Those were after Germany's defeat, and those put on trial were no longer active combatants.
I'm pretty sure no military in history has ever delayed taking out an active threat in order to conduct legal proceedings. They don't need to, because enemy combatants don't have to be guilty of any crimes to be valid targets under IHL.
I guess I get both effects. Every now and then there is a post about something I'm actually expert in and the standard of the comments sometimes shocks me. It's hard to connect the two experiences.
It’s hard to believe that so recently, “serious” people would fund research of literal mumbo jumbo. By all means, the 90s was a different time epistemologically.
We aren’t immune to this today, far from it, though the hoaxes have become way more believable in my assessment.
It appears this was actually authorized by Congress.
“ In the FY 1991 Defense Authorization Act,
the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was identified as executive
agent for initiating a new program to investigate
parapsychological/ anomalous phenomena. A funding level of $2
million was authorized for DIA to undertake specific research and
other activities relative to this activity. Objectives of this
authorization were to enable a systematic and scientifically
sound approach to the R&D effort, to permit wider and more
systematic review of potential intelligence applications, and to
assess foreign developments in this area.”
It was taken serious enough to be funded for two decades starting in the 70s. Eventually it was terminated when the strategic pressure eased.
AIR was commissioned to look at the research and says in this [1]
“A three-component program involving basic research, operations, and foreign assessment has been in place for some time… beginning in the 1970s, it has conducted a program intended to investigate the application of one paranormal phenomenon — remote viewing, or the ability to describe locations one has not visited.”
“The AIR review found that remote viewing produced occasional hits that were statistically better than chance, but it remains unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to paranormal phenomena, and the laboratory conditions under which effects were seen do not generalize to real intelligence problems. The information provided by remote viewing was judged vague and ambiguous, making it difficult or impossible for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality and accuracy for actionable intelligence.”
Yeah pretty much this unfortunately. Imagine some person tasked and genuinely interested in helping the united states but they do it all with subterfuge which backfires more than it helps anything. Such a person must experience a lot of cognitive dissonance and would generally be susceptible to conspiracy theories such as this which only reinforces the cycle of meddling.
Another element that is ignored in all of this is: How much of this is really intended to be genuine research? The CIA is an intelligence agency, and misdirection is part of counter-intelligence.
Putting legitimate resources into a phony cause could be an effective way of leading an enemy astray, if you know they are intercepting or replicating the same research you're doing (or if you happen to " leak " details to them).
Congratulations, you're the new head of the Department of War. It's Day 1 in your new role.
An admiral walks in and sits down and tells you that he'd like some money to research some unidentified aircraft that are buzzing US Navy pilots. Shaped like "tic tacs", that seem to defy physical laws - they accelerate incredibly fast and seem to be able to move between air and water without damaging their structure, even at high-speed. They've been caught on camera multiple times, and pilots don't know what to make of them.
You ask what is this "mumbo jumbo", and whether he is "serious". He points out to you that if these aircraft are Russian or Chinese in origin, given there is no defence against them, they pose a major threat to national security and your refusal to take them seriously will not bode well for you in the annals of time if they do turn out to be a threat.
You agree to funding a small program to research further.
Then an Army General walks in. He wants $2m for a program to research "remote viewing" and "psychokinesis". You sit in awe as he explains: multiple independent laboratories have been able to conduct experiments that show Extra-Sensory Perception, Remote Viewing and Psychokinesis may be real despite not being explained by any current physical model. There is intelligence to suggest that Chinese and Russian militaries are investing in these techniques and the US military is not able to defend against them if they're real and exploited by adversaries, or for the USA to exploit them either, because they have no understanding of them.
You hand wave it away as "mumbo jumbo" and state this is not the work of "serious people". You demand a physical model to explain it before you invest.
You are reminded that there is no single physical model that explains the entirety of how an aircraft wing works, or how anaesthetics work, and that the only way such models are created is through scientific investigation. If after spending the $2m they're able to show such claims are baseless, that is a null result that has value in that it shows the Russians and Chinese are also not a threat to US National Security.
You are reminded that such techniques may pose a major threat to national security and your refusal to take them seriously will not bode well for you in the annals of time if they do turn out to be a threat.
You agree to funding a small program to research further.
And on it goes. It's Occam's razor - if you commit to the scientific method, you have to commit to it. If you are concerned there is a science and technology that others have and you don't, you need to figure out if there is value in you being able to obtain that science or technology, even if it sounds like "mumbo jumbo" today.
These weren't idiots, they weren't corrupt, they were asking for tiny slithers of money to figure out if Western Civilisation was about to collapse into the hands of a few people who asked more questions.
I'm not sure it's changed that much. Look at the work around the em drive. Or fusion power for that matter. I'm not saying we shouldn't be researching fusion, but all the fusion "startups" are essentially jokes, or more charitably, monuments to the unwarranted hubris of investment capital.
The Tylenol thing is one of the least crazy things he has believed in, at least it had some initial studies suggesting it. There’s no science at all in most of his beliefs.
It's perfectly rational to allocate a bit of money towards investigating unlikely phenomenon. In this case, it started around the 70s and it was believed that the Soviet Union was also doing research into paranormal effects, so even if people were skeptical it seems prudent to allocate funds and research if there's anything there.
I agree with you, except the "fair and square" part.
Can we please stop pretending there's any fairness to any of it? That the reward is proportional to merit, effort, strength of character, utility, or any respectable and desirable quality? That everyone was on equal footing when trying to succeed?
You really do put it in perspective when you look at it closer like that.
It never was fair.
Tens of millions of boomers, if they could even get paying work during rampant inflation & recession, still had to work minimum-wage jobs for many years at rates like $2 per hour. With constant overtime or they wouldn't be able to make ends meet or have any kind of home equity now. Many for more than a decade before anything resembling recovery was on the horizon.
Most are still not homeowners and those that are, very few have it paid off completely even if they have been there more than 30 years.
The cool thing is that millions of others were in better positions, avoided the massive layoffs, and actually weren't dragged down as far by the predatory financial policies of the time. And there are whole neighborhoods of them today where it's still a free enough country where you often get to witness their eventual stately homes and selection bias where this kind of good fortune finally arrived after all this time.
In case not everyone remembers, the "great recession" of the 21st century was a nothingburger by comparison.
Do you seriously expect middle aged people to not have like double or more in savings compared to young people? I think you need to do some calculations...
We may not all be on equal footing, but life is a game of skill and chance. It's easy to look at some people who, for example, made money from buying a house, while forgetting all those who didn't actually gain anything. Playing by the same rules is what makes it fair.
If you want to cry about something unfair, cry about inflation. It makes all the supposed "wealth" figures go up as everyone gets poorer. That sure isn't fair. It might be unavoidable at this late stage in our societal decay, but that is hardly any consolation.
Ah, you’re determined to believe that everyone is playing by the same rules.
Carry on. You need that to live.
Unfortunately that very belief is perpetuating the issue you’re complaining about, but your worldview may very well hinge on you not making the connection.
We generally do play by the same rules in life. No system of rules is going to be perfect, but we have basically the most fair system in the world.
>Unfortunately that very belief is perpetuating the issue you’re complaining about, but your worldview may very well hinge on you not making the connection.
We just have different beliefs about what makes a thing fair. I think your worldview depends on tearing down the foundations of civilization, and I would like for you and everyone like you to recognize it sooner rather than later.
With a functional government, antitrust enforcement would prevent a single company from driving economy-wide price inflation out of an attempt to starve its competition. Since we don't have a functional government, we'll ungracefully take this up the ass.
I'm not blaming them. It's really frustrating that old people are taken advantage of. We shouldn't need to be so cynical. This isn't the star trek future we were promised.
Edit: It's similarly frustrating about the zoomers. Parents are derelict of duty by not defending their kids and preparing them for the world they are in.
Sci-fi will never materialize. But the ones passionate about it are so desperate for the faux future that they won't be able to tell when they're being duped.
Just wait until the next great collapse, a disaster big enough to force change. Hopefully we'll have the right ideas lying around at the time to restructure our social communication system.
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