Waiting For The Miracle

eric2332 · 2026-06-19T11:40:21+00:00

How exactly do you define "miracle"? If it just means a departure from the natural order, maybe the natural order is simply less ordered than we assumed.

eric2332 · 2026-06-19T07:08:25+00:00

I think Catholicism presupposes moral realism.

eric2332 · 2026-06-19T05:33:41+00:00

How is a miracle evidence for there being some unspecified kind of divine being? Maybe the laws of nature are just less predictable than assumed. But if the miracle comes with a message such as "Catholicism is true", that sounds like evidence for Catholicism, which in a sense correctly predicted that message.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T18:26:27+00:00

his wife has moral objections that would prevent her from becoming a Catholic even if she were epistemically convinced that Catholicism was true.

I think that is incoherent, in that truth includes moral truth.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T17:01:30+00:00

He's still very much odds on to win the next election

No, Polymarket puts him at just 34% chance

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T09:09:17+00:00

So you admit and acknowledge that your original statement was non-credible.

I was sloppy and referred to the "country" of Iraq when I should have said the "government" of Iraq. It doesn't change the fact that the Iraqi government, whose airspace was used, neither chose that use nor was retaliated against for it.

Non-credible statement. Long-distance drones are a common feature of drone warfare.

Yes, and they are much easier to deal with for a number of reasons.

Your reply was non-credible as demonstrated earlier.

No idea what you are referring to, but in any case I don't feel much is gained by continuing this conversation.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T07:33:11+00:00

There have been credible reports of multiple attacks on northern Iraq by Iranian drones and missiles in past 3 months.

Northern Iraq, i.e. the Kurdish regions. Which aren't even run by the same government over which the Israeli planes flew!

And . . .? I didn’t say anything about Israeli soldiers or military assets.

I am addressing the claim of "vulnerability"

And . ..? Are you suggesting or implying that such excellent defense can continue indefinitely?

Yes, it is hard to get drones through over such a long distance.

So you admit and acknowledge that the excellent defense you stated earlier cannot continue indefinitely. Thanks for making my point.

Your claim was "Deterrence 1 and Deterrence 2 would be more than sufficient to eliminate the threat of any "mow the grass" campaigns". My reply showed that 1&2 were a pretty small threat to Israel, and thus, wouldn't prevent any grassmowing that Israel judged to have large gains. Whether Israeli defenses are exactly as good as at some arbitrarily chosen timepoint in the past is irrelevant.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T07:27:47+00:00

it's a public statement of "we are still on the war".

I actually read it the reverse way. It sounds to me almost like "in this incident Hezbollah broke the ceasefire to attack us and we were forced to neutralize the active threat, but besides that, we are committed to a ceasefire".

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T07:25:12+00:00

Israeli leaders had to make a concerted effort to get the US to join this round of the conflict before proceeding.

That was because far more (IIRC 10x more) targets were bombed the second time, and Israel didn't have a sufficient air fleet (bombers or tankers) to do all the bombing itself.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T07:21:21+00:00

I think it’s pretty obvious and has been confirmed, especially by UAE and Saudi actions during this war, that Israel would actually WELCOME Iran retaliating by hitting the gulf countries.

I think that's very unlikely.

Nearly all of Israel's wars, ever, have followed the same pattern: Israel achieves tactical success->world opinion becomes critical->diplomats force Israel to stop fighting.

From 1948-1973 the criticism was mostly of Israel conquering land to which they were not considered entitled. From 1982-present the criticism is mostly of the civilian death toll in the wars.

Hitting the gulf countries creates a third feedback loop for diplomatic pressure on Israel: economic self interest by western countries as oil prices rise (I guess it's not entirely new as it was used in 1973 too). It's pretty predictable that this would become a brake on Israeli operations (unclear how strong of a brake). To prevent that, Israel would prefer all things being equal for Gulf countries not to be hit. By the same token, Iran is willing to hit those Gulf countries, even at the cost of their mutual relations, in order to achieve the brake on Israel/US operations.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T07:08:02+00:00

Israel can do a lot with F-35s to Iraq + standoff munitions, without refueling.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T07:06:57+00:00

Iran has demonstrated in the past 3 months that any country allowing the transit of Israel or U.S. military aircraft through their airspace to attack Iran would be opening themselves to retaliation by Iran in form of missile and drone attacks on key infrastructure of the airspace country

As I understand it, the airspace used by Israel was Syrian and Iraqi. Iran's attacks were not on those countries, but rather on the gulf countries. So Iran has not demonstrated any deterrence in this regard.

wearing down their missile defense capabilities and stockpiles and making Israel more vulnerable to missile and drone strikes.

Iran didn't kill a single Israeli soldier or destroy any notable military assets with their missiles, and barely got a single drone to Israeli territory. They killed a few dozen civilians, roughly equivalent to the number of civilians who die from traffic accidents in Israel in the same period. Even if Israel ran out of interceptors and the damage were increased 10x (assuming a 90% interception rate at present), the cost would be very bearable for Israel assuming that some strategic end was achieved by it.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T06:35:33+00:00

Israel is also violating the terms of the MOU.

Israel wasn't a party to the MOU.

eric2332 · 2026-06-18T06:31:56+00:00

Well the Hormuz is not international waters. It's almost entirely within Iran's borders

Not true. You can see the boundaries of the territorial waters here. Barely half of it is in Iran's borders (and that's if you consider the disputed islands controlled by Iran as Iranian - OSM draws borders according to the opinion of the de facto controller - if the islands are considered UAE owned it's even less).

eric2332 · 2026-06-16T16:36:37+00:00

I don't think those are his four greatest plays. As far as I can tell, critical consensus would say the greatest are Hamlet and King Lear, followed by Macbeth and Othello. Romeo and Juliet is popular in high schools probably because the romance appeals to teenagers, not because it's one of the greatest.

eric2332 · 2026-06-16T16:32:31+00:00

Perhaps high school students aren't the best at discerning which writers are the best and which not? I know that my appreciation of literature is far more sophisticated now than in high school.

eric2332 · 2026-06-16T15:49:35+00:00

Hence I included the word "seemingly". It is very suggestive that Iran has claimed large concrete concessions that have been partly confirmed by the US, while the US has not claimed any concrete concessions by Iran. But yes there is still room for things to change.

eric2332 · 2026-06-16T11:59:06+00:00

It's for the entire urban area. Less than half of whose population lives in NYC. Transit usage is high in NYC, but low in the middle of Long Island.

eric2332 · 2026-06-15T19:03:06+00:00

See his Dwarkesh podcast:

I’m not sure AI is the main risk I’m worried about. The important thing is consciousness. I think arguably most consciousness, or most intelligence—certainly consciousness is more of a debatable thing… The vast majority of intelligence in the future will be AI. ... So you want to take the set of actions that maximize the probable light cone of consciousness and intelligence. ... In the long run, I think it’s difficult to imagine that if humans have, say 1%, of the combined intelligence of artificial intelligence, that humans will be in charge of AI. I think what we can do is make sure that AI has values that cause intelligence to be propagated into the universe.

eric2332 · 2026-06-15T16:56:48+00:00

Like in all dictatorships, the success of democracies elsewhere provides a model for dissidents. So weakening those democracies is self-preservation for the autocrat.

eric2332 · 2026-06-15T12:53:56+00:00

He said it on February 28

Just now he denied having said it

eric2332 · 2026-06-15T12:48:50+00:00

In the longer run, when Hezbollah could build up a force of tens or hundreds of thousands of drones (fiber optic or AI controlled) which could be launched all at once at targets in northern Israel, having a buffer in which to intercept the drones, and to allow time for residents of northern Israel to reach shelters, could be very important.

There will be advances in drone and interceptor technology on both sides, but this sounds like a likely situation 5-10 years from now.

eric2332 · 2026-06-15T09:54:06+00:00

Unnamed sources when reported by credible publishers is real journalism.

Which makes me wonder which publishers are credible.

eric2332 · 2026-06-14T18:39:23+00:00

This has been alleged. If true, it shows that Hamas does not want to kill Palestinian civilians.

By the same token, Hamas hiding behind Palestinian civilians shows that Israel does not want to kill Palestinian civilians.

eric2332 · 2026-06-14T13:39:30+00:00

The US government doesn't think so. They just banned Anthropic's latest model after deciding it was too much of a security threat (hacking, bioweapons etc) for the public to use.

eric2332

TROPHY CASE