[pmoriarty]

"In the end, it was education, freedom and efficiency that allowed the west to beat out totalitarian governments."

What about the massive catastrophe that killed off tens of millions in the Soviet Union and devastated the country, while the US was left completely unscathed by comparison?

In many ways education in the Soviet Union was far ahead of the United States, particularly in mathematics.

Women were also far more equal to men in the Soviet Union, so in a way this is an example where there was more freedom in the Soviet Union than in the United States, since the roles for women in the US were far more restrictive and curtailed their potential to a far greater degree. The US was also one of the last countries in the world to outlaw slavery, and the lack of freedom that black people were suffered under segregation in the US had no equal in the Soviet Union at the time (though the USSR also had their own racism and discrimination against Jewish people).

The USSR suffered not just from a lack of freedom, but crucially from the concentration of power in to the hands of a highly paranoid and ruthless elite and secret police who killed tens of millions of their own citizens, along with a callousness towards the deaths of millions more in the redistribution of resources and the overhaul of society in a race towards modernization.

The USSR also had to face the efforts of a far wealthier and equally paranoid adversary that was determined to see it fail.

If there had been cooperation and mutual aid instead, if the USSR had suffered no worse than the US during WW2, and if it hadn't been saddled with bloodthirsty paranoid tyrants for leaders, the outcome might have been quite different.

[4ntonius8lock]

If ... if ... if ... might

3 ifs and one might. Let's see: If my grandmother was male and if she was catholic, she might be the pope. I only had to use two ifs to get to that one.

I'm really not sure what your point is.

Are you seriously arguing that overall there was more freedom in the USSR than in America? I just want to be totally sure I get where you are coming from. Because my post was the general freedom as in the literal definition of it: "the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint"

[pmoriarty]

No. I'm saying it's not black and white, and the post I was replying to was overly simplistic and misleading.

It's interesting that your response was laser focused on freedom and utterly and completely ignored every other point I brought up.

[4ntonius8lock]

I said the greater freedom in America helped it win the cold war. Of course it is more nuanced than that. But that can literally be applied to everything and anything ever said - if someone said being outside jail is good or not being addicted to heroin is good... well its more nuanced... maybe someone would benefit from being in jail or from being a heroin addict... sure, but at some point you aren't really increasing understanding. You are just pedantically noting things that are obvious in a way that detracts from meaningful conversation.

It seemed to me you were arguing against my freedom point by trying to say America wasn't much more free than USSR. Since such a position seems so utterly disconnected from reality and history, I asked you to clarify your position, maybe I misunderstood.

I also asked what your point was, since I honestly can't see what you are trying to get at in the context of the conversation: should the US have more anti-freedom ML technology applied to mass surveillance and social control? Do you think that will help? Read the FA and opine, I'd be happy to hear a smart analysis. You seem to be able to do that, you seem quite smart. But picking at the edges of arguments without actually participating is kinda... detracting from the goal of conversation and moving towards ego boosting.

Also, even if you are smart, if I understood correctly that you honestly believe the USSR to be more free than the US in any significant manner based on the definition of freedom, then I'm not going to participate in this line of thought.

I've had a conversation once with someone I had just met. He mentioned 'dinosaur bones were placed there by the devil to trick us'. I asked if he meant it. With a straight face he said yes. You could say I laser focused on that, because after it, I never went beyond 'hows the weather' with him. He has every right to see it that way, I and many others have every right to think of him as slightly less 'there' and therefore avoid getting tangled with what we see as incoherent.