as a wise guy once said, "a grown man made a wager; he lost."

Hence why we drastically reduced the number of wagers/addictive risk taking because of its cost on society.

The libertarians here will say "oh yay, we've won". Then a few years later they'll cry about your mom losing her house to a gambling scam with no recourse. Then they'll cry again when the voters finally rid themselves of the gambling scourge years later.

some people like gambling. for them, risking money is an efficient way to purchase a thrill. do we not care about them?

People like doing Crack, do we not care for them?

because submarine piloting is a going-under-water activity, improvements in holding one's breath can lead to faster submersibles.

> All you need to do is to programmatically change bits, and you have compute.

all you need is to rapidly push off one foot and land on the other, and you have running.

to be clear: your claim is that the us military is misinformed because key constituents have played too many board games?

does hearing it back like that make it seem absurd to you as well?

Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game). And no, it doesn't make it seem absurd to me.

My argument is that Western strategic thought (with games being a codification thereof, rather than the source of) generally considers countries as mostly atomic actors that can be defeated - the history of European warfare being filled with "gentlemanly" surrenders followed up by peace treaties, with guerrilla warfare being a very rare exception.

On the other side, the reality in the East is that a state's collapse doesn't end the conflict, but just prolongs it. The army doesn't surrender, it goes home with its weapons and reconstitutes as insurgents. I can't actually think of a single proper surrender of an Eastern country ever, except for Japan in 1945.

> Well, yes (except that Civ isn't a board game).

It is actually several physical board games, the oldest of which is older than (and unrelated to) the computer game [0], as well as being a series of computer games that are basically digital board games.

[0] Well, except for the computer game based on it and its expansion, which, because of the other computer game, had the long-winded title "Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization".

Finland comes to mind.

As an example of an Eastern country? Well touché, I suppose you're historically correct, but what I had in my mind for this distinction is not the line in the middle of Europe (between the First World and Second World), but that between Europe and Asia. Sorry if I miscommunicated.

there is a benefit as well, though, as it makes your threats credible.

either way, you may wish to know: your poor argumentation shores up support for the war.

You may disagree with the idea that militaries are responsible for civilians they kill regardless of intent, but it is not poor argumentation. And the fact that it triggers you to support the war reveals more about you than you may intend.

you've mistaken my comment! i do not support the war.

i think the poster you're replying to does not regard iranians as capable of independent decisions. thus, the school deaths are a crime, but the dead protesters are more like a weather event: a tragedy.

> do you think perhaps deciding who to invade and kill is a special privilege reserved only for your country, which should be emperor of the world?

yes. we got the bomb before they did, because our policies are better than theirs.

in this analogy, it is OP who is the dog.

Ridiculous. We should be calling people out for being performatively offended. It reduces the impact and gravitas of situations where real offense is given that should be considered.

I have herded cats, sorted sheep, and wrangled cattle all throughout my career. I can come up with more that are quite accurate to the situation.

And I've been the cat, sheep, and cattle likely more than I have been on the other side.

It's simply part of working with groups of humans. We become dumb in groups and lend ourselves towards herd behavior. It often requires someone tending to us to break us of the habit.

This is some really tortured logic to find something to get offended about.

> Calling yourself the smartest breed of dog isn't particularly humble

Surely “smart as a border collie” is not a high bar for a human.

That's probably reading too much into the metaphor. I think it's apropos because regardless of whether the others are smart or not, we all have blind sides, and in order to get things done that need to be done you have to apply pressure in the right way to overcome a certain amount of group inertia. Those things still fit with the metaphor without necessarily being disrespectful.

They should stop acting so much like sheep then.

I have a relative that has a border collie and the thing has got to have the dog version of Down syndrome.

This dog does the worst job of being a dog that I’ve ever seen.

they did not call their coworkers sheep, though.

a border collie can nip the heels of humans just as well.

sailors eat with their elbows on the table, to keep their fare from sliding as the boat rocks. don't look poor!

That could only work as a reason to avoid the behavior if people were familiar with sailors.