to cause issues.

    Say what you will about the CPC but at least they correctly realized that Pu-Yi didn’t need to eat a bullet to head off any issues, and that was even after he collaborated with the Japanese.

    • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      That arguments even worse, it takes it from “killing the kids solves a current problem” to “killing the kids may solve possible future problems”, and if that’s the standard, then it’s never not justified killing kids, as you can always posit some possible future where some kid is going to cause issues.

      That argument is completely absurd. Just because you can always posit some possible future where some kid is going to cause issues doesn’t mean it’s likely.

      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I don’t want to pull the “I’m a statistics professor card”, but I’m literally a statistics professor so unless I see an integral over a sample space in the denominator I don’t want to hear about likelihood, and especially not when someone’s half-baked narrative of possible possibilities gets treated as meaningfully bearing on that likelihood.

        Like are we just throwing that word around or is their some objective method that apparently everyone else knows about for now to compute these probabilities and arrive at these conclusions.

        • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah it’s called guesstimating janet-wink

          There’s no way to objectively calculate the worth of an innocent person’s life anyway, so you can’t really put it into a formal equation. Sometimes you just have to make decisions based on incomplete information, I don’t see what the problem is. It’s not like I want to kill kids, but if I evaluated that there’s a high enough chance that it could save a high enough number of lives, I’d pull the lever on that trolley problem 100%. What am I, a Kantian?

          • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            If seems to me that if we’re willing to acknowledge that our subjective estimation of probabilities aren’t necessarily any good at predicting actual outcomes we could not only save ourselves a ton of trouble handwringing over what level of perceived benefit justifies turning on the orphan mulcher, it would also go a long way to ensuring we don’t accidentally make common cause with the people who do enjoy mulching orphans.

            You can pretty easily draw a thoughline from the slapdash deployment of political violence to the elevation of ghouls like Beria to the head of the organs of state.

            • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              10
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              You’ve already decided you’re ok with orphans getting mulched the moment you pick up a gun and call for revolution. Innocent people die in war, that’s a fact of life. It may not be you who mulches the orphans, but you’re the one setting of the chain of events that will cause them to get mulched. I feel like anybody who cares about this just has an extremely romantic view of war.

              Revolutions don’t happen on a regular basis, and a failed revolution can change the course of history and deny opportunities for centuries to come. And in the short term, it can mean the death of everyone you know and love, and countless others beyond anything you’re capable of comprehending. You have to understand what you’re getting into when you go down that path, and you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to win. You try to fight honorably, you pass up on a potential advatange, you can be assured that the enemy won’t. There’s no room for half measures, you either fully commit or you back down.

      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Obviously the kids of a deposed ruler represents far more of an issue than regular children in a country.

        Right it was some great great cousin of the Tsar that opened the Soviet Union up to the west leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and not some hereditary nobody.

        I seriously don’t think non-revolutionaries far after the event have a leg to stand on to critique the actions of the Bolsheviks from some Ivory Tower of morality.

        I mean, they fail even a basic “ends justify the means” test given that Russia is currently a hyper-capitalistic dystopia so yeah, I don’t think my critique of the path they set down is in fact ill-posed.

        Capital, in all it’s algorithimic and anti-humanistic glory is the supreme enemy, not some guy wearing a funny hat in a bunch of medals . The french killed their funny hat guy and 10 years later they had an Italian in an even funnier hat running things, so this notion that we can just kill our way into socialism by executing certain lineages seems a bit daft.

          • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            misrepresent what I said by claiming that I want to “kill our way to socialism”

            Well let’s strip out the euphemistic cover to the following.

            Bolsheviks took out an easy path to anti-revolutionary activity and stopped the flower of evil from flowering

            What specifically did that involve? A smidge of killing possibly?

              • SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                8
                ·
                1 year ago

                Fuck you. Killing children is never necessary. If you can’t understand that, I don’t know what else to say.

                the enforcement of authority of the proletariat must be carried out agaisnt the former oppressors.

                Children were never the oppressors you fucking ghoul! You remind me of the goddamned apologists for the US nuking Japan “anything done in the name of furthering the goals of my side, even deliberately to innocent people born in the wrong place at the wrong time, may seem icky but thems the way it is. I’m just being practical.” Not only does the argument rest entirely on a possibility of what might happen, it’s completely unjustified regardless.

                • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  9
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I don’t think it’s fair to equate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the injury and radiation poisoning and genetic defects of countless more to killing, what, 5 children? That’s absurd. You’re blowing this completely out of proportion.

                  You can argue it’s wrong but I can’t imagine getting upset over something like that. There’s a simple matter of scale to consider.

                  • SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    7
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    And again, that’s exactly what the fascist apologists for the dropping of nuclear bombs on innocent Japanese civilians say.

                    “I can’t imagine getting upset over something like child murder.” I almost put in one of the disgust emojis here but it felt like it was too light-hearted for the disgust I’m actually feeling right now for people I used to think of as comrades.