What is the value of a navy Veeky Forums?

I see nothing wrong with statement desu. What value does money have? Really nothing, it is just paper. But society as a whole has agreed this is the unit that we provide services for and buy things with.

Because they can destroy your imaginary enemies' navies which prevents the conquest of your imaginary society that your imaginary enemies would otherwise be able to achieve easily, as they wouldn't encounter any military resistance unless you also had an imaginary army but they would probably bring their own imaginary army too

I'm laughing at your non-argument. I cannot argue against a non-argument.

Review Alfred Thayer Mahan

>DUDE NAVY IMPORTANT IN SECURING GLOBAL INFLUENCE.
>Americans think this admiral is a great thinker when Euroniggers have been doing that for quite some time now.

>I don't know what an argument is
Why are you even here?

"Diamonds have values because we value them" is not a reason why we value diamonds. I'll ask again. Why does mankind value diamonds?

>Imaginary Enemies conquer your Imaginary Society
>kill your men and children, rape your women, burn your homes, and salt your earth

well good thing they weren't really our enemies, we just imagined they were

yeah, because men, children, and women are also imaginary. Get it in your head. The concept of a man, a child, or a woman was thought up by some guy that the rest of us chose to believe. Even the concept of rape is just a meaningless interaction that somebody decided was taboo.

Null. It's just rum, sodomy, and the lash

It has industrial purposes.
Before then, its pretty.

Sorry, I though /u/dominican was serious because I forgot to read his name

>industrial purposes
Another imaginary concept. There is no objective of industrialism other than creating things which have no meaning.
>pretty
If by pretty you mean attractive, the concept of attraction was developed by humans and is therefore imaginary

You didn't ask why we value diamonds, you said that there is no reason why diamonds are valuable. I responded that diamonds are valuable because people value them. Asking why we value diamonds is different from asking why diamonds have value, so you are not asking again. If you're not going to be deliberate in the language you use, you should not be making radical claims.

Now, we can say that mankind values diamonds for a number of reasons. They have some practical industrial uses due to their hardness. They're also a historical status symbol and have a lot of aesthetic value.

>Now, we can say that mankind values diamonds for a number of reasons. They have some practical industrial uses due to their hardness. They're also a historical status symbol and have a lot of aesthetic value.
You're spooked out, dude.

I'm not seeing an argument here

seeAnything that mankind 'values' was only given value by somebody who imagined it to have worth. Therefore, diamonds are worthless.

>objects don’t have meaning man
What the fuck are you even talking about?

It's hard to explain dude

Think of a table. A table has no purpose. You may say that a table's purpose is to provide a stable platform for a drink, but what is the purpose of providing a stable platform for a drink? To exert yourself less in accessing your drink? Well what is exertion if you will die anyway? It is nothing. Tables save you exertion but exertion doesn't matter. Tables have no meaning.

>Another imaginary concept. There is no objective of industrialism other than creating things which have no meaning.
Everything we create has meaning to us, that's why we create it. And even if you were to create something with no meaning, it would gain meaning itself from it's lack of meaning.

>If by pretty you mean attractive, the concept of attraction was developed by humans and is therefore imaginary
If it was developed by humans to describe real things, then it's hardly imaginary. It's a descriptor of very real qualities.

>Anything that mankind 'values' was only given value by somebody who imagined it to have worth. Therefore, diamonds are worthless
No, because someone thought it had value therefore it had value. Giving value to something doesn't somehow give it no value, that's almost nonsensical.

>Everything we create has meaning to us, that's why we create it. And even if you were to create something with no meaning, it would gain meaning itself from it's lack of meaning.
No, we give it meaning because we believe that it serves some purpose according to our imaginary beliefs when it really doesn't.

>If it was developed by humans to describe real things, then it's hardly imaginary. It's a descriptor of very real qualities.
Yes it is imaginary. By 'real qualities' do you mean shiny rocks? Shiny rocks were given value by mankind because what the fuck. 100% imaginary value.

>No, because someone thought it had value therefore it had value. Giving value to something doesn't somehow give it no value, that's almost nonsensical.
Value is imaginary. Giving something value is applying an imaginary concept to an object. Somehow you think suddenly it has value. No.

I remember when I first discovered nihilism. I'm sure you'll grow out of it eventually.

Nihilism is imaginary. Any attempt at philosophy incorporates mankind's imaginary concepts and is therefore meaningless.

>No, we give it meaning because we believe that it serves some purpose according to our imaginary beliefs when it really doesn't
Generally it does serve a very real purpose. Going back to diamonds, they hold their value because of their many uses. We need diamonds in order to cut certain substances, that is an undeniably real purpose with a real goal. We have a piece of metal, we need it cut into two, we use the diamonds.

>Yes it is imaginary. By 'real qualities' do you mean shiny rocks? Shiny rocks were given value by mankind because what the fuck. 100% imaginary value.
They were given value because they were shiny, and shiny rocks equated to social status. If you found a shiny rock you were probably the only person in the tribe with a shiny rock, you'd be hot shit. Other people will probably want it because its shiny, so you can trade that rock for food or weapons. Likewise today, if you find a diamond the size of a fist in your backyard, you can buy a helluva lot of food and weapons. It has very real value for there by virtue of the fact that we give it value.

>Value is imaginary. Giving something value is applying an imaginary concept to an object. Somehow you think suddenly it has value. No.
Value isn't imaginary, although the concept of value is imaginary. But that's because all concepts are imaginary until they are actualized. The actualization of the concept of value can be seen in the previous examples I've already explained.

holy shit this is next level right here folks

Define "meaningful" and "meaningless" for me please. Help me to understand.

>Generally it does serve a very real purpose.
A 'real purpose' is an imaginary concept.
>We need diamonds in order to cut certain substances, that is an undeniably real purpose with a real goal. We have a piece of metal, we need it cut into two, we use the diamonds.
What is the object of cutting a piece of metal? To shape the environment in a way which serves our imaginary purpose which could any number of spooky ideas.
>They were given value because they were shiny, and shiny rocks equated to social status
Social status is an imaginary concept. It was likely created by some idiot humanoid sitting on a pile of shiny rocks. Therefore diamonds have no purpose in this sense either.
>all concepts are imaginary until they are actualized
You'll have to explain what you mean by 'actualized'. It's sounding similar to what you said before about diamonds being amounting to social status. 'Actualizing' something is applying the imaginary concept of value to the environment (in this case a shiny rock).

With a Navy you can expand your influence overseas

Haven’t you ever heard of “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves.”

The meaning of the word 'meaningful' is the product of a human's imagination, and has no actuality.
'Meaningless' is a word used to describe concepts which are imagined. You pick up a hammer. It is meaningless. That is, it is man's reshaping of his environment into something which he thinks has a purpose (it might be to hammer nails into a wooden frame), but the hammer has no purpose because hammering in the nail to build the wooden frame produces a wooden frame, and the wooden frame has no purpose. It's a never-ending path of 'progress' which mankind has, alongside religion, declared to be the reason for his being.

Diamonds are valuable because they are beautiful and scarce. Period. Sure there are industrial uses too, but diamonds are plentiful as fuck and can be manufactured now.

>Diamonds are valuable because they are beautiful and scarce
The concept of beauty has been imagined by a human who told his friends. Scarcity implies that materials have purpose (diamonds have more market value than a bucket of sand), but when you realise that trading has no purpose, because 'possession' is an imagined concept, your argument falls to pieces.

>A 'real purpose' is an imaginary concept
It's anchored in reality, which makes it nonimaginary by definition.

>We need diamonds in order to cut certain substances, that is an undeniably real purpose with a real goal. We have a piece of metal, we need it cut into two, we use the diamonds.
Lets not get ahead of ourselves and just stick of diamonds. Now if I have one piece of metal and I want two pieces, for whatever reason, any reason, it could even be the end in and of itself; ie I just want to own two pieces of metal and the purpose of my life will be complete at which point I will kill myself. In such a scenario, where I need that diamond to cut that piece of metal into two for whatever reason, means or end regardless, it could not possibly be said the diamond is valueless. In the scenario where my life's entire purpose is to cut the metal, it could be said that the diamond is infinitely valuable.

>Social status is an imaginary concept. It was likely created by some idiot humanoid sitting on a pile of shiny rocks. Therefore diamonds have no purpose in this sense either.
Social status was not created by a singular person with a lot of shiny rocks. Maybe that singular person found all of those rocks, but what gives him social status is the fact that the other people in society want his rocks. Therefore he did not invent his social status, it was an emergent phenomenon. Later on humans created a concept to model this phenomenon, but the phenomenon itself is very real.

>You'll have to explain what you mean by 'actualized'.
Yes, actualize merely means to bring into reality from the imaginary. The opposite would be conceptualizing something, like in the example I just gave. It is a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg scenario where concepts are actualized and reality is conceptualized in an endless feedback loop. To think of reality and the imaginary as somehow compartmentalized from each other like you are is incorrect.

When we've said valuable, we don't mean the colloquialism "worth very much", we mean having any amount of value >0. It's not an argument as to why diamonds are worth very much, but rather why diamonds are worth anything at all. Even if there was no artificial scarcity of diamonds they would still have some worth, although obviously not as much as they have now.

>It's anchored in reality, which makes it nonimaginary by definition.
Reality is imaginary
>Now if I have one piece of metal and I want two pieces, for whatever reason, any reason, it could even be the end in and of itself; ie I just want to own two pieces of metal and the purpose of my life will be complete at which point I will kill myself. In such a scenario, where I need that diamond to cut that piece of metal into two for whatever reason, means or end regardless, it could not possibly be said the diamond is valueless. In the scenario where my life's entire purpose is to cut the metal, it could be said that the diamond is infinitely valuable.
You could only want two pieces of metal for an imaginary purpose. Say if it was to worship the God of Ions. The God of Ions was imagined by you or another human. Purpose is imaginary.
>Social status was not created by a singular person with a lot of shiny rocks. Maybe that singular person found all of those rocks, but what gives him social status is the fact that the other people in society want his rocks. Therefore he did not invent his social status, it was an emergent phenomenon. Later on humans created a concept to model this phenomenon, but the phenomenon itself is very real.
'Wanting' something is an imaginary concept. If those other people in his society were really thinking their impulse through, they'd realise that there is no reason they want the diamonds, and they'd tell the diamond hoarder to fuck off.
>yes, actualize merely means to bring into reality from the imaginary.
An impossible feat. There is no way of actualizing imaginary concepts because for something to be actual, it has to have purpose.

>Reality is imaginary
Can you justify this? I'm not going to address the rest of this argument because this really seems to be the foundation of everything else we're arguing with here.

Sure.
I think that each of us 'humans' is a stupid animal. As humans, we have reshaped our environment into something that we think accords to our reason for living (the same has been done to our thought processes). We have imagined that we have purpose, and modified our environment to suit this purpose. A car is a product of our imagination (produced maybe in the pursuit of the imaginary concept of wealth). Really, any purpose for life has been imagined by us. If you were convinced that life's purpose was to have a happy family and spend your last days on a golf course with your buddies, for example. The 'happy family' concept has been imagined by somebody and advertised to the rest of us. It is a creation of meaning; a product of the imagination. What follows is that anything created to achieve this purpose is also imaginary. It's hopeless: a entire environment constructed in the pursuit of an imaginary purpose of life.

But when you say that reality is imaginary, are you saying that the actual material environment around is in our head, ala Cartesian scepticism?

No. Everything is perfectly real. It's application is just imaginary.

Its*

But aren't imaginations party of reality? Unless you see them as part of some spiritual realm, in which case I don't know how you could support nihilism.

>But society as a whole has agreed this is the unit that we provide services for and buy things with.

Because America has a huge fucking army to enforce the value of that paper.

>protects your borders
>allows you to project influence far beyond your borders
>protects your trade
>gives you a large advantage over nations with no navies
they are pretty important for nations and to an extant the common people as everyone hear is affect by the state of the navy or navies past

The raging faggot here doesn't understand that everything created have their own values as something beneficial or harmful to themselves or others

So go fuck yourself you pseudo intellectual faggot nigger equivalent of the kid who keep asking why

>misspells "extent" and "here"
>calls someone else a pseud

No. The imagination is part of the human, and the human is separable from reality.

>The raging faggot here doesn't understand that everything created have their own values as something beneficial or harmful to themselves or others
>So go fuck yourself you pseudo intellectual faggot nigger equivalent of the kid who keep asking why
wew

Protecting the shipping lanes of the world from criminal and national piracy.

in an age of rockets and jet air-planes navy is obsolete

>It is your obligation to world peace to put down a terrorist movement in a heavily populated country
>hit terrorist positions with Jdam bombs and ballistic missiles, killing more civilians that terrorists
No.
>send a flotilla with soldiers on board to said country
>land soldiers in country and conduct sweeps of terrorist positions, saving civilians' lives that would otherwise be taken
Yes.

various strategic values and fleet in being

>convoy everything
>????
>navy completely nullified
boat cucks btfo

entirely true but tragically impossible

yeah how the fuck is it impossible

Sending soldiers abroad is also done with planes. Especially if you occupy a landlocked nation like Afghanistan.

value is only based on being able to tell other people what to do, as long as we are social creatures there will always be people pushing themselves to the top by assigning what is and what is not valuable

You're assuming that value can be real. What I'm saying is that value is some abstract concept that mankind has created.

>rape is meaningless interjection
PEAK POST MODERNISM
None just give all coastal land to your vassals and let them build up a fleet

>not getting there with landshups

>rape is meaningless interjection
>PEAK POST MODERNISM
Are you trying to disregard my idea by associating it with post-modernism and its adherents

value is real even if it is an abstract concept. without value you have primitive society, so the physical manifestation of value must be fairly extensive. a hut has value because it keeps man maybe dry and maybe warm. a hut makes man want to make babies. making babies makes man want to make a hut that keeps him more definitely dry and more definitely warm.

i dunno man, read descartes 2nd discourse

>this thread
"& Humanities" was a mistake

>ww2 was won by a navy
howling

>Why does mankind value diamonds?
because they're good at cutting things and many people think they're enjoyable to look at

navy =/= naval trade power >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> shitty landcucks

There is no reason to cut diamonds though, other than building on our imaginary civilisation. As for the 'enjoyable to look at', the concept of beauty, if that's what diamonds have, is also imaginary (created by mankind in his attempt to make sense of the environment).

>value is real even if it is an abstract concept
No, it isn't. The concept of value is no more real than the concept of flying dragons which we have also imagined. Basically, everything which is a product of mankind's purposeless history in this environment is imaginary. It has no existence outside of what we believe it has been produced for (and it hasn't been produced for anything).

Securing maritime access for trade or conquest.

Actually when mahan wrote that it was more influential in Japan than America.

Childhood is admiring the usds constitution.

Adulthood is realizing the uscgc eagle is cooler.

Thinking along the same line of thought, if everything is determined by how the human consciousness percieves it, then does that make a value given by the human consciousness a real value, since the human consciousness is the only thing that can gauge value?

Not entirely...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_monitor_Parnaíba_(U17)

That's interesting. I didn't say that everything is determined by how the human consciousness perceives it. That would mean that things don't actually exist, which I think they do. Objects exist, their reality has just been misunderstood by our consciousness. Wood exists. When it is shaped into the shape of what we know is a table, it is still wood. It still exists even though we have imagined it is now a table. We imagine that it now has purpose, even though it is only wood shaped as a 'table'. We have given it value because we think it serves a purpose, but it can't serve a purpose because purpose doesn't exist. We have have imagined it. We have imagined value.

But in the absence of god, the next highest being is a sentinent being. As human's are the only known sentinent being, then humans define purpose, just as a deity would.
The determined purpose is then the real purpose, of which value can be declared.

There is the person--a dumb animal--and there is the imaginary consciousness which has created purpose for a person where there is no more purpose than for cats (person=cat+imagination).
>in the absence of god, the next highest being is a sentinent being.
You mean sentient? I don't think the person is any more sentient than any other life form. We have the same physical qualities in that we are just organisms. The only difference between the person and any other animal is that the person has imagined that there is some higher purpose for its existence.

But the human consciousness is the most advanced of its kind on our earth. It can comprehend abstract thought and is clearly the most developed. Thus it has the authority to decide what the purpose of existence is, and gives value to all entities.

You can ship troops by aircraft, but supporting an extensive war effort through aircraft is simply not done. The vast majority of logistics and heavy fighting kit was brought into Afghanistan by shipping via sea into neighbouring countries to then by shipped by land.

No. First of all, we have no way of knowing that other life forms such as cats have more advanced consciousnesses than us, but choose not to use them because they know it would be worthless to do so. Second, "abstract thought" that you think consciousness can comprehend is imaginary. It has no reality. It is exactly abstract because it doesn't exist.
>Thus it can decide what the purpose of existence is
It can imagine all it wants. It has imagined all it wants and it will continue to imagine. Evidence of its imagination in the pursuit is what we see in any invention.
>and gives value to all entities
Yes. I think we agree that consciousness imagines that things have value. It might give value to what we call a lawnmower because the lawnmower can mow the lawn. But what is mowing the lawn? You might mow the lawn to make it look pretty, but the idea that a mowed lawn looks pretty is imaginary. It has been thought up by a person's consciousness. Therefore, lawnmowers have no purpose other than an imaginary one. We have imagined that an object has value.

>we have no way of knowing
It's very obvious that the human mind is distinct in its sentience to all other organisms and i refuse to agree otherwise.

>no purpose other than imaginary one
What value or purpose the human consciousness determines IS the value and purpose. We're a very very great collection of randomly arranged quarks, so there is nothing that can decide what purpose is in the universe other than god, and failing god, we turn to the only known sentient entity, us.

>It's very obvious that the human mind is distinct in its sentience to all other organisms
The person is certainly distinct. Not all life forms have our capabilities of awareness of our environment (taste, sight, touch, smell, sound).
I maintain that anything beyond the person is imaginary. Anything that we have created is just a product of the imagination and serves no purpose.
>What value or purpose the human consciousness determines IS the value and purpose.
Let's say you're right. I choose one day to establish a new belief, a religion, that means I have to spend 'four hours of every day' on my knees worshiping a great big boulder. I have created this religion. I have brought it into the world with my own imagination. It wasn't here before I imagined it. It will cease it exist if I stop believing in it.
I think everything that mankind has created is imagined in the same way as somebody could imagine a new religion.

The ability to project military and economic power internationally, while denying that ability to your enemies

Nothing. Everything

did all those planes fly to Pearl harbor from Japan?

then all those soldiers swam to from island to island and duked it out

>Japan can't execute anything because of ABDC Naval power
>Germany can't strangle Britain because of British Navy and American naval policy
Yeah, navies pretty much won the war.

Germany also. Wilhelm II was infamous for giving away copies. Mahan's book was """'influential"""" because it effectively confirmed what literally everyone was already doing as a legitimate policy.

When you have command of 70% of the Earth's surface (and you're able to transport supplies safely over said surface to a foreign war front), then you win wars. It's a necessary tool used in a specific way among other military tools.