Quoting RT is a bit like quoting QAnon. If there is not even another Russian source that would confirm the information, I think it is quite safe to assume that it was made up.
For those unfamiliar, watch this. (Yay, European censorship trivially circumvented.)
Christian is not saying that RT is reliable, only that we can’t trust either side. Only if both sides report something or if there is independent reporting—but where will you find that? I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia on this either—who knows what filtering/blocking of accounts goes on.
My argument is that if some pro-Russian information is not even supported by mainstream Russian media (which are fully under Putin’s control), but only by RT, we can falsely assume that it is a lie.
Please do not “both sides” at me when one of those sides is RT. Note that I am not saying “Russia” here, but “RT” specifically. Using RT as an argument for… anything… is just silly.
Sorry, I am running out of patience here. Using RT in a discussion is exactly the same level of insanity as using QAnon. If RT merely repeats statements made by someone else, please use the original source. If RT is the original, then please let’s just not discuss that at a wannabe rationalist site at all.
With regards to Wikipedia, I do not trust the articles, but I trust that if a controversy exists, it will appear on the talk page. (At least in form of: “A suggests X” “B suggests to ban A; A is banned”.)
If RT merely repeats statements made by someone else, please use the original source.
Are you actually reading what I write? This has nothing to do with what I said. I have two independent sources, not one source repeating what another source says. Neither of the two nor them together is enough for me to be confident that the claim is true.
I did refer to both sources. The other is an eye-witness report (with two people in between) and not a media report. Given that I noted that in the first post, it feels strange to me that you assert I somehow only referred to RT.
If RT makes a claim then that claim is a claim that’s alleged. Then it’s a set of the “all war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine” that throwaway62654 talked about. You can talk about how important that set happens to be but if you want to make arguments about its nature, then to me this clearly falls into that set.
mainstream Russian media
Unfortunately, I don’t know any Russian, so I can’t check what mainstream Russian media says about Mariupol.
I’m not saying “both sides” here. I see Russia as the much worse aggressor. It seems clear that Putin used the real but very weak Nazi accusations to expand his energy empire. But we have only very weak evidence of what goes on in the war zone unless both sides agree on some aspect.
My argument is that if some pro-Russian information is not even supported by mainstream Russian media (which are fully under Putin’s control), but only by RT, we can falsely assume that it is a lie.
Agree.
I understand Christian’s point as primarily about stopping the war to help people on the ground—with all the difficulties that brings—many might not want to be “liberated” . Cheering Ukraine isn’t helping that cause.
But we have only very weak evidence of what goes on in the war zone unless both sides agree on some aspect.
I know we’re in a hostile information space, but this takes epistemic learned helplessness way too far. There are lots of ways to find things out other than being told about them, and when you don’t have specific knowledge about something you don’t have to adopt a uniform prior.
Taking Mariupol as an example, our two suspects are the Russians, who were attacking Mariupol and didn’t have any assets there, and the Ukrainians, who were defending Mariupol and did. Given those facts, before we hear from either side, what should we expect? If you’re unsure, we can look at other events in similar reference classes. For example, of the German towns destroyed during World War 2, how many would you predict were destroyed by Allied attackers, and how many by German defenders?
Usually that’s just about denying strategic assets, though: blowing up railroads, collapsing mine shafts, that sort of thing. Blowing up the museums and opera houses is pointless, because the enemy can’t get any war benefit by capturing them. All it does is waste your own explosives, which you’d rather use to blow up the enemy. Scorched earth practiced by attackers, on the other hand, tends to be more indiscriminate: contrast the state of Novgorod post-WW2 with that of the towns west of it, or the treatment of rice fields by North Vietnamese vs. Americans during the Vietnam war.
The Wikipedia number for Mariupol’s ethnic Russian population is 44%. Russia certainly had the intention to make Mariupol Russian territory. Making Mariupol Russian territory is worth more if it stays standing. Russia has to invest less money into rebuilding Mariupol if it’s not destroyed.
The inability of the Russian army was not as apparent at the time Mariupol was taken as it’s now, so it’s quite plausible that Ukrainians didn’t expect to be able to retake it at the time.
World War II was not a far fought to take over German territory, so it’s not in the same reference class. That’s especially true because of lessons from World War I, that the German population might have to see part of Germany being destroyed to really understand that they lost.
I’m a little curious what reference class you think the battle of Mariupol does belong to, which makes its destruction by its defenders plausible on priors. But mostly it sounds like you agree that we can make inferences about hard questions even without a trustworthy authority to appeal to, and that’s the point I was really interested in.
The reference class would be “wars to extend a country’s territory permanently”. As such there’s an interest to have the value of the newly won territory as high as possible.
When waging war over a city, for both sides there are actions that can be taken to increase or decrease the amount of damage that the city takes.
In Ukraine, it seems that no party went out of its way to reduce the damage to cities. We know that from Amnesty trying to understand what happened and them finding that frequently Ukrainian army stationed itself inside the city and got shot at by the Russian army.
This dynamic does explain that a part of the city is destroyed but it doesn’t explain why 90% of Mariupol’s residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed (Wikipedia numbers). The 90% sounds to me like this is more than just collateral damage but that someone made a conscious choice to destroy more of the city than they would need for purely military reasons.
One reason to do that might be propaganda reasons and to make the population fear you. Given that according to Russian propaganda Russia came to liberate the Russian minority, destroying a city with a large number of ethnic Russians makes little sense for that goal.
Often in war destruction is also done as a punishment. Russia punished the population in Chechnya for their local resistance in the Second Chechnyan War. It’s unclear to me why the population of Mariupol would deserve to be punished from the Russian perspective.
On the other hand, at the time that Mariupol was taking Ukrainians might have thought that this war will end in a way where Donetsk and Luhansk would permanently be part of Russia. Under that assumption making Mariupol worth as little as possible seems to me like an understandable reason.
Reporting suggests that taking Crimea was expensive for Russia. Having Mariupol destroyed means Russia would have to invest more money into it to make it function again after the war.
Quoting RT is a bit like quoting QAnon. If there is not even another Russian source that would confirm the information, I think it is quite safe to assume that it was made up.
For those unfamiliar, watch this. (Yay, European censorship trivially circumvented.)
Christian is not saying that RT is reliable, only that we can’t trust either side. Only if both sides report something or if there is independent reporting—but where will you find that? I wouldn’t trust Wikipedia on this either—who knows what filtering/blocking of accounts goes on.
My argument is that if some pro-Russian information is not even supported by mainstream Russian media (which are fully under Putin’s control), but only by RT, we can falsely assume that it is a lie.
Please do not “both sides” at me when one of those sides is RT. Note that I am not saying “Russia” here, but “RT” specifically. Using RT as an argument for… anything… is just silly.
Sorry, I am running out of patience here. Using RT in a discussion is exactly the same level of insanity as using QAnon. If RT merely repeats statements made by someone else, please use the original source. If RT is the original, then please let’s just not discuss that at a wannabe rationalist site at all.
With regards to Wikipedia, I do not trust the articles, but I trust that if a controversy exists, it will appear on the talk page. (At least in form of: “A suggests X” “B suggests to ban A; A is banned”.)
Are you actually reading what I write? This has nothing to do with what I said. I have two independent sources, not one source repeating what another source says. Neither of the two nor them together is enough for me to be confident that the claim is true.
I did refer to both sources. The other is an eye-witness report (with two people in between) and not a media report. Given that I noted that in the first post, it feels strange to me that you assert I somehow only referred to RT.
If RT makes a claim then that claim is a claim that’s alleged. Then it’s a set of the “all war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine” that throwaway62654 talked about. You can talk about how important that set happens to be but if you want to make arguments about its nature, then to me this clearly falls into that set.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any Russian, so I can’t check what mainstream Russian media says about Mariupol.
I’m not saying “both sides” here. I see Russia as the much worse aggressor. It seems clear that Putin used the real but very weak Nazi accusations to expand his energy empire. But we have only very weak evidence of what goes on in the war zone unless both sides agree on some aspect.
Agree.
I understand Christian’s point as primarily about stopping the war to help people on the ground—with all the difficulties that brings—many might not want to be “liberated” . Cheering Ukraine isn’t helping that cause.
I know we’re in a hostile information space, but this takes epistemic learned helplessness way too far. There are lots of ways to find things out other than being told about them, and when you don’t have specific knowledge about something you don’t have to adopt a uniform prior.
Taking Mariupol as an example, our two suspects are the Russians, who were attacking Mariupol and didn’t have any assets there, and the Ukrainians, who were defending Mariupol and did. Given those facts, before we hear from either side, what should we expect? If you’re unsure, we can look at other events in similar reference classes. For example, of the German towns destroyed during World War 2, how many would you predict were destroyed by Allied attackers, and how many by German defenders?
Ever heard of scorched earth?
Usually that’s just about denying strategic assets, though: blowing up railroads, collapsing mine shafts, that sort of thing. Blowing up the museums and opera houses is pointless, because the enemy can’t get any war benefit by capturing them. All it does is waste your own explosives, which you’d rather use to blow up the enemy. Scorched earth practiced by attackers, on the other hand, tends to be more indiscriminate: contrast the state of Novgorod post-WW2 with that of the towns west of it, or the treatment of rice fields by North Vietnamese vs. Americans during the Vietnam war.
The Wikipedia number for Mariupol’s ethnic Russian population is 44%. Russia certainly had the intention to make Mariupol Russian territory. Making Mariupol Russian territory is worth more if it stays standing. Russia has to invest less money into rebuilding Mariupol if it’s not destroyed.
The inability of the Russian army was not as apparent at the time Mariupol was taken as it’s now, so it’s quite plausible that Ukrainians didn’t expect to be able to retake it at the time.
World War II was not a far fought to take over German territory, so it’s not in the same reference class. That’s especially true because of lessons from World War I, that the German population might have to see part of Germany being destroyed to really understand that they lost.
I’m a little curious what reference class you think the battle of Mariupol does belong to, which makes its destruction by its defenders plausible on priors. But mostly it sounds like you agree that we can make inferences about hard questions even without a trustworthy authority to appeal to, and that’s the point I was really interested in.
The reference class would be “wars to extend a country’s territory permanently”. As such there’s an interest to have the value of the newly won territory as high as possible.
When waging war over a city, for both sides there are actions that can be taken to increase or decrease the amount of damage that the city takes.
In Ukraine, it seems that no party went out of its way to reduce the damage to cities. We know that from Amnesty trying to understand what happened and them finding that frequently Ukrainian army stationed itself inside the city and got shot at by the Russian army.
This dynamic does explain that a part of the city is destroyed but it doesn’t explain why 90% of Mariupol’s residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed (Wikipedia numbers). The 90% sounds to me like this is more than just collateral damage but that someone made a conscious choice to destroy more of the city than they would need for purely military reasons.
One reason to do that might be propaganda reasons and to make the population fear you. Given that according to Russian propaganda Russia came to liberate the Russian minority, destroying a city with a large number of ethnic Russians makes little sense for that goal.
Often in war destruction is also done as a punishment. Russia punished the population in Chechnya for their local resistance in the Second Chechnyan War. It’s unclear to me why the population of Mariupol would deserve to be punished from the Russian perspective.
On the other hand, at the time that Mariupol was taking Ukrainians might have thought that this war will end in a way where Donetsk and Luhansk would permanently be part of Russia. Under that assumption making Mariupol worth as little as possible seems to me like an understandable reason.
Reporting suggests that taking Crimea was expensive for Russia. Having Mariupol destroyed means Russia would have to invest more money into it to make it function again after the war.
I agree that ending the war sooner rather than later is politically the most important priority.