Who Will be First to Go Nuclear

[Chanakya]

That doesn't make sense. It's both true that the US possessed nukes for a very short time before deploying them, and that the US has both had nukes and not used them for longer than any other nation. The truth of the former doesn't even tell us anything about whether or not the latter is true.

I honestly don't understand why you think that the former being true means that the latter is not true. How do you get from "The fact is the US has possessed nukes for a very remarkably short time before deploying them, and not just once" to "so the answer is a No"?

Can you spell that out for me? (…)

Sure.

And maybe I can just take the analogy route? Happy to simply spell it out in terms of this directly, in case that doesn’t end up conveying my meaning adequately.

Okay, that room of yours/ours? There’s this 50-year-old gent there, and the rest of them are all 25. They’ve all turned up for a job. The job calls for someone really trustworthy, someone who’s going to be personally handling a great deal of cash and/or finances generally, so they want to do a check on whether anyone there might be a risk, specifically as far as stealing. …So this older guy, when he was 20 he’d been involved with not one but two different instances of major theft: two bank heists, let’s say. It’s thirty years past that, and he knows that the rest are all ~25 years old. …So, the guy says, “Hey, I’m the guy that’s gone longest in this room without having done anything even the least bit dishonest”. Something like that.

Same case, right?

Now, among the guys doing the interview thing, there’s someone that knows the old guy. And the rest of the people doing the hiring ask him, Hey, is that true, what that guy said?

While it would technically be correct if the guy now simply answered with a Yes; but it would be patently dishonest to do that, completely misleading, patently wrong.

The only honest answer to that question --- at a FACTUAL level --- would be for this guy to say: ‘Well, both yes and no.’ With a brief sentence in explanation. That is, regardless of how he phrases his answer, the only honest way to answer that question is to clearly explain.


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(Which, of course, is not to say that’s necessarily a deal-breaker. That’s a separate matter. Lots of other questions will then come up, like has the guy actually repented and turned over a new leaf? Etc.)

(Incidentally, I don’t think the guy, in this case, has actually repented, or turned over a new leaf. It’s just that what he’s stolen when he was 20 years old was instrumental in his having become very wealthy, which is why he’s never been visited with the situation that either he steals or else he faces a difficult situation. (At least he’s not a kleptomaniac, that steals even when his pockets are already bulging with cash, that much I suppose we can give him.) …Which does add some comfort, in the sense that there’s no need for this wealthy guy to steal any more now. …On the other hand, should he someday find himself poor again, then it might well be that this guy, who’s once had no compunction in stealing, who’s never actually repented, and who’d benefited so handsomely from his last experience of stealing, and who’s never had occasion to ever regret his past dishonesty but on the contrary has taken away the life lesson that dishonesty pays, and pays handsomely: might he not help himself to whatever he can lay his hands on all over again if he ever found himself in straitened circumstances again? …And not to forget, the old guy’s got this Mr Hyde thing going, he’s sometimes given to attacks of insanity, when he paints himself orange and when he does that then all bets are off about what he might do or not do. …All of that’s something the interview board will have to figure out.)

(You spoke of interpretation, Roboramma. Both those parentheses above, below the separator line? They’re interpretation. But the answer to the question, Is this guy telling the truth when he claims that he’s gone longer than the rest of the candidates without having done anything dishonest? The only honest answer to that question, at a FACTUAL level, is, Both yes and no; with a brief explanation.)

If you want a Yes answer to that question, that is not dishonest, then you’ll need to talk not about whether it is factually true, but about whether it is technically true, and in fact word in like I’d suggested in my post the other day. (Not that I think, any more, that you’re out to somehow extract a Yes answer, as I’d imagined last time when I was talking with you. Just putting what I said then in context of this analogy.)


…Sorry, I seem to have ended up making this way longer than I intended to when I started out typing! But hopefully, it conveys my meaning, why I think just a Yes is not the right answer, not even at a FACTUAL level? As opposed to merely at a technical level?

 

[theprestige]

Sure.

And maybe I can just take the analogy route? Happy to simply spell it out in terms of this directly, in case that doesn’t end up conveying my meaning adequately.

Okay, that room of yours/ours? There’s this 50-year-old gent there, and the rest of them are all 25. They’ve all turned up for a job. The job calls for someone really trustworthy, someone who’s going to be personally handling a great deal of cash and/or finances generally, so they want to do a check on whether anyone there might be a risk, specifically as far as stealing. …So this older guy, when he was 20 he’d been involved with not one but two different instances of major theft: two bank heists, let’s say. It’s thirty years past that, and he knows that the rest are all ~25 years old. …So, the guy says, “Hey, I’m the guy that’s gone longest in this room without having done anything even the least bit dishonest”. Something like that.

Same case, right?

Now, among the guys doing the interview thing, there’s someone that knows the old guy. And the rest of the people doing the hiring ask him, Hey, is that true, what that guy said?

While it would technically be correct if the guy now simply answered with a Yes; but it would be patently dishonest to do that, completely misleading, patently wrong.

The only honest answer to that question --- at a FACTUAL level --- would be for this guy to say: ‘Well, both yes and no.’ With a brief sentence in explanation. That is, regardless of how he phrases his answer, the only honest way to answer that question is to clearly explain.


----------


(Which, of course, is not to say that’s necessarily a deal-breaker. That’s a separate matter. Lots of other questions will then come up, like has the guy actually repented and turned over a new leaf? Etc.)

(Incidentally, I don’t think the guy, in this case, has actually repented, or turned over a new leaf. It’s just that what he’s stolen when he was 20 years old was instrumental in his having become very wealthy, which is why he’s never been visited with the situation that either he steals or else he faces a difficult situation. (At least he’s not a kleptomaniac, that steals even when his pockets are already bulging with cash, that much I suppose we can give him.) …Which does add some comfort, in the sense that there’s no need for this wealthy guy to steal any more now. …On the other hand, should he someday find himself poor again, then it might well be that this guy, who’s once had no compunction in stealing, who’s never actually repented, and who’d benefited so handsomely from his last experience of stealing, and who’s never had occasion to ever regret his past dishonesty but on the contrary has taken away the life lesson that dishonesty pays, and pays handsomely: might he not help himself to whatever he can lay his hands on all over again if he ever found himself in straitened circumstances again? …And not to forget, the old guy’s got this Mr Hyde thing going, he’s sometimes given to attacks of insanity, when he paints himself orange and when he does that then all bets are off about what he might do or not do. …All of that’s something the interview board will have to figure out.)

(You spoke of interpretation, Roboramma. Both those parentheses above, below the separator line? They’re interpretation. But the answer to the question, Is this guy telling the truth when he claims that he’s gone longer than the rest of the candidates without having done anything dishonest? The only honest answer to that question, at a FACTUAL level, is, Both yes and no; with a brief explanation.)

If you want a Yes answer to that question, that is not dishonest, then you’ll need to talk not about whether it is factually true, but about whether it is technically true, and in fact word in like I’d suggested in my post the other day. (Not that I think, any more, that you’re out to somehow extract a Yes answer, as I’d imagined last time when I was talking with you. Just putting what I said then in context of this analogy.)


…Sorry, I seem to have ended up making this way longer than I intended to when I started out typing! But hopefully, it conveys my meaning, why I think just a Yes is not the right answer, not even at a FACTUAL level? As opposed to merely at a technical level?

Or you could just talk about the nations with nuclear arsenals, and how they've used them, in their own terms. We don't need elaborate and tortured analogies for the this.

The US has a long record of establishing and upholding a global security regime that prevents anyone from using nuclear weapons, discourages proliferation, and retards escalation. If you're going give the US credit for using nukes in one conflict, eighty years ago, then you need to give the US credit for everything it's done with and about nukes in the decades since.

That's all I meant by that comment. You've got History Channel Disease: History ends with World War 2. Get well soon!

 

[Chanakya]

Or you could just talk about the nations with nuclear arsenals, and how they've used them, in their own terms. We don't need elaborate and tortured analogies for the this.
The US has a long record of establishing and upholding a global security regime that prevents anyone from using nuclear weapons, discourages proliferation, and retards escalation. If you're going give the US credit for using nukes in one conflict, eighty years ago, then you need to give the US credit for everything it's done with and about nukes in the decades since.

That's all I meant by that comment. You've got History Channel Disease: History ends with World War 2. Get well soon!

You're doing the royal We thing now?

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Canada, and they have kept it very quiet*; Tube Alloys was far more successful than was ever announced. For political reasons Canada had to allow the US to catch up with the Manhattan project. The balance of terror has kept peace across the US-Canadian border despite outstanding US claims on Canadian territory.

*If you try looking for information about the Canadian nuclear arsenal on the internet you'll find nothing which just proves the truth of this.

Damn it. Now My Country (the True North Strong and Free) will have to send a White Helicopter^* to take you out.

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^* You just can't see those damn things in the snow.

 

[arthwollipot]

Got it.

(Thought that was some actual ha-ha joke, that had gone over my head, given my very sketchy, practically non-existent, knowledge of Australian politics. And, on an impulse, butted in to ask.)

It's cool. If you don't ask, you don't know.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Are you actually disputing the factual nature of thepretige's claim? The period in which the US has possessed nuclear weapons and not used them is longer than that for any other nation. Whether or not you find this fact meaningful is a separate question from whether or not its accurate.

Want to test its accuracy? Just ask, how long is that period for the US? It stretches from just after the bombs were dropped in 1945 to today, so ~79 years.

Is there another nation that has both possessed nuclear weapons and not used them for more than 79 years?



Yes, this is also a fact. Both are true. It's up to you to determine the meaning of those facts.

Russia has the longest before using them, US has the shortest time between having nukes and nuking a city. US just happens to have a long time between its second and third usage.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Australia not so much. We have had a very long standing policy (recently chucked in the bin by a certain former PM) of permitting nothing nuclear in the country. We have only one fission reactor, for research purposes, and no nuclear powered ships. It's only reluctantly that we permitted American nuclear powered vessels in our ports, and mostly because we're America's lapdog and allow America to do whatever it likes.

No, we aren't a screwdriver twist away from being a nuclear power. We're pretty far from that.

Good so we can cut you off from Americas nuclear umbrella then. Then people can nuke Australia with out worrying about american reprisals.

 

[theprestige]

You're doing the royal We thing now?

I'm doing the collective We thing. You, Roboramma, and I don't need elaborate and tortured analogies for this. We're capable of discussing the thing in its own terms.

But maybe I spoke too soon. What is the nature of your struggle to discuss the use of nuclear weapons in its own terms?

 

[arthwollipot]

Good so we can cut you off from Americas nuclear umbrella then. Then people can nuke Australia with out worrying about american reprisals.

Why would they want to nuke us? Everybody loves Australia.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why would they want to nuke us? Everybody loves Australia.

Ya'll really are out there thinking America is the only country people hate, aren't you?

 

[arthwollipot]

Ya'll really are out there thinking America is the only country people hate, aren't you?

Ya'll are really out there thinking America is the greatest damn country in the world. Ya'll are out there thinking you won WW2 singlehanded, won the Cold War singlehanded, and everybody just ******* owes you because you're soooo great.

Give me a ******* break. Also, can I have some of your root beer? 'Cause that stuff's really good.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Why would they want to nuke us? Everybody loves Australia.

So renounce the ANZUS treaty.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/anzus

 

[jeremyp]

Or you could just talk about the nations with nuclear arsenals, and how they've used them, in their own terms. We don't need elaborate and tortured analogies for the this.

The US has a long record of establishing and upholding a global security regime that prevents anyone from using nuclear weapons, discourages proliferation, and retards escalation. If you're going give the US credit for using nukes in one conflict, eighty years ago, then you need to give the US credit for everything it's done with and about nukes in the decades since.

That's all I meant by that comment. You've got History Channel Disease: History ends with World War 2. Get well soon!

It is true that the USA was the only country ever to use nuclear weapons but that does not speak to its likelihood of using them again.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were very small and the Allies had been capable of wreaking similar levels of destruction for two years, albeit using hundreds of bombers carrying conventional bombs.

There was also zero chance of escalation because following Nagasaki, for a brief period there was no nation capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to a target.

Finally, this was an opportunity to end a war and avoid millions of casualties in an invasion of Japan. How could Truman not use it? Can you imagine, if the bomb had not been used and the war had dragged on for another year how he could have stood up and explained to the mothers and fathers and wives and sweethearts that they had the means to stop the war but they didn't use it?

Following WW2, America started making bombs as fast as it could. It had about 300 nuclear weapons in 1950 and the Soviet Union had five. In 1955, the Soviet Union had about 200 bombs but the USA had ten times as many. Furthermore, the USSR had no credible means of delivering a nuclear weapon to the USA mainland. People in the US chain of command were seriously arguing that they should take advantage of the disparity and bomb Russia back to the stone-age there and then.

And yet, the USA didn't do it. If you want to ague that the USA is a highly responsible member of the nuclear club, I think the evidence is overwhelming that you are correct.

 

[Chanakya]

I'm doing the collective We thing. You, Roboramma, and I don't need elaborate and tortured analogies for this. We're capable of discussing the thing in its own terms.

But maybe I spoke too soon. What is the nature of your struggle to discuss the use of nuclear weapons in its own terms?

This is getting decidedly surreal. You now fancy yourself arbiter of what Roboramma and I must talk about, and on what terms? And you decide that because we happen to be talking about one aspect of one thing now, therefore we must "struggle" to talk about something else?

 

[arthwollipot]

So renounce the ANZUS treaty.

Okay, I'll get right on that.

 

[Roboramma]

Same case, right?

Yep.

Now, among the guys doing the interview thing, there’s someone that knows the old guy. And the rest of the people doing the hiring ask him, Hey, is that true, what that guy said?

While it would technically be correct if the guy now simply answered with a Yes; but it would be patently dishonest to do that, completely misleading, patently wrong.

The only honest answer to that question --- at a FACTUAL level --- would be for this guy to say: ‘Well, both yes and no.’ With a brief sentence in explanation. That is, regardless of how he phrases his answer, the only honest way to answer that question is to clearly explain.

I completely agree that its good to give context. But I don't see how you can get "no" out of that. "Yes, but..." is valid. "Yes and no"? I just don't understand why you think that its correct to say that a true statement is false. Its entirely reasonable to think that given what the person asking the question wants to know, you should give the deeper context.

This is pretty much the crux of our disagreement here. I don't disagree with you that context matters or that some facts can be misleading in isolation. I disagree that this makes them untrue or not facts.

(You spoke of interpretation, Roboramma. Both those parentheses above, below the separator line? They’re interpretation. But the answer to the question, Is this guy telling the truth when he claims that he’s gone longer than the rest of the candidates without having done anything dishonest? The only honest answer to that question, at a FACTUAL level, is, Both yes and no; with a brief explanation.)

Sorry, but I just don't see how it can be factual to say that the answer is "no". You keep typing "FACTUAL" in all caps, but you haven't actually supported the idea that the fact of the matter isn't simply true.

I also don't see what the distinction is that you are trying to make between "factually true" and "technically true".

Anyway, at this point I'm happy to agree to disagree. If you think you have something new to say I'm happy to read it, but I get the feeling that if we continue here we're likely to just keep repeating the same arguments over and over again.

I would like to point out one more time though that accepting the factual nature of the statement "the US has had nukes longer without using them than any other nation" is not the same as thinking that's an important fact or that it implies that US isn't likely to use nukes in the near future or anything else. It's simply one fact that you can take into consideration or not. I am only objecting to the idea that this statement isn't true.

 

[dudalb]

Ya'll really are out there thinking America is the only country people hate, aren't you?

Besides China does not want to Nuke Australia, they want to make it a puppet nation.
A lot of lefties, franky, hate the US and want it to vanish from World Affairs.
Problem is international politics are like nature, they abhor a vacumm, and something will move in to fill the vacumm left by the US.
and n the Pacific it is pretty clear who that will be.

 

[dudalb]

Okay, I'll get right on that.

I get a sick feeling you are not joking.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I'm pretty sure the US has stuff in Australia not because it's worried about Australia being threatened but because it's worried about Taiwan and the Philippines.

 

[Chanakya]

Yep.



I completely agree that its good to give context. But I don't see how you can get "no" out of that. "Yes, but..." is valid. "Yes and no"? I just don't understand why you think that its correct to say that a true statement is false. Its entirely reasonable to think that given what the person asking the question wants to know, you should give the deeper context.

This is pretty much the crux of our disagreement here. I don't disagree with you that context matters or that some facts can be misleading in isolation. I disagree that this makes them untrue or not facts.

Sorry, but I just don't see how it can be factual to say that the answer is "no". You keep typing "FACTUAL" in all caps, but you haven't actually supported the idea that the fact of the matter isn't simply true.

I also don't see what the distinction is that you are trying to make between "factually true" and "technically true".
Anyway, at this point I'm happy to agree to disagree. If you think you have something new to say I'm happy to read it, but I get the feeling that if we continue here we're likely to just keep repeating the same arguments over and over again.

I would like to point out one more time though that accepting the factual nature of the statement "the US has had nukes longer without using them than any other nation" is not the same as thinking that's an important fact or that it implies that US isn't likely to use nukes in the near future or anything else. It's simply one fact that you can take into consideration or not. I am only objecting to the idea that this statement isn't true.

Right, so clearly we’re on the same page on everything we’ve talked about in our recent posts, except for this one disagreement, which is no more than an incidental question of semantics. Which is cool, the agreement part I mean to say. That’s by far the main thing.

Absolutely, we can agree to disagree at this point, as far as that insignificant little semantic quibble.

Nevertheless, I’d like to take you up on that invitation to bring in something new to my (incidental, semantic) argument, with one last post. Go ahead and chime in with a “Yeah I agree with you after all, you’ve managed to convince me” if I do manage to do that, bring you over to my POV that is to say. Else no big deal, like you suggest we’ll just do the agree to disagree thing.

And yes, I’ll flog the poor beast under cover of spoiler tags, so as not to derail the thread too much.

Here goes, then:

The difference between “factually true” and “technically true”, and why I insist on making a thing of it:

There is this thing in law, in court proceedings, where you say, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, right? Well, that is the difference I’m highlighting. The difference between “the truth” and “the whole truth”. Sometimes it takes “the whole truth” to actually bring out factuality, as opposed to merely “the truth” (which can end up actually misrepresenting facts, and therefore end up being the exact opposite of “factual”, even as it remains “technically” true).

In general one need not really make a song and dance about this, obviously. However, where someone’s intent in saying something is essentially disingenuous --- when someone, for whatever reason, refrains from descending to direct outright lies, but nevertheless tries their very best to do the exact same thing, and misrepresent facts, under cover of technically being truthful but factually misleading --- then insisting on highlighting this semantic thing can help easily expose that disingenuity.


An analogy, if I may. (I’ll keep the analogy short this time, I swear. And hopefully make it kind of entertaining, as well.)

Remember how Trump lied outright in the debate about Haitians in Springfield eating the dogs and cats and pets of people in Springfield? So let’s say instead of the half-witted Trump, there’s someone debating there that’s just as much of a lowlife as he, but a smarter version --- Vance, maybe. And Vance has come equipped with documentary evidence that, in one home in Springfield, a child’s bowl of goldfish was knocked over, and the pet cat pounced in and ate up the two goldfish in that bowl. And Vance, in defense of the They’re-eating-people’s-pets-in-Springfield lie, asks, in context of that documented evidence: “Is it true that we have evidence that pets were eaten in Springfield?”

You try to say anything other than a Yes, and he keeps badgering you, “It’s a Yes or No question: Is it true that we have evidence that pets were eaten in Springfield, Yes or No?” … “Look, …” you start saying, but he cuts you off with, “Is it factually true that pets were eaten in Springfield, Yes or No?” _______And I submit to you that the unequivocal answer to that question is, “No! Yes AND no! It is NOT factually true. It is technically true, sure, but it in terms of fact a lie. It is not the whole truth. It is effectively a lie, is what it is.”

Pardon the all-caps, they’re purely for emphasis, not to raise my voice. Surely you see that that is an instance of something that can be technically true and yet factually false? To claim that pets were eaten in Springfield is the “truth”, certainly; but in as much as it isn’t “the whole truth”, therefore it is actually, in effect, a lie. It does not actually present the fact, but skilfully uses words to present the opposite of what is the fact while technically staying within bounds of what might pass for the truth.


I submit to you that that’s exactly what’s happening here, when it’s claimed that the US has gone longest possessing nukes without using them. It’s exactly as disingenuous as the above case. It’s exactly as misleading, and made in equally bad faith. It’s essentially a lie; except, it is dressed up as a half-truth by someone that’s much too clever to be caught technically lying. It’s technically true, but factually untrue.

When asked whether that technically-the-truth-but-factually-a-lie is true, then it is not correct, not right, not honest, to reply with a Yes. One might say, “It is a half-truth, which is to say it is a half-lie”, and then explain. Or one might say, “It is technically the truth, but it is not the whole truth, and it misrepresents the fact”, and then explain. Or one might say, “Yes, but…”, and then explain. Or one might say, "Yes and No", and then explain. The point is, one MUST explain, else one is colluding with what is effectively a lie even if it is technically, and only technically, the truth, even as it is factually untrue.


Yep, that’s about it. What I meant by technically true but factually not true.

Hopefully I’ve been able to clearly convey my meaning. And hopefully I’m going to hear you now chime in with a “Yes, absolutely, fully agree with you, thumbs-up-emoji.”

Else, if you find yourself still disagreeing, then sure, the agree to disagree thing, by all means. It’s just a semantic disagreement after all, even as, like you’ve said, we agree with our overall other-than-the-semantic-bit argument and POV.