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I never heard of any of those names you mention (only Nastia I've heard, as it is Russian name really).

Me naming few nations which are greater than your in some aspect does not gives you ground for putting my words against my words. It is clear that all the nations I mention are best in something, in some sphere, you cant really tell "but how there can be so many greatest nations". No, each of them is great in something. If there was a nation, who was the biggest, the most smart, the most influencial, the most cultured, etc, etc, biggest territory, most Noble prize winners overall and percent from population, etc, etc - then yes, then you can say: this nation is number 1 in all demographics categories :) THey have the best GNP, the biggest land, the biggest military, the biggest food, the biggest culture, espionage, trade, commerce, etc, etc - so then this nation must be really the best. And to add to this, in Civ the categories are given number - like 10 or something. In RL, we can have 100's of categories. Do you claim USA are the best in all categories? We have so many and different nations being 1-st in something, that it is not that easy if at all possible to tell which nation is the best.

ANd LOL, you twist in amazingly spectacular way a lot of the things I say. ANd it is really sad I have to say this, but sorry buddy, I really have no time and desire to answer all this :) I know you will feel disappointed, so am I feeling myself.

I think I gave some criterias how the greatness of a given nation can be measured. You added just one measurement - how many Olympic medals given country have. And I never been in the USA, so all the idea I might have about black guys having only these three choices I most probably have from watching Hollywood movies.

I can add lot more and argue each and every point of yours. Like the Vietnam case - who beats who? When Vietnam beat China? Weren't China supporting Vietnam in that war? Like communist buddies? Where you forgot for example Afghanistan. When USA armed and supported the talibans, just to make them powerful enough to seize the control of the country and beat off USSR. But what goes around comes around - some 20 years later the same talibans fight USA soldiers... What about Cuba? USA lost the undeclared war with them and had (have) to still suffer their presence in their backyard?

AS for who really won the cold war, I can say it was the eastern-European countries and the Soviet Republics who rebelled one by one against USSR and put end of the Russian empire. Russia was never invaded or defeated in armed conflict by USA to claim that USA have score over Russia in this. Russia all in all is well and alive, not much of an empire anymore, but that's life, each empire comes to its end eventually.

Waving with hand and saying: because those are only frozen lands these countries own, it does not count. Yes, it does count. If these frozen lands hold more petrol, platinum, aluminum and whatnot more than the lush green USA lands, maybe this counts too? No?

I did not knew that English is not official in USA. Still, it is predominant at least. And is de facto official. Do you have alternative speeches of your president making his oath to serve USA? I dont think so. On which language your laws are written and kept? Is it knowing English requirement to occupy ANY government post? Do you have examples of some congressmen who dont know English? Or it is just coincidence?

But what is most surprising for me is how my initial claim that "Not automatically America=USA and others may feel patronized and find this claim arrogant." to which I think I gave facts and arguments showing that "America" was the name of the continent when it was found and it was called as such even in USA till 1950's so it is a bit egocentric to claim now that only you can call himself American denying this name to the others and they must put some more things to their names to differ from simply "America"... how this became to "Prove us wrong that USA is the greatest country in the world" Will this support the USA claims on the adjective "American"? And I think a lot of people got offended, insulted, feelings hurt, nationalism shining... Why don't we all try to broaden our knowledge and point of view? "I know that I know nothing" is fundamental. Every intelligent human must start from this and build up. :)
 
@Sommers: You came up with the great objective criteria to judge what is the "greatest nation in the word" by civ-like score of GNP, science output, olympic medals, land and such. All these criteria can be also applied to US states - so please do tell us which is the greatest State of the Union?
 
Just sorting the nations by life expectancy and claiming Japan is the greatest country in world is just plain silly.
:confused: Who did that? Did I do that? When did I "sort the nations by life expectancy and claim Japan is the greatest country in world"? What are you talking about? Or is this just another strawman hypothetical?;)
:lmao::lmao::lmao:
Seriously, man! This is rich! You calling on someone else for logical fallacy? I would also suggest checking what straw man means before next time you want to accuse me of building one. Straw man would require that I would claim your position to be something that it's not. It would be rather clear also that this is not case with this comment if you'd bother to actually include the context in the quotes you take instead of cherry picking individual sentences or even partial sentences to get something you think you can attack on. In this case it would have been enough to include just the previous sentence. See below with explanation.

E.g. if politicians try to look into ways to improve their country's average life expectancy it makes sense to to sort out nations based on life expectancy and investigate what the say top ten nations are doing better than their nation. Just sorting the nations by life expectancy and claiming Japan is the greatest country in world is just plain silly.
What I was saying is that if data is needed for some practical purpose, getting it and sorting it is a very sensible thing to do. However, if you do it just for bragging rights I think its just stupid. Understand now? Yes, I used an example. I tend to do that a lot. But an example is not a straw man. Let me give you an example of a real straw man:

That is why I am speculating that your claim that you find this pointless and silly to be just a rhetorical tactic. You are opposed to the notion that the US is the greatest nation (like 2metra ;)) but unlike 2metra, you are unwilling/unable to just say who you think is greater... probably because you never thought about it. All you know is that the whole "US #1!!!" thing irritates you and so you are arguing tooth and nail aginst it, but when I ask you "OK then who is the greatest?" you say... "Oh you can't tell that... it's too complicated... too many variables... no way to measure that" :smug:

What:confused:?? You just said US isn't the greatest, so either that was just a typical emotional anti-US knee-jerk "US is the evil empire:evil:" response, or you have some evidence/statistics/measurements etc to back that up?
This is how a real straw man looks like. You are making a presumption that I am on a typical anti-US crusade and then you attack my supposed anti-US sentiments without really responding to my actual argument that I find this whole nationalistic my-country-is-better-than-yours crap stupid, sad and detrimental to general progress in the world. If you want to know why, please refer to Yossarian's message. My opinion about nationalism is pretty much the same but he put it in much more eloquently than I could.

Finally! An opinion! So you think China is the greatest huh? ANYONE but the naughty, bad, nasty ol' US, huh ;)? Now before you retreat into equivocation "Oh I didn't mean to say China was the greatest, I just meant in Civ points... yada yada..." I will say that in modern-day based scenarios, (WWI, WWII, 1861 -[post unification], etc) the US usually outscores China in BTS, so I would opine that you are wrong about the Civ scoring system putting China on top :).
I see what you did there. First you ask me to estimate countries by Civ scoring system. When I humour you, you draw parallels between my answer to your pretty objective question with my presumed subjective stance. And to top it off you counter with "Oh, but I didn't mean regular civ scoring system, but the scoring system of these randomly picked mods so you are wrong about that as well." Mods, that I have not even played, BTW. I don't know if in your career this kind of "argumentation" is preferable, but where I come from it is called trolling. And it is rude.
 
My personal subjective opinion is that the world would be a lot better off if people viewed everyone equally without consideration of nationhood or citizenship, and it's way too easy to make that mental leap from "best country" to "best people". Extreme nationalism brings few benefits and a ton of problems. It can be fun to joke about "I'm the best because I belong to this nation" but if you actually and truly believe that, it has potential to lead down a very dark path. Obviously world wars and genocides are the most extreme examples, but I see consequences of this every day working with undocumented women and children.
:agree: This.
The thing that currently really scares me about nationalism is that at least in Europe it seems to be on the rise, and not even in its mildest form. Think about Greece or Hungary for example. And I do not take any pride in the fact that even in Finland the biggest winner in last parliamental elections was a populistic nationalist party (Perussuomalaiset) who basically got biggest increase in seats with anti-EU stance and anti-immigration rethoric just shy of blatant racism. I am honestly afraid that we have yet to see the worst that the first half of 21st century has to offer us.
 
:agree: This.
The thing that currently really scares me about nationalism is that at least in Europe it seems to be on the rise, and not even in its mildest form. Think about Greece or Hungary for example. And I do not take any pride in the fact that even in Finland the biggest winner in last parliamental elections was a populistic nationalist party (Perussuomalaiset) who basically got biggest increase in seats with anti-EU stance and anti-immigration rethoric just shy of blatant racism. I am honestly afraid that we have yet to see the worst that the first half of 21st century has to offer us.

:agree: with Yossarian and Aivoturso. Discussion what is "the greatest country" or "the greatest nation" are silly at best, but can also lead to dangerous convictions the certain people are better or have more rights than others that have already cost millions of lifes :(
 
@Sommers: You came up with the great objective criteria to judge what is the "greatest nation in the word" by civ-like score of GNP, science output, olympic medals, land and such. All these criteria can be also applied to US states - so please do tell us which is the greatest State of the Union?
California...

I havent read anything past this post yet but I can see a direct question posed to me (in BOLD no less:lol:)... and unlike some ;), who moan that there is no debate and then hide from it, I won't run or hide from it...
 
OK finished reading the rest...

I entered this debate witht eh explicit statement that I was talking primarily to 2metra, precisely because I knew he wouldn't get hurt feelings over a fun, trivial argument such as this, so now I see 2metra is basically saying he's too busy to really debate this with me so I just have to SMH :nope: @ Aivo accusing me of trolling and being rude etc :rolleyes: when I said from the beginning that you should not engage with me if you're getting insulted or hurt feelings over this. It was meant to be fun.

So to re-cap
1. 2metra is too busy and can't be bothered debating this with me
2. Aivo is insulted and thinks I'm trolling and rude
3. Maga clearly wants to change the subject, very, very, badly
4. And now for the umpteenth time, people are replaying that tired old "Sommers is gonna start the next holocaust with this discussion" song again ::sad:

OK... Well Maga, I answered your question.:)
 
BTW, how bad are mosquitos in summer in the northern parts of Norway? (above Stavanger). Read some scary reports ;)

The mosquitos are pretty heavy this year. No idea why. So if you're easily bitten, then you should pack some anti-mosquito remedy. I'm lucky that they dislike me, so I'm very rarely bitten thankfully. :)
 
California...

I havent read anything past this post yet but I can see a direct question posed to me (in BOLD no less:lol:)... and unlike some ;), who moan that there is no debate and then hide from it, I won't run or hide from it...

:lol: Since it seems that at least half US-born on our team live in California, that is probably the safest answer :goodjob:

Anyway, I would try :devil:: Cav, do you agree that California is the greatest of US states?
 
Isn't cav from California?

Dunno ... If Sommers is the only non-California based US-born then I loose my case :(

EDIT: Sorry, forgot about at least Regent. Oops.

SO all US born here agree California is the greatest of US States? I thought we had some Mitt Romney voters here, too? :confused:
 
I said not that I cant be bothered, but that I have no time to proper answer all the nuances and arguments, which will of course lead to slow and not-full experience debate. :) But I am totally OK for a debate. Despite what we are talking and if we find if theyre is such thing as the greatest nation in the world, as you said very well, no one here have nukes button :D
 
SO all US born here agree California is the greatest of US States? I thought we had some Mitt Romney voters here, too? :confused:
Ha I won't start with that argument (I am biased towards Washington State, after all, but with no real debate facts) but yes, I was a proud Mitt Romney voter (pity he lost :sad: ).

Hell, I was probably the only proud McCain voter on my college campus...
 
and unlike some ;), who moan that there is no debate and then hide from it, I won't run or hide from it...
And yet you do. Maybe I should have bolded my direct question so you wouldn't miss that so conveniently. Here you go sir, now with bolding:

Please, point out where I have stated that specifically USA cannot be the greatest nation in the world.
I really would like you to answer to that. And since you can't find the single message where I have done that, could you also tell me what it is that makes you think that I have anti-USA motives in the discussion?

OK finished reading the rest...

I entered this debate witht eh explicit statement that I was talking primarily to 2metra, precisely because I knew he wouldn't get hurt feelings over a fun, trivial argument such as this, so now I see 2metra is basically saying he's too busy to really debate this with me so I just have to SMH :nope: @ Aivo accusing me of trolling and being rude etc :rolleyes: when I said from the beginning that you should not engage with me if you're getting insulted or hurt feelings over this. It was meant to be fun.
When you use the argument tactics that are basically trolling, I will say it out loud. BTW, what's with the "etc"? Only thing I accused you of is that you use common trolling techinques, which I consider to be rude.

Also I find your "if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen" attitude again misleadin. I entered this discussion by replying to Calis since I agreed with his statement of the ridiculousness of the whole "greatest nation" thing. Do you mean that I shouldn't have done that since you already gave your trolling warning? I did not engage with you in this discussion before you replied to my message. Now before you say it, I do not mean that you shouldn't have replied to me either. I just mean that you are again mis-representing the facts about me deliberately engaging you in a debate when you warend us not to. That's not what happened.

So to re-cap
1. 2metra is too busy and can't be bothered debating this with me
2. Aivo is insulted and thinks I'm trolling and rude
3. Maga clearly wants to change the subject, very, very, badly
4. And now for the umpteenth time, people are replaying that tired old "Sommers is gonna start the next holocaust with this discussion" song again ::sad:

OK... Well Maga, I answered your question.:)
You know, you do not win arguments like you did back in the kindergarten when you were 5 years old. "Since no-one is wants to discuss with me anymore, I win":smug: Doesn't work like that in real world, sir. Well OK, I have to admit that I do not know if it really does in your field. But at least in sciences you actually have to defend your argument instead of driving everyone else away to get your argument accepted.

And now to the specific points.
#2: I do not feel insulted. I never was. This is you again leaping to conclusions. I just pointed out that I find your method of "argumentation" rude and childish. At most I find it mildly irritating when explain my point several times from different angels, only to have you make presumptions of my motives that are just plain wrong and then go off the tangent.
#4: No-one has claimed that you will start a next holocaust. We just ask you and everyone else to be mindful about the fact that nationalism has caused much damage and will do it again if given chance. As an extreme example neither of the World Wars would not have been possible without general nationalistic feelings of the population of several European countries.

Oh, please! These are two totally different discussions. Cultural victory in real life does not happen. Even if you did have three or more cities with legendary culture it does not prompt a victory screen. This part of the discussion was my attempt to lighten up but then you try to make this also about me trying to bash USA, which is not at all what I've been aiming at.
And no the discussions are not seperate, because drat boy said "US already won cultural victory" in response to you saying that US could achieve "greatness" by "winning a diplomatic victory"
Just noticed that I forgot to answer this. The discussions really are separate. I never said anything about USA being able to achieve greatness via "diplomatic victory". I was answering to Cav Scout's question why USA should even listen to "weak" countries opinions. This part of the discussion was never about "greatness" until you tried to force it to be.
 
I said not that I cant be bothered, but that I have no time to proper answer all the nuances and arguments, which will of course lead to slow and not-full experience debate. :) But I am totally OK for a debate. Despite what we are talking and if we find if theyre is such thing as the greatest nation in the world, as you said very well, no one here have nukes button :D
OK good:) so then I will respond to the main point you last made...

I did address very directly your argument that people from the US are arrogant to call themselves "Americans." What I said was that "arrogant, conceited etc" is the same as "confident, sure of themselves, proud etc." The difference is whether the person talking wishes to praise Americans or critisize them. A person who wishes to critisize says "arrogant", while a person who wants to praise says "confident, sure of themselves." Then I gave as an example our US President, who opponents call "arrogant" and supporters call "confident."

Those adjectives can be two sides of the same coin, meaning exactly the same thing just one negative and one positive, depending merely on whether you want to praise the subject or not.

Then I speculated that the reason you were choosing the critisizing tone, was because you felt a Cold War loyalty to USSR/Russia and thus rivalry with the USA. You deny this... OK. So now we are left with the fact that you say "arrogant", US supporters say "confident." Why you wish to critisize USA rather than praise, I can (and have) only speculate. But the fact is that USA being "arrogant" is not relevant IMO because that is just rhetoric, its just a negative adjective that is easily positive depending on which "side" you are on.

That is why I moved on to the "greatness" argument (cavscout started that BTW) which is just as subjective but is more complex and has more data to talk about and it thus more fun :D (at least to me).
 
@ Aivo - I am hesitant to respond... At this point you are calling me a troll, rude, and now childish.:rolleyes: ... but I don't know whether not responding will make it better or worse so...

Ironically, it seems we agree... that you keep making the same argument over and over just saying it a different way... But then when I point that out you call it "trolling"... So I don't know what to say.:confused: I can't re-respond to your same arguments because you call it "trolling" and you aren't making any new ones, so there is almost nothing to respond to. Here is your argument:

1. We can't talk about this because its "dangerous talk" (then you imply, the Nazis, holocaust, nuclear war, genocide, human suffering etc will result from this type of discussion :rolleyes: I'm sure you have heard the saying that an internet discussion is basically over as soon as someone implies something about the Nazis/Hitler etc:p)

2. The topic of national greatness is too complex and subjective to answer, so its silly to discuss and there is no point to even talk about it. However it is not too complex for me to definitively say that USA is not the greatest. Its impossible to say who is greatest, but I know for sure its not the USA. *(see note)

3. :sarcasm: I am a smart science guy and you are a silly, dumb lawyer. Since I have a different (better) science education than you I just have waaay better reasoning skills that are just too smart for you to understand. In science we make real arguments with facts and logic while you non-science dummies just...whatever :rolleyes:. Look! Look! I know what a logical fallacy is:wavey: I'm smart! Your argument is logical fallacy!:run: I win!:smug: - (Sorry that's a little snarky:evil:, I admit, but I have seen people resort to this tactic sooooo many times that it has become so comic to me, I just thought I would poke some fun at it;))

4. Sommers is a rude, childish, troll :rolleyes: (for pointing out that my arguments are repetitive and unpersuasive :dunno:??) - Im not as inclined to respond in detail to any of that as its just name-calling.

And about your last point... *sigh*:sad: ... cavscout entered this discussion by starting the "greatness" debate with the words "the USA is the greatest nation on the planet." If you were responding to cavscout then you were participating in the greatness discussion. Accusing me of "forcing" it is just... well you get the point.

Maybe you just want the last word? :dunno:
 
*(note) - Anyway, here is my response to your question. When cavscout said that USA was the greatest because she can impose her will on anyone, you rejected that saying
Because even USA does not have enough power to impose its will on all of the rest of the world at once? Think about it. USA really was stretching it ... Now imagine that USA foreign policy was to only use military power ... other countries with a capability to lob nuclear weapons back at US). So in the end USA is still ways of from achieving conquest victory ;) IMO, that is a good reason to listen to the opinion of "the weak". Who knows, that could even bring USA a step closer to diplomatic victory :cool:
So that is one example of you arguing why US isn't currently the greatest or can't be considered the greatest. Another thing to note is that the above directly contradicts your statement that
I never said anything about USA being able to achieve greatness via "diplomatic victory".

Here is another:
Nah. Cultural victory requires three cities with legendary culture. USA has at most two, New York and Los Angeles. And even that is debatable since the cities have not been around for very long. Though the cities' culture output are unarguably huge, it takes time to accumulate enough points for victory ;)
dratboy was saying USA was the greatest because of already winning a cultural victory (figuratively of course)... And once again you were quick to jump in arguing that this could not be the case, USA had not established Cultural victory (and thus could not be the greatest).
 
*(note) - Anyway, here is my response to your question. When cavscout said that USA was the greatest because she can impose her will on anyone, you rejected that saying So that is one example of you arguing why US isn't currently the greatest or can't be considered the greatest.
No, I didn't. I only responded when he asked "But why does the opinion of the weak even matter?" That part of the response is just about that. A response to a question why USA should listen to the "opinion of the weak" in its foreign politics. Maybe I should have left out the chit-chat about Civ victories since you seem to draw parallels from Civ scoring / victory system to the real world "greatness". I don't and I didn't think that anyone could actually think that Civ scoring would be applicable to real world. :eek: And the continuation to Dratboys message was again just an attempt to continue the idle chit-chat. Never once did I imply that there was any aspect of greatness about that. I even pointed that out in my last message but apparently you did not bother to read that far or just conveniently ignored that. Since bolding seems to catch your attention, here again is my opinion about Civ scores: Sommers, I do not see any parallel between real world "greatness" and assumed Civ scores or victories. Now that this misunderstaning should be sorted out, can we actually continue the discussion without you trying to blame me on supposed anti-US agenda?
 
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