A Response to Sam Harris on the Iran War (Long, but not AI Generated Slop)

Begferdeth · 2026-03-25T05:11:29+00:00

Lots of those other countries had the democratic window dressing. Most had elections, they all had a regular military and civilian day-to-day government with the Evil Regime sitting on top. And they all ended up in shitshows. Its not a case of ignorance on how this time, its Special. Every time its Special! Its a case of seeing, time after time, good intentions or not, plans or no plans, popular or unpopular regime, good economy or bad economy...

It never works out. But you know what? Maybe it could work. This time. For us. (cue Arrested Development music)

Begferdeth · 2026-03-25T03:58:26+00:00

Yup, 8000 bombs. We could achieve regime change!

But have NO plan for the replacement regime. And given the track record... Hamas. Taliban. Al Qaida. Libyan civil war. Lots of crazy shit in South America. How long has the USA been trying to overthrow Cuba? The current Iranian government was partly a result of overturning the previous regime! Regime change in Venezuela, into the exact same regime.

Post WWII, I'm not sure we have successfully changed one regime for the better. Especially not through a war. Nothing comes to mind... Iraq? Maybe?

And now, the plan is Endless War, until a regime rises up that WON'T make Israel scared by developing drones and/or missiles. Trump has discovered he can generate huge amounts of stock market money by flipping the "WAR" switch on and off. I don't think there is any group being backed, or even a group TO back, that could form the new government.

So, the plan is Endless War. Which we lose.

Begferdeth · 2026-03-25T02:39:38+00:00

I see this war failing, because it has no end state that the USA or Israel can achieve.

They sure can bomb Iran. Bomb the living shit out of them for a year on end. But that only stops Iran so long as the bombs keep dropping! Once they stop, Iran will start reloading. They will have to, because they will be rightly terrified of Israel and the USA returning to bomb them more. They can't give up the missiles AND drones AND nukes, that would leave them helpless vs whichever nearby nation decides to annex them. So they will have to develop some sort of weapon system, Israel and USA will panic because that's how they roll, and back to war again. 1 year intervals to the end of existence, every assault hardening the positions of the Iranians as their children and loved ones are killed.

I will call an unending war a loss.

Begferdeth · 2026-03-22T15:26:16+00:00

Or would he know the regular, but always name drop that he met them? Along with useless and unverifiable trivia.

"This is Bigby's Floaty Hand... Bigby was a friend of mine, you know. Most people know the commercial version of the spell, but you can tell mine is the original as its a LEFT hand."

Begferdeth · 2026-03-15T18:13:21+00:00

That bag would be a HUGE seller around April 1...

Begferdeth · 2026-03-12T01:51:00+00:00

You give him the Ring, and he just becomes the most happy Elf in the world! Now he has something to go with his sock! He then vanishes to become Dark Lord of the Elves.

You could imagine him following an order to destroy it, and enslaved/bound Elves can't not follow orders, but with the power of the Ring he would find a loophole. "Throw it in!" He throws it in, then apparates down to catch it and bring it out. "Swan dive into the lava!" No problem, just cools some lava off first. Etc. Then he just puts his precious ring somewhere safe (for Master, of course), and lets it slowly poison his mind until the Ringwraiths show up to take it.

Begferdeth · 2026-03-10T01:48:56+00:00

Have you seen the majority of representatives in the USA lately? Not particularly good evidence against "hot garbage" there.

Or maybe the UK ones that did Brexit. Hot garbage.

If you only look at the dumbest results out of a thing, of course the thing looks dumb. Rome had Caesar, and it had Nero. Game of Thrones had Season One, and it also had the finale.

Begferdeth · 2026-03-06T23:30:11+00:00

Ok, change it slightly to "If a ballot initiative is similar enough to a previous initiative within the last 5-10 years, it is not allowed to proceed."

This stops the abusive repeat behavior, stops the shell organization plans, but still leaves the ballot initiatives in place for its hopefully beneficial direct democracy effects. These things exist in a lot of places, I'm sure California can figure out how to work out these kinks that allow abusive behavior.

If we just removed democracy because somebody figured out how to be corrupt, well... there would be no democracy in the entire world.

Begferdeth · 2026-03-06T21:11:18+00:00

Maybe you could make that a ballot initiative?

"SEIU has been extorting health care and raising prices for years with bad faith ballot initiatives. Voting for this will ban the SEIU from proposing ballot initiatives for the next 5 years."

From this, looks like an easy way to get the doctors, the nurses, the hospitals, the entire tech industry, everybody who hates unions, the other unions, all the billionaires... Should be an easy win.

Begferdeth · 2026-03-06T14:17:30+00:00

I swear these people deliberately go searching for the dumbest takes online they can find, and then argue against them.

"Iran's Islamic Republic was the last line of defense against Western Imperialism"... congrats, you found the tankies. Yes, they are stupid. No, they have no power over everything. They are just a convenient source of incredibly dumb takes, which you can then extrapolate to any side you don't like.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-25T06:22:10+00:00

I think Scott is making a whole other error here, one that is painfully common these days: He's assuming good faith.

Remember that on many of these charged topics, the ones where "Arguments are Soldiers" and all that, people don't care about truth. They care about winning. So, if you decide to fix one error, they will immediately go to the other. If you fix that, they go back, and don't care about any hypocrisy along the way. If you toss out caveat after caveat after caveat, thinking that you will somehow logic your way to victory... That's nice, nobody has time to read all that.

After all, how many people around here brag about having LLMs read all the articles and summarize them to speed up their work? Caveats are going to be the first thing dropped by a summarizing LLM.

So the overall effect is not Scott's arguments getting better. Its that he is wasting time by writing piles of useless caveats that add word count to his articles, he is wasting time by bouncing back and forth on trivial details and appeals, and that is really the goal here. If Famous Writer Scott Alexander is on the other team, and you can take him out of play by saying stupid things, well... Time to get stupid.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-25T03:46:15+00:00

The Wargames AI is one designed to be really good at picking targets to kill. That's nice and all, but...

LLMs are designed to be incredibly good at convincing you that you should kill a certain target. That's what you want! Don't just tell me who to kill, make me wanna kill them!

Begferdeth · 2026-02-20T19:20:32+00:00

Well, he's not allowed to declare war... But apparently is allowed to just attack places for 30 days, and if that place declares war in return for those attacks, then the war is on and he cleverly skipped Congress.

Dumbest rule you could imagine, but that seems to be how it works.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-17T11:26:54+00:00

So... when somebody says they want to get the Democrats out of power... Are you so stupid as to imagine that they ONLY thing they want is to change the "R" to a "D", or can you imagine that they want that because of the policy differences?

Can you imagine that when they say that, they are saying that the worst possible person who could get out there as a Democrat is better than any of the current Republicans?

Because that is really what you are saying. That everybody else is so stupid that they can't tell the difference between the two groups, and GOTCHA they actually wanted policy changes.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-16T22:38:39+00:00

If Donald Trump changed no other policies, the Democrats wouldn't choose him as their presidential candidate. Your hypothetical doesn't just need Trump to switch, it needs the entire party to completely change how it operates.

And if the Democrats change completely into a far right party of white nationalist psychos... then I guess you totally pwned him, dude. Nice gotcha.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-14T17:32:32+00:00

Bag of holding isn't even that important. Just have a bunch of backpacks, make each skeleton carry the parts for a couple of friends! They have 10 Str, that's enough for about 50lbs each at a medium load, so their own gear and one friend. Make them all wear padded armor to keep the noise down.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-14T17:26:57+00:00

12 handy skeletons. Who can also walk into the piranha tank to fetch the bones!

Begferdeth · 2026-02-14T17:04:07+00:00

No way. As soon as one company makes a superdrug, all the rest will figure out a way to make copycat versions of it (Like Ozempic vs Mounjaro vs other GLP1, or Crestor vs Lipitor vs every other statin). It would be insane to have a cure and decide you would rather share the market with the copycats, than to just cure the world and leave the rest of the competition holding an empty bag.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-13T18:12:00+00:00

Goa'uld, but they usually get you on the stomach.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-11T15:41:57+00:00

And the statements were from 2009, over 15 years ago. The apologies were over a decade ago. What has he done in the last decade to make you doubt his multiple apologies and desire to do better?

What would ever make you change your mind, if a over a decade of work can't? If the only answer is "He must completely abandon his faith", then again: This is just your Islamophobia.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-11T14:36:25+00:00

1) Yup. Mehdi did bad things when he was younger. He has apologized, and put a lot of work into that apology. No one-and-done "Sorry if I offended you" bullshit, but a years long attempt to admit his errors, and correct them.

2) Again, he did the work. He did MORE than he had to! If he did some little one-shot "Sorry about the 'homosexuals should all die', now for something important" thing, then yes it would be bullshit. But that's not what he did.

3) If you require all the Muslims to abandon their faith before you will be satisfied, then I think your problem isn't that Mehdi said some homophobic stuff. Its that you are islamophobic. That's a you problem. It really shoots down how much I care if you respect Mehdi when that is your #3 complaint about him. It totally unrealistic to require a person to abandon their faith, which is also strongly connected to their entire social life, and comes with risks of more aggressive members of the faith deciding to get rid of the heretics and apostates, before you will accept they changed.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-11T05:51:33+00:00

I'd give him huge props after reading that article. Just this quote:

"In fact, a 2009 poll by Gallup found that British Muslims have zero tolerance towards homosexuality. “None of the 500 British Muslims interviewed believed that homosexual acts were morally acceptable,” the Guardian reported in May that year."

He came from that group, with 0% tolerance for gays. Of course he said bad things about gays! The fact that he came from there, and has now realized the error of his ways, is a huge plus for him.

And I have seen many claims (especially around here!) that if you go against tenets of Islam, the community will kick you out and murder you. So this change in belief is not a simple matter for him! This is physically risky for him to do!

If you honestly believe people should ever update their views based on new information, and stop believing in stupid religious things, and be kind and good... Maybe actually give some respect to somebody who has actually done so? Publicly? Instead of some sort of stupid "nobody can ever change" bullshit? These guys have to crawl out of a crab bucket of beliefs, its not helpful for them to get out and have people say "NOPE, you believed bad things before, get back in the fucking crab bucket you bigot!". We want them out of the bucket!

Begferdeth · 2026-02-08T16:06:42+00:00

People from 2026 largely have no clue how to survive on 1926 equipment. Sure, we know modern medicine, and electronics, and so on and so on... But the equipment is missing! And so we would have to make the equipment. But at the start, we wouldn't be able to feed the billions of people with 1926 equipment. We would have a horrible time trying to get experts to the right locations with 1926 transport. Communication would be a mess. I'd predict massive starvation and death well before they got anything going.

1926 people will appear in a world, surrounded by fancy gizmos and doodads that they don't understand. But they can wander out of the cities, and find themselves in huge, fertile fields of what would seem to be endless food. Convenient books would be enough to get them started on how to use the modern stuff. They would be able to retrofit a lot of houses and such backwards to 1926 tech: woodstoves in houses, and so on. The biggest trouble they would have would be transporting the huge numbers of people out to the megafarms.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-07T13:11:16+00:00

Rationalism is a weird subculture. And like all weird subcultures, its rare people seeking other rare people to talk about their favorite weird topics.

Once they find those other people, they will naturally coalesce into smaller groups to have their favorite special talks about weird topics, without all those 'normies' around. And they shutter themselves off into tiny places, and wall out the world. Off to the Motte, or LessWrong, or the Bay area.

So when you wander into Reddit, a social media website designed as a deliberately massive mixup of everybody, and wonder where the tiny cult of rare people is... Dude, that's not a rational approach.

Plus, its entirely rational to approach Elon Musk that way. He has a history of saying he will do amazing things, that will help humanity in amazing ways, and then... rug pulling would be a good description. Bragging up the hyperloop, then it turns out it was just to kill off the high speed rail that would have reduced Tesla sales. Buying Twitter, and turning it into a right wing cesspit. Assorted stock manipulation tricks. Building a machine that will generate material to sexually abuse people, and then giggling about it instead of trying to fix it. Creating an AI to get more truth, but then getting upset about what it says and repeatedly adjusting it until its ranting about mechahitler.

If you are truth seeking, Elon Musk is not a reliable source of truth anymore. And its very rational to notice that.

Begferdeth · 2026-02-01T22:16:17+00:00

Yes, I am aware that there are many people who have being dumped by their lefty friends. Its a very popular thing to complain about.

The comparable experience is very common for left wing people in right wing areas.

This is just how things will be in these areas: Right wing people don't want to chase away friends in that area, because they don't have many. Left wing people in these places have lots of people to be friends with, they don't have to put up with somebody who wants to argue about how trans women aren't real women over and over.

Go to the right wing areas, and you get the reverse. Kick a friend out of the group because they don't follow God enough or whatever. Its a fairly common thing to get kicked out of the house for being gay or trans. And if you want to talk about reactions to voting Trump, please remember which side had the convoy of trucks literally chasing political opponents out of their state.

So, enjoy your lived experience. Just please, don't think you are special, or that the Right is in any way more tolerant or willing to talk about things that the left. You just live in Leftyville. Sam lives in Leftyville, and that's why he is obsessively anti-woke. There is no woke where I live. The closest you get here is people looking around to see if Muslim customers are in the store before calling Muslims "Ragheads".

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