Joined: 22 Mar 2014 Age: 42 Gender: Male Posts: 510
04 Jan 2015, 1:38 pm
The line between offense and defense is probably more blurred the more interconnected the two opposing entities are. If there's a small sea-living organism with nothing but water for several meters around it, and then a big fish comes darting against it as if out of nowhere and eats it, then I can see how you might possibly see that as offense on the fish's side, although perhaps if you were to get theoretical and abstract about it and extrapolate into a wider context you could perhaps debate that. But when you have a technologically advanced and globally extremely interconnected society, the cold war is literally fought on a million fronts, and then the question seems to morph into something of a different nature.
Here's an analogy that I came up with right now. You have two bathtubs side by side with water in them. In one bathtub is you tied to the bottom. In the other is your friend tied to the bottom. Each of you have a hand pump with a tube that is long enough to reach the other bathtub. The bathtubs are right next to each other with no space between and it is an enclosed area so either of you have nowhere else to aim the tube but into the other bathtub. When there is an equal amount of water in both tubs the water is over both of your noses and both will drown. You can't breath through the tube because it's glued to the pump. So the one who is the most efficient pumper will survive. And simultaneously kill his friend.
Joined: 22 Mar 2014 Age: 42 Gender: Male Posts: 510
04 Jan 2015, 4:44 pm
I posted the same topic on three forums. On the other two there were no replies at all. And here this. What is the problem? Is this beyond people's comprehension or what? Not that it's the first time I post something and get that response though.
Joined: 22 Mar 2014 Age: 42 Gender: Male Posts: 510
05 Jan 2015, 12:27 am
Humanaut wrote:
I believe both bathtubs have the right to defend themselves.
The question is whether the division between offense and defense is an illusion. In the case of the bathtubs, every single liter of water you pump out of your own bathtub in order to allow yourself to breath, is a liter pumped into the other person's bathtub making it harder for him to survive and increasing his chances of being killed. Replace the two bathtubs with two companies, two states or two other entities. Every minute of commercial time on TV X on Friday night that company A has bought makes people skip the product/service of company B and choose the product/service of company A. With countries defense works in a similar way. Defense can be to maintain trade that benefits 5 large companies in your country, and hurts 5 large competitor companies in another country, by for example trying to undermine the operations of the 5 companies in the other country. Let's say there's discussion about whether to build a certain highway or instead build a certain bridge in the other country. You know that the 5 companies would profit more if the highway is built, so you do everything you can to further the cause of the bridge. You pay x million dollars for a commercial about the great benefits of building the bridge. You pay x million dollars to an environmental organization that protests against the highway. You recruit 100 people to join the environmental organization to stand in the streets with placards, which gets on the TV news. All such actions are in defense of your country, yet offensive actions against the other country. The two are indistinguishable.
Joined: 22 Mar 2014 Age: 42 Gender: Male Posts: 510
05 Jan 2015, 5:00 pm
And even if you want to contrast abstraction to generalization as in zoom in/zoom out, it can be argued that I'm zooming in into the concepts offense and defense. In a war for example you can see that as two countries, and then you can zoom in a lot and all of a sudden you see those thousands of fronts I talked about. My point is that nobody cares about this topic for some reason except you and you didn't seem to bother to think about the topic and wrote the following, which was borderline trolling:
Quote:
I will defend your illusory right to offend yourself.
Joined: 22 Mar 2014 Age: 42 Gender: Male Posts: 510
05 Jan 2015, 6:50 pm
Humanaut wrote:
tomato wrote:
Humanaut wrote:
tomato wrote:
Humanaut wrote:
A wider generalization equals a lower level of abstraction.
Not necessarily.
It is always the case; an unconditional consequence of how abstract concepts are formed.
Depends on what one means by abstraction.
Not really. It is merely a matter of hierarchical structure.
What I mean though is that people such as you seem to lack the ability to abstract away from their conditioned concepts. In this case the concepts offense and defense. And thus they can't even begin to discuss this subject. Most people on this forum have this form of rigid minds. Which is why a mildly psychotic person such as myself often find myself in this situation on this forum. Everybody keeps regurgitating their books like another tape recorder page after page, nobody ever does any speculative thinking of any degree. And hence this thread is totally empty of any worthwhile feedback.
04 Jan 2015, 1:25 pm
