Wait, what? This isn't normal in other countries?

Another reason we are the new Britain, I guess.

I see. I don't know exactly why Obama did not do that, but I believe you're right that not doing specifically that was probably a mistake. I did do a Google search, though, and found this quote from an Obama advisor:



Which does sound plausible. A no-fly zone won't stop much but the Russians, and it doesn't seem to me (maybe I'm wrong) that Russian airstrikes are as bad for the people as ISIS is, and given the cost, it wasn't worth doing.



I agree very much that Europeans aren't some awesome, unhypocritical factor in this, and that they don't benefit from the same violence that American benefits from. I what you're saying means that America is going to have to re-prioritize which allies are best. At the risk of sounding a bit racist, staying with western Europe is probably best for America, because there's a cultural legacy there that binds the continents together. Which might mean having to be more respectful towards those allies, and losing influence elsewhere.

You're probably right. I don't really like partisan demagogues and tend to consider them as "others". Which is probably a hypocritical thing to say because I probably come across myself as partisan. And doesn't help me to understand American politics since Trump won on pure demagoguery.

Among other things, ARPANET was literally an American reimplementation of UK government research.

The "heritage" of the underlying technologies is super global. Even when something legitimately originated in the US, chances are it was a first generation immigrant who did it. The US supremacy in computing is basically just propaganda, and cringeworthy at that.

But yeah, I won't dispute the fact that you guys owned everyone at actually commercializing computers.

When I said I would be sad to leave the country I was talking about geography. You seem to be talking about nations here, which is fine, but not the same thing. I don't care where the research started, or where the researchers emigrated from. The fact is, a bunch of the organizations, funding, and people who designed the systems that we use today were geographically located in the vicinity of MIT and Stanford.

From this point of view, the idea that the researchers in these orgs were just "commercializing" something from the UK is a flippin` joke. Looking at the work of Claude Shannon or John McCarthy in that light is ludicrous.

I never said Americans didn't contribute to computer science and I don't understand where you could have possibly gotten the idea.

I am happy to be corrected for neglecting to include alongside the American contribution its antecedents from other countries, but don't you think it would be rather silly to sum up the tremendously important work done in the mid-20th century by Americans as commercializing stuff that they stole?



Like, I don't care if you were rubbed the wrong way by some propaganda efforts in the present that wrongly take too much credit. I am just balking at this notion that commercializing stuff is all we're good at, which is outright ridiculous (especially if you go back half a century, as I suggested).

Which in absolutely no way implies that Americans contributed to computer science and computing technologies less than proportionally.

Whatever. You were dismissive when you wrote "But yeah, I won't dispute the fact that you guys owned everyone at actually commercializing computers" in response to a post I made about how I'd miss being close to some of the centers of 20th century technological research. Perhaps it was in fact American success in commercializing that research which ensured the continuing relevance of American incarnations of things that may (in some cases!) have been invented elsewhere, but I am not trying to win some kind of pissing contest between nations by using the word heritage to refer to the American research that led to this commercialization. Just that I'd miss being close to a part of the research that in fact changed the course of history. And to reduce it down to "commercialization" misses the fact that it did start out as research, and no, it was not all "stolen".

You are completely missing the point of what I was saying, but it seems like you want to be angry about something so go hard dude.

He's mad because he has to pretend to love the country he's pretending he's going to leave. Have some compassion.

Hey you heard him, he'd totally consider leaving if only there were successful research universities in other countries. It's not his fault that literally every computer scientist lives in the US.

I really do think we are misunderstanding each other. I honestly think we'd agree if we'd had the chance to communicate over a different medium than text. I may be using the wrong words to describe my point. (I think we may be using the words "research", and also "heritage" slightly differently.)

Pretty much all the value I am placing in American research is historical. As in, stuff that happened a long time ago, like, between 1940-1980. I tried to concede to Jon several posts ago that he is probably totally right in the case of recent research, when I said



In fact, it was pretty much the entire reason I spent that post searching for reasons that American research has fallen from the visionary goals of people at SRI in the 60's.

And to be clear, I was using the word "heritage" to imply that I was talking about the past. It is perhaps an unfortunate coincidence that in the same sequence of posts there was a contention about just how much the American contribution should be valued compared to that of other nations, but I didn't at all mean to use the word "heritage" to imply American supremacy here.

Really the only thing that rubbed me the wrong way was when you characterized the American contribution as mere commercialization. You may not have meant it literally the way I took it, but you have to admit that often times you like to use hyperbolic language to illustrate a specific point.

Oh my God. I just noticed that Reverend Jones' post count is only 2547.

Well you're going to need another term or two in its Taylor expansion to make sense of it....

I said safe zone, not no-fly zone. They're different things.

Still, contra Ben Rhodes, there are some Obama advisors -- for example, Evelyn Farkas -- who believed that a no-fly zone was both possible and desirable at one point during the course of war, but it became impossible as time passed (specifically, IIRC, once Russia entered the war). Maintaining a no-fly zone requires a deterrent. In Farkas' opinion, it was impossible to effect a no-fly zone, because Obama's deterrent was no longer credible.

But I've digressed. The reason why Obama didn't set up a safe zone is because it would have meant boots on the ground in Syria.



Eh, the history of Europe isn't exactly the history of peaceful co-existence and shared interests. War has been a constant on the continent. What you're saying about a "cultural legacy" may be true about the United States, the United Kingdom and certain British commonwealth countries (New Zealand, Australia, Canada). But the widespread belief that European countries have a single, collective fate that supersedes their individual destinies is a 20th century invention that is more of an unrealized hope for the future than a present day reality. And current realities on the continent aren't making that hope an easy one to cling to, to put it understatedly.

lol. You probably haven't ever lived outside of the United States for a very long time. It exists.

And it's definitely not reducible to how American military power is perceived. In many countries, it represents itself as resentment about the pervasiveness of American culture in their societies (it's seen as a foreign infiltrator that challenges the preservation of their own culture), and the belief that American culture is much more vapid than their own. It can also come from interacting with loud, brash, uninformed, insensitive Ugly American tourists. But there are many reasons why people dislike Americans and the United States aside from what the CIA does.



If you talk to a German who's been to Greece or Spain in the past few years, he/she probably wouldn't be laughing. Or if he/she had traveled to just about any other country where a sizable part of the population believes their country has gotten a raw deal from EU/Eurozone membership, and that most of the benefits have gone to Germany -- which, at this point, is very large portion of the EU member states.

Anti-German sentiments are rampant throughout the continent, and the Germans know it. You don't know what you're talking about.



Wut? Wait, have you not heard of Donald J. Trump? The NY real estate developer turned reality TV star who tweets crazy ****? He just became president by galvanizing the Republican base around hatred for Mexico and Mexican immigrants.

Your argument here is that because you can make up a word that doesn't sound quite right, its corresponding idea doesn't exist, or the corresponding reality doesn't exist. Not a good argument. The idea and the reality both exist. Plus, there are other phrases that do convey them (e.g., anti-Mexican sentiment).

But imagine a world where that's possible! I want to live in that world!

FWIW, I too would greatly prefer to live in Star Trek.

To be fair, you're a contrarian dick almost all the time, so it's easy for people to read your posts as being contrarian dick moves, even on the rare occasion when they aren't.

Well, at least people read mine.

Well done.

I hope you guys don't see this as a contest. I certainly don't mean to come across as angry, and I totally admit that my posts are often their own sources of confusion.

I know my posts are sometimes poorly thought out, but if I understand his remark correctly, Jon did just effectively admitted that he doesn't read all of them. So there is potentially that as well creating the confusion.

Not that I would try to argue that anybody should be forced to read a poorly written post. I really like you guys just the way you are, not trying to be contentious here!

I think he was saying nobody read my posts, but it's hard to tell because of his laconic branding.

Yeeeah, it just dawned on me he was probably referring to your posts. Heh.

I read your posts though!

Thanks!

And also, I am sorry.

Just let me know if it's getting to the point where I'm no fun anymore.

I will break up with you long before that point just to preemptively prevent the suffering we will both experience through that experience.

If you did tear yourself away from me, I would cry, but this does not mean I don't love you, I do... that's forever.

You can't do this oblique quotes game, GBK and FGR have it on lockdown.

You're knowledgable enough to have informed opinions, and secure enough to have those opinions challenged, so I don't think you have much to worry about.

I'm one hell of an eternal prison!

Jon, the problem has less to do with me being insecure than it does with being misunderstood by somebody so eager to turn everything into a contest.

For example, just now you failed to pick up the dynamic between myself and Spook. The line you quoted was me spouting literal non-sense directly from a Crosby Stills and Nash song.

I don't mean to sound defensive or contentious here, because I really do admire you for your knowledge and seriousness of mind, but you know sometimes you come off as kind as pretty abrasive.

I am honestly (no sarcasm intended) sorry for wasting your time (because I respect you a lot!) and I am also saddened to have earned your scorn, but I really think you are taking this all way too seriously.