Your cartoon example isn’t even remotely equivalent to the reality Putin is in. He went in expecting to take Kyiv in a week with minimal resistance and no serious Western response. Even in his worst-case planning, he didn’t prepare for what he’s in now. The point where he could have cut his losses passed long ago - he’s gone all in, and now the West is calling his bluff.

Put yourself in his position and look at the “solution” being offered: withdraw all troops, surrender the little territory you’ve gained, and face the full weight of everything you’ve gambled and lost. The alternative? Keep throwing whatever you have left at the problem and hope for a miracle.

Given he’s likely only got another decade or so left to live, there’s no personal incentive to fold now. He has nothing more to lose - he’s not just going to walk away.

I’m not defending Putin’s actions - I’m assessing the realistic options given the current situation. There’s a difference between what should happen in a moral sense and what is actually likely to happen in the real world.

Saying “he should accept the consequences” is easy - but how exactly do you propose making that happen? Wishing for an outcome is not the same as having a way to it. If you think there’s a viable way to get Putin to take personal responsibility or withdraw and survive it personally, I’m genuinely interested in hearing what you think that looks like in practice.

I don’t see a conflict here but I’m happy to explain if you elaborate on what’s confusing about what I said.

Nobody claimed it was a reliable source. However, the fact is that people use it to answer questions anyway - and in cases like this, I think it’s good to let people know where you got the info so they can take it with a grain of salt. The same applies to your friend Kevin, who’s just as likely to confidently spread false info as the truth.

I don’t think that shaming people for using chatGPT is useful. They’re not going to stop using it - they’ll just not tell about it then which is worse.

There’s nothing wrong with asking chatGPT and you should mention it as the source for your information. It’s far better than the alternative where people omit this information because of online bullies.

Nothing I’ve said is in any way defending the invasion.

In my opinion? Well obviously yeah. That just doesn’t have anything to do with the topic at hand.

Russia has attacked my country in the past as well, and I have zero sympathy for their cause. But that doesn’t stop me from imagining the situation from their perspective. “Just ending the invasion” isn’t a survivable option if you’re Putin. No matter how unjust it’s been, the only imaginable way out is to somehow let him “save face" what ever that means in this situation.

Build your enemy a golden bridge to retreat across.

• Sun Tzu

Explanation is not excuse. This has absolutely nothing to do with justifying anything they’ve done.

If a person climbs onto a stage to make a statement, and instead of getting on stage to make a counterpoint someone just shouts “booo” from the audience, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand that person to show their face. There’s a certain level of cowardice in simply downvoting without explaining why you disagree. There’s no option to post anonymously here, so it’s not obvious to me that voting should be anonymous either. If people upvote or downvote, they should be willing to stand behind that - and if someone asks for an explanation, you have three choices: ignore them, block them, or explain. I guess there’s also the option to simply not vote at all.

If it were up to me, I’d hide vote counts from users entirely. It’s not all bad, but I’d argue the net effect is negative. Visible votes encourages toxic behavior. When someone makes a controversial claim, you can first downvote them, then dunk on them in a reply - and now they’re being downvoted into oblivion while you get applause for your smug comment. It feels like you’ve won the debate when in reality, nobody’s mind changed. Heavily downvoted comments also prime readers to dislike them before they even read them, instead of approaching with a neutral mindset and then forming their own opinion - or reading further to see other perspectives. As it stands, the system mostly trains people to recognize what’s popular on a platform so they can self-censor to avoid downvotes, and feel validated for shouting down people who voice unpopular opinions.

So, if someone asks me to explain why I downvoted something, I might explain or I might not - but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to ask. On the other hand, if someone makes it their personal mission to follow me around and harass me because I downvoted their comment, I think it’s unreasonable to demand the system be changed just so I don’t have to deal with it. There’s already a solution for that: blocking them.

Thank you!

No, I haven’t - I’m a plumber by training. I credit my autism for my precision of speech, and as for my philosophy and the vocabulary around it, I’d say that’s simply the result of a few decades of debating these topics online, combined with thousands of hours of podcasts and YouTube videos covering these topics.

It’s rare that I say anything completely original. If something I say comes across as well-crafted, it’s probably because I’ve said the exact same thing a dozen times before.

There’s no real cost to stopping drunk driving. Putin, on the other hand, has gone all in on the war in Ukraine. “Just pull your troops from Ukraine” is about as realistic as “just shoot yourself,” because from his perspective, the outcome is basically the same in both scenarios.

Sure, it would be nice if Russia simply left Ukraine, but put yourself in Putin’s position - it’s a complete non-solution. You don’t fold after going all in. It’s an incredibly naive thing to say, and it ignores the reality and complexity of the situation entirely. It’s a thought-terminating cliché - a feel-good slogan people toss around to avoid critical thinking, while fishing for upvotes from like-minded people.

“You might not be that intelligent” isn’t the counter argument you might think it is.

You misrepresented what OP said. Plain and simple. That’s what I’m calling you out on.

You’re not accurately representing what they said.

this could easily be solved.
Russia go home. Leave Ukraine.

…is on par with telling people to “get a higher-paying job” to fix their finances or “just get friends” to solve loneliness. I don’t downvote a comment like this because it wouldn’t solve the issue, but because the proposed “solution” is completely out of touch with reality.

Good rule of thumb for online discussion: if someone offers a simple solution to a complex problem, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about.

If someone starts to harrass you due to your voting habits (which I’ve never heard of happening) you can just block them and move on with your life. The difference between someone saying mean things to you and someone writing them is that you can just stop reading.

The question was about what you want to do - not what would have the biggest impact or look best on your resume.

That’s not what they mean by “happiness” when they say Finland is the happiest country in the world. It’s more about overall life satisfaction and I can assure you that this isn’t achieveable by drugs alone.

I’d start a gay gym with pool, spa, sauna, bar etc. I’m talking about the kind of place where you will see obscenities.

EDIT: These threads always make me lose my faith with humanity as I read people share their violent and sadistic fantasies.

You can literally look up these videos on google. It’s not even illegal in many countries. There’s a famous case in Finland of a guy who snuck on a farm at night to fuck pigs and if my memory serves, the only thing he got charged with was illegal entry.

Interesting fact about this case: the mushroom in question, Amanita Phalloides is responsible for 90% of mushroom related deaths in the world.

Also, what “news” site is this? Kinda sus coming from a brand new account as well.

Buddhists probably had figured out a lot of things about the workings of the human mind way before science did.