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[Criptfeind]

Did  fenrif just say that 190% of the people have had the leave their homes?

[Jreengus]

Leaving now would be spitting in the face of every person that has died in this war. The families of dead soilders have said that they want the military to stay, so their sons and fathers haven't died in vain. And if we stay, and fix this, they won't have.

Logical fallacy, killing more people wont change the fact that those people are already dead. Value is independent of the price paid.

To quote that joy of joys wikipedia:

Spoiler: The bit the bit we want is referring to. (click to show/hide)

Economists  argue that sunk costs are not taken into account when making rational  decisions. In the case of the movie ticket, the ticket-buyer can choose between the following two end results:

   1. Having paid the price of the ticket and having suffered watching a movie that he does not want to see, or;
   2. Having paid the price of the ticket and having used the time to do something more fun.

And the bit we want:
Loss aversion and the sunk cost fallacy:
Many people have strong misgivings about "wasting" resources. This is called "loss aversion". In the above example involving a non-refundable movie ticket, many people, for example, would feel obliged to go to the movie despite not really wanting to, because doing otherwise would be wasting the ticket price; they feel they passed the point of no return. This is sometimes called the sunk cost fallacy. Economists would label this behavior "irrational": it is inefficient because it misallocates resources by depending on information that is irrelevant to the decision being made. Colloquially, this is known as "throwing good money after bad"

The whole thing is just a small part of the entire Sunk Costs article so it is very focused on the economical aspect but it applies to things like the lives of soldiers as well as it applies to coins.

And no, there is overlap in fenrif's percentages you can't just add them all up to see how many people are affected..

[Criptfeind]

And no, there is overlap in fenrif's percentages you can't just add them all up to see how many people are affected..

It was a joke but I can make a argument that there is no overlap, if they did it for this reason they must not have done it for that reason.

[Jreengus]

Yup, because all decisions I ever make have one (1) reason behind them and never have more than one (1) reason or less than one (1) reason.

[C4lv1n]

Leaving now would be spitting in the face of every person that has died in this war. The families of dead soilders have said that they want the military to stay, so their sons and fathers haven't died in vain. And if we stay, and fix this, they won't have.

Logical fallacy, killing more people wont change the fact that those people are already dead. Value is independent of the price paid.

To quote that joy of joys wikipedia:

Spoiler: The bit the bit we want is referring to. (click to show/hide)

Economists  argue that sunk costs are not taken into account when making rational  decisions. In the case of the movie ticket, the ticket-buyer can choose between the following two end results:

   1. Having paid the price of the ticket and having suffered watching a movie that he does not want to see, or;
   2. Having paid the price of the ticket and having used the time to do something more fun.

And the bit we want:
Loss aversion and the sunk cost fallacy:
Many people have strong misgivings about "wasting" resources. This is called "loss aversion". In the above example involving a non-refundable movie ticket, many people, for example, would feel obliged to go to the movie despite not really wanting to, because doing otherwise would be wasting the ticket price; they feel they passed the point of no return. This is sometimes called the sunk cost fallacy. Economists would label this behavior "irrational": it is inefficient because it misallocates resources by depending on information that is irrelevant to the decision being made. Colloquially, this is known as "throwing good money after bad"

The whole thing is just a small part of the entire Sunk Costs article so it is very focused on the economical aspect but it applies to things like the lives of soldiers as well as it applies to coins.

And no, there is overlap in fenrif's percentages you can't just add them all up to see how many people are affected..

That does not work just as well with the lives of soilders as money. Leaving now and having no one else die would be wasting the lives of all the people that have died. Staying, and having hundereds more die would be spending those lives to save the lives of thousands of people yet to come.

To put it in perspective, what if your father was a soilder, and he went to afganistan, and got killed fighting for those people, and then we decided to leave. Wouldn't you feel like shit, realizing that your dad died for no reason, that nothing will have come of his death? Even if you belive in your loss aversion theroy, you would still feel like shit.

The example above doesn't translate properly to lives. It specificly states "doing something more fun", meaning you still get the same or better benifit (fun), leaving now gives us an immediate benifit (no more soilders die), but many more people will die, and many more will be oppresed, and forced to live in horrible conditions.

And yeah, their conditions suck right now, but think of the conditions of the British, French, and Russians during both world wars, they were as bad as they are in Afganistan now, but now things are better. Right now were fighting a war, when that war is over things will be better. You're assuming that things can never get better, and they always can. We could have easily given up to the Nazis, our soilders would have stopped dieing, but the what would have happend? We'd be living in a place very much like Afganistan will be if we give up now.

[Criptfeind]

Yup, because all decisions I ever make have one (1) reason behind them and never have more than one (1) reason or less than one (1) reason.

No but at lest one of the reasons was the main reason or at the straw that broke the camels back. It sounds dishonest they way he said it, it would be much better to say 20% 20% 20% or some such.

[andrea]

To put it in perspective, what if your father was a soldier, and he went to Afghanistan, and got killed fighting for those people, and then we decided to leave. Wouldn't you feel like shit, realizing that your dad died for no reason, that nothing will have come of his death? Even if you believe in your loss aversion theory, you would still feel like shit.

actually, if my father was a soldier and against the war, I would do whatever I could to withdraw soldiers... there is more than 1 father in the army, more of them that can die while leaving families at home, widows and orphans. while mine is not rational thinking, neither is your. Mine is based on compassion for other people in my country, ignoring people in afganistan, your is based on revenge. Not that I would blame somebody who just lost a father for not thinking rationally...

edit: actually, forget that compassion bit. It is just personal suffering. Still, your argument doesn't hold... not everybody would like a war to continue only because their father died fighting it. I believe there are many people who, for the same reason, would want it to stop.

[C4lv1n]

To put it in perspective, what if your father was a soldier, and he went to Afghanistan, and got killed fighting for those people, and then we decided to leave. Wouldn't you feel like shit, realizing that your dad died for no reason, that nothing will have come of his death? Even if you believe in your loss aversion theory, you would still feel like shit.

actually, if my father was a soldier and against the war, I would do whatever I could to withdraw soldiers... there is more than 1 father in the army, more of them that can die while leaving families at home, widows and orphans. while mine is not rational thinking, neither is your. Mine is based on compassion for other people in my country, ignoring people in afganistan, your is based on revenge. Not that I would blame somebody who just lost a father for not thinking rationally...

edit: actually, forget that compassion bit. It is just personal suffering. Still, your argument doesn't hold... not everybody would like a war to continue only because their father died fighting it. I believe there are many people who, for the same reason, would want it to stop.

I think from your post that you assumed that my father died in this war, and he hasn't but he is in the military, also, I doubt that there is a military family in the entire western world that is againt the war, and if they are, they are probably low ranking, didn't do very well in training, and very young. I've also never heard someone say that they wanted it to stop because a family member died, but I've heard plenty say they want the mission to be completed.

[Jreengus]

Firstly terrible terrible question to ask me of all people, my dad died of cancer about 3 years ago now and I honestly didn't give a shit. Yes I'm seriously screwed up.

Secondly you're falling right into the fallacy once again. Now try to understand this: Those people are dead. All those people with dead parents who want their deaths to mean anything are advocating the death of further fathers.

I'm really having trouble trying to phrase this. I'm not the most eloquent poster on the forums, but please go back look at your post and tell me how it isn't falling right into the fallacy. most notably:

Leaving now and having no one else die would be wasting the lives of all the people that have died. Staying, and having hundereds more die would be spending those lives to save the lives of thousands of people yet to come.

Those people are dead, you can't waste their lives. You can waste the lives of those still living by telling them they have to die because someone else died.

[andrea]

no, I didn't think your father died there, sorry if I wasn't clear. Probably having a father in the army changes the way you are raised and influences your thoughts about situations like, for example, war.
The father example, however, still doesn't work for everybody.it works for families with soldiers, but those are not the ones you are trying to convince. I believe " we stay there for their good" is a far more effective thing to say, if you are speaking to civilians.

[C4lv1n]

Firstly terrible terrible question to ask me of all people, my dad died of cancer about 3 years ago now and I honestly didn't give a shit. Yes I'm seriously screwed up.

Secondly you're falling right into the fallacy once again. Now try to understand this: Those people are dead. All those people with dead parents who want their deaths to mean anything are advocating the death of further fathers.

I'm really having trouble trying to phrase this. I'm not the most eloquent poster on the forums, but please go back look at your post and tell me how it isn't falling right into the fallacy. most notably:

Leaving now and having no one else die would be wasting the lives of all the people that have died. Staying, and having hundereds more die would be spending those lives to save the lives of thousands of people yet to come.

Those people are dead, you can't waste their lives. You can waste the lives of those still living by telling them they have to die because someone else died.

First, instead of your dad let's say it's your mom, brother, sister, uncle, cousin, aunt, cat I don't care. But it should be something you care about.

Second, I'm going to play along with your "Fallacy". Let's say you have this really nice car/house/deck/pool, let's call it "the middle east". Let's say some guy comes and seriously screwes up "the middle east". Now your pissed off, you really liked "the middle east", so you spend one million dollars which we will refer to as "lives" trying to fix the "the middle east". Unfortunetly for you, that isn't enough "lives" to fix "the middle east", but fortunetly you have enough "lives" to get "the middle east" fixed. So what do you do? Leave "the middle east" in a very fucked up state, or spend some more "lives" and fix "the middle east". Of course you're going to spend more "lives", you want "the middle east" fixed don't you? It's not like you don't have the "lives."

If you have no problem thinking of lives in the same way as money, you should understand and agree with what I'm saying.

On a side note, the one million dollar figure is the approximate number of soilders that have died fighing in this war.

Also, andrea, the father example works for everyone not concived via test tube. Can you imagine your father dieing and what that would do to you? Then the example works.

[Cthulhu]

Most well-adjusted people don't think of lives in the same way as money though.  Russia/China/The Stans are a hole you throw soldiers into.  How many times do countries have do this before that sinks in?

[C4lv1n]

I'm not thinking of soilders of lives, I think of them all the same way I think of my father, but Jreengus seems to think of soilders as lives, so I'm putting it in a way he can understand.

[smigenboger]

I'd like to think if a soldier has died, it was their intent, and not specifically the result, that would give them merit. Throwing other people into the grinder, including the enemy, shouldn't add merit to someone who has already died. Remember the enemy is fighting for their perceived just cause too, they aren't just some faceless, chaotic evil mooks, they are the same as our soldiers.

[C4lv1n]

I'd like to think if a soldier has died, it was their intent, and not specifically the result, that would give them merit. Throwing other people into the grinder, including the enemy, shouldn't add merit to someone who has already died. Remember the enemy is fighting for their perceived just cause too, they aren't just some faceless, chaotic evil mooks, they are the same as our soldiers.

I am in totaly agreement, I'm not suggesting throwing a bunch of soilders at the enemy and hoping it works. What I'm suggesting is we send them in just as we are now, with good equipment, intelligence, and support. But even with all that, we know more people are going to die.