Pseudohistory

You can also pull it off if you are well informed.



Well, now you have.



What is it about me being right that bothers you so much?

You can even question the limits of falsifiability by considering how there are non-falsifiable forms of theory that are also elucidating analytically without being falsifiable.

Popper used Marxian class analysis as a negative example of tautological theory that could never be falsified and always worked to explain any story in the newspaper for the armchair sociologist who liked to interpret everything through the lens of class-conflict.

Marxian class theory may not be falsifiable in the way that Einstein's theory of curved space were, but that doesn't mean that it was completely devoid of explanatory value. It is possible, therefore, to have non-falsifiable theories that aren't worthless. You just should keep in mind that they're not falsifiable and thus that they are interpretive/analytical lenses and not testable propositions.

There's more to making sense of the universe than coming up with falsifiable theory, in other words.

As such, you can falsify falsificationism by showing that it is treated as a tautology that all theory must be falsifiable in order to hold any heuristic value.

It makes it impossible to have an intelligent conversation with you. Your bombastic, godlike pronouncements get in the way of anyone who wants to have a real discussion on any topic of death.

I am using "falsifiability" as one of the factors that distinguishes testable facts from opinions.

I am not sure what you are getting at. There are opinions that are worth discussing.
They aren't facts.

The fact that I'm right does not prevent anyone from having an intelligent conversation with me.

If you find one of my claims questionable, challenge the claim and ask me to support it.

If you think you can make a case that I'm wrong, make your case.

You can't follow the conversation, rather.

I won't call this pseudo-history, because you're not willfully lying. But you do display ignorance, something from which all of us suffer, and which can be cured.

In 1895, Japan went to war with China in the First Sino-Japanese War. They took the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan. In 1904-05, Japan fought the Russian empire over their territorial ambitions in Manchuria. In 1911, Japan invaded and overran Korea, something they had been trying to do for centuries. In 1931, using a manufactured incident, Japan invaded Manchuria. In 1937, they invaded the rest of China in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Early in that brutal war, they committed one of their most brutal acts, the rape of Nanking. There was an American gunboat in the river there, U.S.S. Panay. The vessel's crew had painted huge American flag on the fantail, but in their arrogance and hubris, the Imperial Navy bombed Panay. Two American seamen were killed, and 43 sailors and civilians on other ships were wounded. The Japanese issued a public apology (very humiliating for them), and paid reparations.

Japan announced their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940. It was a cover for their imperialist ambitions in Asia. On the night of November 11-12, 1940, aircraft from a Royal Navy carrier attacked the main Italian naval base at Taranto in southern Italy. It was more or less a spur of the moment attack, with no long term planning, but it nevertheless sank one Italian battleship, and damaged several cruisers and destroyers. The event sent shock waves through naval staffs around the world. In mid-November 1940, Admiral Yamamoto, the senior naval officer afloat and the most highly respected military figure in Japan, told his chief of staff to begin planning an attack on Hawaii. In January, 1941, he appointed Lt. Commander Genda as planning officer for the operation. Genda asked that his military patron, Lt. Command Fuchida, be appointed to the operation. Yamamoto promoted Fuchida to Commander, so that he outranked the air wing commanders on the other carriers and appointed him training officer.

Why was Yamamoto doing this? By 1939, the Imperial General Staff had realized that even with American scrap metal and petroleum (something they could not count on), they would need more resources to conquer China. They began planning dozens of operations which were informally known as the Southern Operation. The eventual purpose was to take over the Netherlands East Indies, which was rich in metal ore and petroleum. Along the way, they would need to take out the Philippines, Hong Kong, British Borneo and Malaysia. Yamamoto understood that attacking the United States was tantamount to suicide, but he was a loyal officer who intended to do his best. That meant destroying or at least crippling the American Pacifi Fleet. Over the objections of the Imperial General Staff, he allocated all six of Japan's heavy carriers to the Hawaii operation. We were lucky. By seniority, a battleship admiral, Nagumo, was appointed to command the First Air Fleet. Having pulled off the attack with negligible losses, he decided to get out while the getting was good. Genda and Fuchida pleaded with him to make at least one more attack, but he wouldn't listen.

There would have been no building of a relationship based on trust and justice.

Ignorance is what you rely on. You don't lie, but you deliberately leave things out that make your own country look bad.

It was typical that your first post was about the treatment of your own indigenous population, railing about how they'd been portrayed as whiter than white, conveniently ignoring the false narrative that you've been spreading about them for centuries.

All Hollywood films prior to the 1970s depicted them as bloodthirsty savages, but you don't mention that.

You do the same here, your starting point is 1895, so you can depict the Japanese as aggressors and yourselves as innocent do-gooders. If instead of 1895 you'd taken 1853 as your starting point it would Commodore Perry sailing American gunboats into Japan demanding trade concessions. Then America doesn't look quite as squeaky clean as you'd like us to think.

You do this all the time, miss out facts that don't fit in with your own particular narrative. Not exactly pseudohistory, but every bit as sneaky and dishonest.

As usual, you're just puking up delusional blab--in fact, British and French warships joined in the effort to open Japan to trade. Are you seriously so addicted to attempting to pick fights with me that you would allege Commodore Perry's actions lead to the Pearl Harbor attack? Wait, wait . . . let me put on my tinfoil hat . . .

Oh, I see . . . you're pissed because of what I wrote about "King Arthur," but you won't take that on, because, as usual, you're so pathetically ignorant and un-informed. Gotcha . . .

I'm not in denial about the crimes of the British Empire. That's the difference between me and you.

You're really out of ideas if you're alleging that I'm saying Pearl Harbor was a direct result of Perry's actions. I said no such thing which is why you needed to make stuff up to argue about.

You were trying to make out that America had done nothing to upset the Japanese, but that clearly wasn't the case. Perry is an example of American aggression in the region, one that you conveniently left out.

You did the same on another thread about the ME. After I'd told another poster that Britain and France carved up the Ottoman Empire you jumped straight in there going on about Churchill and perfidious Albion.

You conveniently left out how America had also benefitted from the oil rich Gulf States, took a leading role in the coup in Iran that deposed a democratically elected government, and still props up nasty dictators in the region. Then there's the sneaky deal with the Saudis to create the petrodollar.

Your approach has always been highly selective, constantly leaving out anything that makes America look bad.

If you were interested in the whole truth and not just bits of it, I wouldn't have to pick a fight with you.

Now you're making up more stuff. I've never claimed Arthur was anything other than mythical even though I've visited his grave.

You're so full of poop, I can smell it from this side of the pond. You are so confused that you don't even see your own stupidity. You don't believe in "King Arthur," but then you say you've visited his grave. You crack me up. As usual, you use your scatter gun rhetorical method, throwing as many accusations as you can in the hope that something sticks. You're still pissed because Linkat and I skewered you in the thread about Kobe Bryant. Poor Izzy . . .

His grave exists, it's a bloody tourist attraction. When I take people to Glastonbury I don't miss out the bits that are mythical, there's no fun in that.



You can't argue with the point I made, which is that you leave stuff out deliberately, so you go off on a tangent.

You're getting more like Oralloy every day.

No, the alleged grave of the putative "King Arthur" exists. If you're going to play around in a history thread--a subject about which you know almost nothing--then get the methodology right.

Are you getting your "taking the piss" fix here? I've been playing a video game, which is much more interesting that showing what an idiot you are, but I'll try to drop by now and again.

Why don't you point out what I left out in regard to the Japanese attack on Hawaii, Einstein?

Why won't you address the central charge, namely that you deliberately miss out information to make your country look better?

I don't doubt for a second that your account of the attack on Pearl Harbor is fairly comprehensive because Japan is the aggressor and America the victim. It's only when it's the other way round that you miss things out, or ignore them completely.

I know enough to know when you're being dishonest and misleading.

This is you all over, you can't address or accept what I've said you're doing so you change the subject, go off on tangents, throw out insults, and in this case become anally pedantic.

I won't minimize the bad acts of Japan. But they only reluctantly had much to do with western powers until bullied into it. They may have settled into a working relationship after that, but they had to recognize that the west was no more trustworthy than anybody else. My remark was off the mark, but all of the adventurism of the west throughout the early era and actually into the present makes us no better. A government's actions ought to be aimed to defuse rather than exacerbate potential wars.

Throw out insults . . . that's rich coming from you.