The Glade 4.0

I don't need to note that. He didn't specify. In a hypothetical, any change from history not specified is not part of the hypothetical. Furthermore, if the war had not started in 1941, it is unlikely the bomb would be ready in 1945. You can stop fishing for an argument now.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Heheh, all things being equal, there would be no winning a war.
The equal armies would meet equidistant from their homelands and proceed to take equal casualties and losses of materiel. They would proceed to equally destroy each other until there was nothing left, or they quit after seeing the futility of it all. Any true "all things being equal" scenario ends with the same two possibilities. A pointless argument if ever I saw one.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

****!

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Holy shitsnacks!

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

That condition is documented at least as far back as the Roman Legions, BC.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Since there still appears to be some confusion, I will provide assistance.



Really, it's my fault. I had a momentary lapse of judgement, and forgot I was dealing with people who don't like to read posts.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

No, no, no that statement couldn't possibly be true if all things were equal. The US and Japan would have had equal knowledge of the plans for the nuclear attacks and would have prevented each one, equally. It's almost as if you are purposefully ignoring what "all things being equal" really means.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

...

I can assure you that two people in this thread are purposefully ignoring what the only ablative absolute in English does, particularly since it's a specific and deliberate idiom: ceteris paribus. TheRiov's argument assumes that changing the body armor variable doesn't change the outcome on total lives lost. Corolinth's observation -- that TheRiov is basing his argument on a singular variable change with no material change in outcome -- is, not unsurprisingly, both linguistically and procedurally correct.

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It was never my intention to imply that casualties would have remained unchanged. (though I can see how that would be read out of what I typed) I was drawing issue with the headline of the article based on a single variable (the presence of body armor on infantry), that 'millions' could have been saved) I threw one argument at it (that body armor would have reduced deaths from things like artillery, but that in the end in order to win the battle you still have to kill or incapacitate the enemy; or stalemate, which would draw out the battle, possibly resulting in more deaths from other causes) Particularly in amphibious landings, armor wouldn't really have been possible (or would have resulted in vast numbers of more dead from drowning during some operations)

It was never my intention to fully extrapolate the various variables but simply to draw issue with the articles assumption that "Oh, well this or that shell wouldn't have been fatal with this armor! This person would have survived the war!"

I'm beginning to see the problem with this thread. The argument/observation/position currently being challenged is the position in this quote. That's the thread-specific point of contention. I don't have a dog in that race.

The derail, amusingly, is about a peculiar idiomatic expression -- "All things being equal." I do have a horse hitched to that cart, though.

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a phrase I never used, though somehow it got attached to my name....

It got attached the argument I quoted in my previous post. The people using said phrase incorrectly, mind you, are DE and Vindi. The phrase, in point of fact, accurately describes the statement you made. Corolinth pointed this out, not so much as to dispute your position, but to explain the fallacy in the source material and that particular point of challenge by you.

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Care to expound on why you believe I'm using the phrase incorrectly, Khross? I'm quite familiar with caeteris paribus. Corolinth introduced new variables in addition to the introduction of body armor thereby breaking the single independent variable quality needed for a scientific use of caeteris paribus. This lowered the standard of usage to colloquial, rather than formal. My posts were highlighting that fact.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Vindicarre:Seems to me, Corolinth knows exactly what he's talking about ... You're simply hung up on a bit of snark that you can't process relative to the rest of his statement. "All things being equal" is indicates we should engage in situational comparison. What happened, all things being equal, would happen in an identical circumstance. Consequently, TheRiov makes an argument that focuses on "what happened" and "what would have happened if we had body armor." Corolinth's nuke comment indicates that TheRiov is assuming "all things being equal" through multiple comparative axes instead of one.

So, yes, you're misapplying it. You're too hung up on a hanging chad to read the rest of the post.

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You see, Khross, using the parameters that caeteris paribus establishes, the statement:
is an incorrect attempt at using caeteris paribus. The correct usage of "all things being equal" demands that all other things besides the variable in question are held constant. Corolinth is obviously misapplying the phrase, as he is allowing for variables other than the one posed by the OP.

Your fiat declarations are nice and all Khross, you've still not stated why you believe I was misapplying the phrase. In light of the explanation I've given (twice) as to why I am confident Corolinth is incorrect by attempting to change variables other than the one in question, therefor de facto improperly attempting to apply caeteris paribus, I would think you'd have something other than "because I said so".

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko