Iran fired 2,500 ballistic missiles at the United Arab Emirates alone, intentionally targeting civilians.
We could pose it as a simple question and examine what the answers would be:
Do western powers bomb civilians intentionally?
US -> No
Israel -> No
Other westerner powers -> No
Iran -> No
Hamas/Hezbollah/Other terrorist murders -> No
You -> Yes
It's a strange thing when you aren't even on the same page as your Iranian friends.
And intent matters. I for one support a form of reparations paid to the families of those who we mistakenly killed. Will Iran pay such reparations for those they've murdered inside and outside of Iran? Of course not. There's a difference - we're morally superior.
Yeah, but… I think if you’re bombing a child’s school because of bad intel, the deaths are on you either way. We’re not going to be like “oh, this war was necessary, which means it’s no biggie that you accidentally killed two hundred children because you didn’t do your DD”
The US attacked Iran because Israel was going to do so anyway. If they didn't attack, that missile wouldn't have killed 150 schoolgirls. Sure, the target was a mistake, but mistakes happen when you shoot thousands of missiles and drop thousands of bombs. If they had not attacked, the girls would be alive.
If Iran hadn't funded and supplied Hamas who then attacked and killed how many people (how many were little girls who were murdered and raped by Hamas?) then Israel wouldn't have had to bomb Iran.
You can go back and forth on who did what first but it ultimately accomplishes nothing in this scenario.
If Israel wants to bomb Iran, whatever, that's Israel's problem. The fact that we (the United States) continue to give unquestioning support to Israel is the problem. If Israel want's America's help, they should need to heel to America's interests, and I completely fail to see how fucking up the global oil trade benefits us.
I don't think it's quite that simple. Of course you know the isolationist point of view goes many directions. If Russia wants to bomb Ukraine, whatever, that's Ukraine and Russia's problem, &c. (I believe in engagement in both conflicts myself). Israel alone can't really stop Iran anyway besides their "mowing the grass" strategy but how long will that work?
But you have to think about the future state. What does an Iran that continues to:
- Build and supply drones and drone technology to Russia
- Build and purchase missiles and missile launchers
- Continue to pursue a nuclear weapons
- Continue to fund groups recognized as terrorist organizations by the United States, European Union, and others
.... look like?
Well, if they have 1,000 missiles today and that's giving us a problem (I'm not sure the true extent to which it is a problem really) and then they have 5,000 missiles tomorrow maybe sprinkle in some Chinese hypersonic missiles just to see if they can take out an American aircraft carrier or other sensitive military equipment, and now when Iran decides to close the Straight or tax the Gulf States or whatever other crazy idea they get in their heads we're facing a much, much bigger problem. It's like having a North Korea in the Middle East. We can't have that. We have seen that movie already and it does not turn out great.
And that's excluding nuclear weapons or an arms race in the Middle East. You can certainly see how easy it would be for the Gulf States to decide Iran is such a threat that they start loading up on missiles and maybe everyone decides they need a nuclear deterrent and now we've got maybe 2-3 countries including Iran with nuclear weapons and there's nothing we can do about it.
Folks like to paint this as an Israel problem, and yea they've done some bad stuff too but this isn't just an Israel problem nor is it just an America problem. It's just that unfortunately the United States is the one that yet again has to go be involved to try and deal with some chaos now to prevent an untenable situation later.
I think it's certainly worthwhile to debate various assumptions, capabilities, &c. but at the end of the day it's important to actually take a look at many aspects of this situation and to try peace together what's really driving this conflict. If your frame of reference is just "what are we doing there?" I'm afraid it puts you at a real disadvantage in terms of understanding the conflict and its repercussions.
I firmly believe a nuclear-armed Iran would be a net positive for world stability. It's not an ideal state of being, but with the existence of a nuclear armed Israel destabilizing the entire region, there needs to be a check against them. But that's besides the point, because by all accounts except on odd-numbered days the Whitehouse's, Iran was responsibly following the non-proliferation agreements that we had made with them under the Obama administration. Either way "Iran might make nukes" is bad reason to start a war.
If "Iran is aiding Russia against Ukraine" was a good reason to start this war, then we should be a lot less wishy-washy about our support of Ukraine themselves. The fact that we keep playing "will they won't they" with ongoing support to Ukraine is in no small part why that war is still ongoing.
And Israel is, absolutely, unequivocally, America's problem. They exist because we decided they should exist, we armed them to keep them existing, and we get involved in absolute quagmires in the Middle East every time that they do something stupid. Every time Israel does some fucked up shit, the UN goes "wow, we should acknowledge that was some fucked up shit", and the only country that consistently backs Israel is the United States.
I am not an isolationist. I fully recognize, and appreciate, the US's (potentially soon to be former) place as global hegemon. But we achieved that position by leveraging soft power, while maintaining the capability to absolute smite parties that won't play ball. And that worked. It worked great. It's why backing Ukraine was a great play: No American lives at risk, we pay a few bucks, Ukraine damages Russia, we remind our allies just how great it is to be under America's umbrella.
But Israel bombing Iran is not the same thing. Israel and the United States are the aggressors in this conflict, plain and simple. We had half-normal relations with Iran, then because Israel decided they weren't content being one of two regional powers, we decided to kick off another damn war in the Middle East.
> Either way "Iran might make nukes" is bad reason to start a war.
I think we disagree here, but that's because I believe in nuclear non-proliferation. More countries have them, more likely they are to be used. If Iran gets them, well maybe South Korea, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Brazil... the list goes on. Is that a better and safer world? I doubt it. Not only are arms races probably bad, they take up resources that could be used for making the lives of everyone better.
> If "Iran is aiding Russia against Ukraine" was a good reason to start this war, then we should be a lot less wishy-washy about our support of Ukraine themselves.
I think it's a contributing factor, but not the sole reason to start (or depending on your perspective, continue) a war here.
> And Israel is, absolutely, unequivocally, America's problem. They exist because we decided they should exist, we armed them to keep them existing, and we get involved in absolute quagmires in the Middle East every time that they do something stupid.
I don't follow this line of reasoning. Israel has existed long before the United States. Admittedly the modern state of Israel as we know it today was carved out in the last century, but the fault there lies primarily with European countries who created empires and then failed to maintain them. But you sort of seem to be justifying things like October 7th or other aggressive actions perpetrated by Iran and its proxies as though Israel existing is just somehow a problem. Last I checked Iran is its own country. What justification does it have to bomb Israel in any way?
> But Israel bombing Iran is not the same thing. Israel and the United States are the aggressors in this conflict, plain and simple. We had half-normal relations with Iran, then because Israel decided they weren't content being one of two regional powers, we decided to kick off another damn war in the Middle East.
Don't recall the US being in a state of war prior to October 7th. Iran overplayed their hand, Israel absolutely fucked up Hamas and Hezbollah with little effort, and then we found out Iran was pretty weak and so we did something about it before they accumulate so much military power that stopping them from effectively taking over the Middle East is untenable. I'm not sure your cause-effect reasoning here makes a lot of sense. We haven't had half-normal or normal relations with Iran for a long time - like 50 years.
> I am not an isolationist. I fully recognize, and appreciate, the US's (potentially soon to be former) place as global hegemon. But we achieved that position by leveraging soft power, while maintaining the capability to absolute smite parties that won't play ball. And that worked. It worked great.
It seems that you're cherry-picking here. The US attacking Iran can just be another case of smiting parties that won't play ball. Same with Iraq, or Vietnam, or Korea.
> It's why backing Ukraine was a great play: No American lives at risk, we pay a few bucks, Ukraine damages Russia, we remind our allies just how great it is to be under America's umbrella.
I generally agree and watching Russia's military be absolutely humiliated was exhilarating, but providing money alone isn't enough to win or stop that war it seems.
The US is still helping, but for some reason when it comes to Iran actually selling and supplying drones that kill Ukrainians it's all of a sudden well that's not a good reason to go to war, Iran isn't the aggressor, Trump is bad, how dare the US stop Venezuela from evading US and EU sanctions, blah blah blah. You're twisting yourself into circles trying to defend Iran for some reason when they're murdering their own population for protesting, helping Russia bomb Ukrainians, and starting wars and destabilizing Yemen, Lebanon, and more. Speaking of the UN, weren't they supposed to stop Hezbollah from indiscriminately launching rockets into Israel? Now Israel is there cleaning house and all of a sudden well that's Americans problem, Israel is America's problem, how can Israel do this? Who cares about the UN in today's world?
You're blindly believing the propaganda from two truly evil governments (Israel, USA) about a country that they absolutely want to destroy. Why don't you question the legitimacy of what they tell us.
Not an American problem. Its a problem between Iranians, Palestinians, Israelis and other relevant middle eastern countries. If they want to fight and kill each other, it's their right to do so.
Iran didn't start the war. Israel did. While pretending to negotiate with Iran. The USA wasn't even involved as a target in this at all before they jumped in stupidly. It wasn't an American headache and it shouldn't have been. Its Iran's, Israel's, Palestine's and whoever else's headache.
This "ally" is proving more pain than gain for several decades. They made their mess, they shat their bed, they should live in it. At this point there is zero point for Americans to die for Israel. If anyone wants to go fight for Israel nobody is stopping them, just don't use the government coercion to force others to. Australia, the Philippines, the Europe are much better actual allies.
You will say they are providing a vital outpost in the middle east for intelligence and launching operations. I will say, are they doing that or are they themselves the destabilizing force that's shitting up the place and send off American blood to die in their messes? How much interest or involvement would these countries have in the USA if Bibi didn't get his American neocon friends to the Iraq boondoggle for example?
No, the free software movement wants that the source code of the software you use be available to you to modify it if you wish. AI does not necessarily do that.
AI makes the entirety of the software engineering profession available to you. All you have to do is ask the right way, and you can build in days what once took months or years.
Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied.
Closed source is no longer the moat it was, and so keeping the source code to yourself is only going to hurt you as people pass you over for companies who realize this, and strive to make it easier for your LLM to figure their systems out.
> Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied.
We've always been able to do that, but that's not the point. There's a reason free software licenses require the "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" to be opened.
One of the core tenets is that any user should have the exact same access as the original developers.
> Decompiling and re-engineering proprietary code has never been easier. You almost don't even need the source code anymore. The object code can be examined by your LLM, and binary patches applied.
Jesus christ.
"The people who wanted everyone to have a home should be happy with the invention of the lockpick. You can just find a nice house and open the lock and move in. Ignore the lockpick company charging essentially whatver they want for lockpicks or how they got accesss to everyones keyfob, or the danger of someone breaking into your house"
That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either...
The open source community wants people to upskill, people become tech literate, free solutions that grow organically out of people who care, features the community needs and wants and people having the freedom to modify that code to solve their own circumstances.
> That is basically your argument. Like AI is a copyright theft machine, with companies owning the entire stack and being able to take away at will, and comitting crimes like decompiling source code instead of clean room is not a selling point either...
Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument. It's not an argument anymore. It's already happened.
How one might choose to characterize the reality, is irrelevant. A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open, for better or worse. Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.
> Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument.
As you mentioned, it's not an abstract argument. It's statements of fact.
> A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open...
No, not at all.
1) If you honestly believe that major tech companies will permit both copyright- and license-washing of their most important proprietary code simply because someone ran it through an LLM, you're quite the fool. If someone "trained" an LLM on -say- both Windows 11 and ReactOS, and then used that to produce "ReactDoze" while being honest about how it was produced, Microsoft would permanently nail them to the wall.
2) The LLMs that were trained on the entirety of The Internet are very, very much not open. If "Open"AI and Anthropic were making available the input data, the programs and procedures used to process that data, and all the other software, input data, and procedures required to reproduce their work, then one could reasonably entertain the claim that the system produced was open.
This is looking at the current situation through the old lens.
That ship has sailed. The revolution is happening. We live in a new reality now, one where we're still trying to figure out what rules should even be.
And there will be winners and losers, and copyright and patent law will be modified in an attempt to tame the chaos, with mixed results because of all of the powerful players on both ends.
You can live on the front of it for high risk/reward, or at the back for safety. But either way, you're going to exist in this new reality and you need to decide your risk appetite.
Your set of statements and their surrounding context reminds me very much of the mass grave scene in Kubrick's Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=670Y3ehmU74>
I'm not sure why it would. Kubrick was criticizing the false morality of the entire adventure, mixed with common bureaucratic fuckups in an unaccountable environment, with tragic results.
I'm talking about a change brought on by a new technology, where the market (i.e. all of us collectively) push it forward, like the internet revolution and subsequent consolidation. Good shit happens. Bad shit happens. People get rich, people get poor, people get left behind. You can argue the moral implications, but you can't put the genie back in the bottle, just like you couldn't snuff out the industrial revolution. So at some point you have to decide: Where will I fit in all of this?
> Kubrick was criticizing the false morality of the entire adventure, mixed with common bureaucratic fuckups in an unaccountable environment, with tragic results.
relying on a "intro to cinema criticism"-level summary of the themes of the entire work almost always leaves you entirely ignorant of the specific themes and characterizations that are explored in a particular scene.
Watch the scene with your actual eyes and ears, maybe a couple of times. Ruminate on it and consider what aspects of your statements and their surrounding context might cause someone to be reminded of it.
> Stop trying to make this into some abstract argument. It's not an argument anymore. It's already happened.
yes and lockpicks also exist. Promotting the ability to break into homes when people are talking about the housing crisis is a crazy, short sighted and frankly embarrasing position to take.
And mischaracterising the people in the open source community as belonging to that ideology is insulting.
> A vast (and growing) amount of source code is more open
You are missusing the word open here, for accesible. Having an open house, and breaking into someone's home are not the same thing, even if the door ends up open either way.
> Granted, this is to the chagrin of subgroups that had been pushing different strategies.
Taking unethical shortcuts that ultimately lead to an even worse outcome is not a cause of chagrin, its a cause of deep and utter terror and embarrasment.
Wanting people to own their skills and tech stack and be informed, smart and engaged is a goal that "just ask the robot you dont control to break into a corporate codebase and copy it" is not even remotely close to helping get close to.
This argument commits the same fallacy as the argument against piracy; copying is not stealing, because the original still remains. A lockpicked and squatted house means someone else does not have that house, it's a zero sum game which information which is freely copyable does not align with.
That only works if you assume that the exclusive value is in the object and not the labour.
The reproduction of the object is essentially free in the internet, but the labour to produce it isn't.
If I spent 3 years making my codebase, and you copy paste the git repo, yeah your access to the information is not going to replace the original. But your labour cost is 0 and you can undercut the 3 years of expense, loans or debt I adquired to produce it.
Btw the FBI murdered Aaron Swartz for attempting to open access to research papers, Mark Zuckemberg admitted to stealing those ssame papers through libgen and showed off the results of Llama and his stock price went up.
I think the piracy argument falls apart when the class warfare and 2 tier justce system is openly weaponised towards open access
Labor doesn't have value inherently, it's about what is produced by said labor. These days even the labor to create something falls to zero via LLMs so I'm not sure the point is valid these days.
Almost nothing does. Value is largely subjective. You deciding it is irrelevant to you is as inherently worthless as the marxist ideal that labour is the maximal value of society.
The non subjective opinion is that there is a necesary amount of work/energy requiered to create things and that the created things can be consumed/used by others.
LLMs do not reduce labor to 0, the energy to power the GPU, the labor to create the gpus, the labor to train the models is all there, as well as all the labor to produce the original material the LLM is trained on. Even if the subjective experience of someone consuming the created thing is the same.
The Voodoo was fast but also expensive, and you needed an additional VGA card. I think it was around USD 300 back then, that's more than USD 600 today and you'll still need another card.
You are only thinking about people and creativity in the workplace. Creativity can be applied anywhere: cooking, a new route on your way to somewhere, read some random paragraphs in a book that spawns new thoughts, a new game with a child, optimize the way you paint the walls on your house, choose the plants in your garden (and how you'll water them), do a doodle, try or buy a new outfit, typing this paragraph in response to your message (kinda LLM-y maybe).
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