The Five Year Old Test
Fine, I guess we’re writing more about politics. Hopefully this isn’t a recurring thing.
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A funny quirk of being around some very smart people is that they will sometimes say some very dumb things. One common failure mode is flipping the ‘ethical polarity’ on things — they will say bad things are good and good things are bad. "Actually, more expensive oil is good because…", "Actually, democracy is bad because…", "Actually, death is good because…".
Most of the time, this happens because smart people get so wrapped up in thinking about second and third order effects that they lose sight of the much bigger first order effects. Colloquially, this is called "gigabraining", as in "I can't believe Bob gigabrained himself into thinking that having a happy loving marriage is bad".
Whenever I think someone is reversing polarity on something, I like to ask myself: what would a five year old think? If you asked a five year old "hey, random five year old, is death a good thing?" they would say no, and in fact the answer would be so incredibly obvious that they might wonder what's wrong with you. This is a great way to cut through noise and get back to first principles. It forces you to remind yourself that, hey, the first order effects are actually still the most important thing,
It's important to keep this test in mind when following the news these days, because the people in power are *checks notes* very smart, so they will often say and do very dumb things.
For example, you may hear someone who you think is intelligent say something like "Russia is actually in the right to attack Ukraine, because Ukraine might join NATO and put missiles on the border in self defense. Russia is just defending themselves." Or maybe you might hear them say something like "Ukraine is prolonging this war, they are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths when they could just stop defending themselves". Or something like "Ukraine is taking advantage of the US, and the US should stop providing aid". Or a favorite that I saw recently, "Zelensky should resign because Trump is an unreasonable buffoon and it’s Zelensky’s fault for not catering to him".
It's tough to identify that this is all bullshit, because they manage to make it sound so smart! But luckily you can just apply the test.
If your 5yo saw someone beating up her friend, and you told her something like "don't worry, little Timmy had it coming for trying to make new friends, and honestly if he just took the punches quietly the beating would end sooner", you may think you're being really smart, that you've found some edge case that makes up down. But the kid would instinctively know that you're wrong. The kid would help their friend.
Because subtlety is lost on the Internet, I’ll state the point clearly: Russia could stop the war in Ukraine today if they wanted to. Blaming Ukraine for defending themselves is so obviously wrong, a child would be able to call you out on it.
More generally, if your position on a subject would make for a good caricature on an episode of Arthur, you've gigabrained yourself into saying something really stupid, and it may be worth sitting down and rewatching some of those children's TV shows just to recalibrate. Assuming PBS isn't defunded by then.
The bombers struck by Ukraine were strategic long range aircraft. None of these aircraft were used to bomb Ukraine, certainly not “daily” as you report. The destruction of these bombers will have zero effect on the military actions in the eastern Ukraine region.
That’s a very complicated and oblique way of saying: “I need to study this situation a lot more.”
My advice would be to begin by recalling the nearly finalized agreement which was scuttled by Biden and Boris Johnson. Zelensky could have ignored the advice of these two puppet masters, and that would have been that. Using that as a baseline, play out the next three years, and try to accept that, just as with the invasion of Iraq, the US is not interested in peace. It is interested in war. That’s something even a five year old can see. And Zelensky is maybe more comfortable with that age group, his experience as a ‘Penisist’ being not quite the right background for dealing with a former head of the KGB.