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by loumaciel 630 days ago
In this analogy, what is water in the real world?
1 comments

Negotiations and treaties.
We are talking about warfare here. Warfare is what happens when negotiations and treaties fail.

War is horrible, but it's sometimes the optimal strategy for independent actors to achieve their objectives.

War is based in basic game-theory.

> Warfare is what happens when negotiations and treaties fail.

In the case of Israel, they are intentionally failing the negotiation part as they commit an active genocide. Their motto has always been "do 10x to your enemy as they've done to you" and at some point it completely fails.

Most other nations don't get this fanatical.

If you're going to clutch pearls about literal war you're missing the point. Anything goes in war... that's the point. The concept of "war crimes" are, again, just part of game-theoretic calculations that agents make when they are deciding what lengths they are willing to go to in order to achieve their goals.

People think war has rules because most wars on television are completely lopsided affairs.

Arguable genocides in war are extremely common in war, and are probably the rule, not the exception. In recent years we've effectively seen an equivalent in the Sri Lankan Civil War, DRC, Darfur, Burma, I could go on. War is fucking terrible, and people should take every reasonable avenue to avoid them.