I’m able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true
When you have only these two mental boxes for claims you can’t distinct between 60% probable alleged claims and 10% probable alleged claims. Or maybe even 1% probable alleged claims, you are citing RT, after all.
This is an easily exploitable position. Coincidently, the one that Russian state is optimized to manipulate very well by throwing lots of completely unevidenced claims and talking about them as facts, so that reasonable people put them in the alleged category.
Russian media is extremely untrustworthy. If you think that of course it is, after all Western media is untrustworthy as well—you have no idea. The Russian media and Western media are in two completely different reference classes of untrustworthiness. My best example is your outgroup network, but completely unrestrained with even a resemblence of memetic competetion with your ingroup network. There is no insentive to be correlated with facts at all moreover there is an insentive not to be.
When you have only these two mental boxes for claims you can’t distinct between 60% probable alleged claims and 10% probable alleged claims. Or maybe even 1% probable alleged claims, you are citing RT, after all.
Who said that I have only two mental boxes? I responded to a statement about what “alleged claims” happen to be. I wouldn’t have brought this up if we wouldn’t have talked about what claims are alleged.
While I’m referring to RT, my process was “friend makes a claim, that’s sourced independently of RT and not to any Russian media outlet but to people on the ground” → search additional sources to see whether that’s actually what the Russian position is.
I didn’t cite any Russian media in my main post. In the comments, I once referred to https://khpg.org/ for a translation but not for other factual claims because it might be a too Russian-leaning source.
I only referred to Russian media when discussing what claims are alleged.
Here you are talking about separating claims in these two mental categories.
I’m able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true.
Also you acted as if at the moment you were indeed using only two of them.
You brought up Ukrainians war crimes in the post, crediting respectful sources as Amnesty International. Than throwaway62654 replied that even if it was true it is tiny compared to credible Russian crimes like destroying Mariupol. Till this moment the mental box “alledged Ukrainian crimes” include only those who came from reasonable sources which are somewhat correlated with the truth. You reply with
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that’s allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
Thus putting a very improbable crime into the mental box. What used to be “alleged crimes according to Amnesty International” is now “alleged crimes according to Amnesty International and Russian state media”, which isn’t a helpful category anymore, but exactly the kind of mental category Russian propaganda machine wants people to have.
I don’t think of the crimes that are well-documented by Amnesty International as alleged crimes but as well-documented crimes. That’s the mental category in which they are for me. As Viliam explained in detail, those are claims by a source with left-wing London values and not one with pro-Russian values.
It feels very strange to see the set as alleged crimes, as only those alleged by Western sources and not count allegations by non-Western sources.
The problem seems to be that this wasn’t clear from your original comment. I admit that after reading it I was under the impression that you were giving at least some credence to the claim that the Ukrainians turned Mariupol into Grozny 2.0. Though rereading it now, I see that my impression was coloured by your other comments—I interpreted it as “no one can tell what really went down, seeing as both sides are blaming each other” rather than “it’s worth knowing what both sides of an argument are saying if you want to come to a compromise”.
This is a pity, since while I don’t agree with you on (my understanding of) your stance on the war and how to best end it, you raise important points which should definitely be considered.
The problem seems to be that this wasn’t clear from your original comment.
I’m not sure what you think “allegedly perpetrated” is supposed to mean when it’s not about who alleges things when I respond to a comment that’s about what’s alleged.
“no one can tell what really went down, seeing as both sides are blaming each other”
I do think that it’s pretty hard to know anything about what happens on the ground in a warzone in real time. I do believe that it’s useful to be generally skeptical of one’s knowledge. People are generally biased to be overconfident when thinking about politics and that’s especially true in times of war.
I don’t think claims from either side should make one confident of what happened. Independent claims like those from Amnesty or the UN human rights council are better. Currently, Amnesty seems to give Russia the blame for bombing a theatre with a lot of civilians in it but doesn’t make claims about the responsibility for leveling a lot of civilian buildings to the ground.
Then why are you spreading unconfirmed claims? That is not nice. The city was encircled by Russians on 1st March. Could you explain me how and why AFU destroyed half-million city just in one week? :) If you’re really honest here do at least some fact-checking.
throwaway62654 stated that Russians destroyed Mariupol.
One doesn’t have to be an expert to see which side caused more death. Mariupol. All war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine pale in comparison to an entire city leveled to the ground. While people were still there.
You opposed and made the statement about possible involvement of Ukrainians.
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that’s allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine. I first heard that claim from a Russian friend who sourced it through a relative of a friend who was on the ground. Russian media is also making the claim. It’s unfortunate that EU censorship makes it harder to know that this is what Russian media is saying and thus to know what “war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine” involve.
Neither of the two makes me confident that Ukraine is responsible, but it certainly falls into the category of war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
According to Russian sources all the war crimes are done by Ukrainians. Does it make Ukraine a subject to praesumptio culpae? Is it a reasonable framing? Should we from the beginning include Ukraine into that category? Should Ukraine always prove that it didn’t do all the horrible things while being invaded?
I can write an article that Mariupol was allegedly destroyed by North Korea (sorry for using absurdity). Will you include North Korea to the list of possible actors? Will it be useful? If not than what is the difference?
Should Ukraine always prove that it didn’t do all the horrible things while being invaded?
I don’t think anybody in this discussion is operating with the authority of the Ukrainian government, so this is a quite strange claim. I’m not calling on the Ukrainians to prove anything anywhere in this post.
I’m able to distinguish my epistemics from claims for what people should do and don’t mix that together. We are arguing here on a rationality forum and it’s helpful for rational reasoning to be able to think clearly about what’s true.
I’m not calling on the Ukrainians to prove anything anywhere in this post.
Yeah but by assuming things (directly or not) you are framing the discussion in a way which significantly influences perception of the topic.
I’m able to distinguish my epistemics from claims for what people should do and don’t mix that together. We are arguing here on a rationality forum and it’s helpful for rational reasoning to be able to think clearly about what’s true.
I can substitute should with is it rational if it drives the point home better :) Or I can expand shoulds to should we dilute our attention and efforts with statements which are most certainly false to find the truth.
Anyway I see we are kinda stuck here and I have nothing more to add.
I’d like to object that it’s rational. Sooner or later any lie will be revealed and the reputation/trust will be lost irrevocably. Without trust Ukraine will lose external and internal support and then the war. The risks are just not worth it.
It would be great if war propaganda lies would lead to irrevocably lost trust, but in most cases that’s not what happens. Most people excuse lies from people they consider to be on their side in war.
In any case, at the start of this war, we had false propaganda stories like the Ghost of Kyiv. They didn’t choose the strategy of not telling any lies and I’m not aware of any army doing that during a war.
Yes, they didn’t. And I think the story about the Ghost of Kyiv is net negative. But not all propaganda is equal. One thing is to lie about a mythic mighty pilot to comfort people (which is still bad imo) and completely other thing is to say that Ukrainians destroyed Mariupol, killed people in Bucha or spend millions to vilify Ukraine and poison EU in information space.
I’m able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true.
In this instance, the claim is that Ukrainians destroyed it before that point.
When you have only these two mental boxes for claims you can’t distinct between 60% probable alleged claims and 10% probable alleged claims. Or maybe even 1% probable alleged claims, you are citing RT, after all.
This is an easily exploitable position. Coincidently, the one that Russian state is optimized to manipulate very well by throwing lots of completely unevidenced claims and talking about them as facts, so that reasonable people put them in the alleged category.
Russian media is extremely untrustworthy. If you think that of course it is, after all Western media is untrustworthy as well—you have no idea. The Russian media and Western media are in two completely different reference classes of untrustworthiness. My best example is your outgroup network, but completely unrestrained with even a resemblence of memetic competetion with your ingroup network. There is no insentive to be correlated with facts at all moreover there is an insentive not to be.
Who said that I have only two mental boxes? I responded to a statement about what “alleged claims” happen to be. I wouldn’t have brought this up if we wouldn’t have talked about what claims are alleged.
While I’m referring to RT, my process was “friend makes a claim, that’s sourced independently of RT and not to any Russian media outlet but to people on the ground” → search additional sources to see whether that’s actually what the Russian position is.
I didn’t cite any Russian media in my main post. In the comments, I once referred to https://khpg.org/ for a translation but not for other factual claims because it might be a too Russian-leaning source.
I only referred to Russian media when discussing what claims are alleged.
Here you are talking about separating claims in these two mental categories.
Also you acted as if at the moment you were indeed using only two of them.
You brought up Ukrainians war crimes in the post, crediting respectful sources as Amnesty International. Than throwaway62654 replied that even if it was true it is tiny compared to credible Russian crimes like destroying Mariupol. Till this moment the mental box “alledged Ukrainian crimes” include only those who came from reasonable sources which are somewhat correlated with the truth. You reply with
Thus putting a very improbable crime into the mental box. What used to be “alleged crimes according to Amnesty International” is now “alleged crimes according to Amnesty International and Russian state media”, which isn’t a helpful category anymore, but exactly the kind of mental category Russian propaganda machine wants people to have.
I don’t think of the crimes that are well-documented by Amnesty International as alleged crimes but as well-documented crimes. That’s the mental category in which they are for me. As Viliam explained in detail, those are claims by a source with left-wing London values and not one with pro-Russian values.
It feels very strange to see the set as alleged crimes, as only those alleged by Western sources and not count allegations by non-Western sources.
The problem seems to be that this wasn’t clear from your original comment. I admit that after reading it I was under the impression that you were giving at least some credence to the claim that the Ukrainians turned Mariupol into Grozny 2.0. Though rereading it now, I see that my impression was coloured by your other comments—I interpreted it as “no one can tell what really went down, seeing as both sides are blaming each other” rather than “it’s worth knowing what both sides of an argument are saying if you want to come to a compromise”.
This is a pity, since while I don’t agree with you on (my understanding of) your stance on the war and how to best end it, you raise important points which should definitely be considered.
I’m not sure what you think “allegedly perpetrated” is supposed to mean when it’s not about who alleges things when I respond to a comment that’s about what’s alleged.
I do think that it’s pretty hard to know anything about what happens on the ground in a warzone in real time. I do believe that it’s useful to be generally skeptical of one’s knowledge. People are generally biased to be overconfident when thinking about politics and that’s especially true in times of war.
I don’t think claims from either side should make one confident of what happened. Independent claims like those from Amnesty or the UN human rights council are better. Currently, Amnesty seems to give Russia the blame for bombing a theatre with a lot of civilians in it but doesn’t make claims about the responsibility for leveling a lot of civilian buildings to the ground.
Then why are you spreading unconfirmed claims? That is not nice.
The city was encircled by Russians on 1st March. Could you explain me how and why AFU destroyed half-million city just in one week? :)
If you’re really honest here do at least some fact-checking.
throwaway62654 was talking about “war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine”. I made a statement about what crimes have been alleged.
It’s useful to be able to discuss what has been alledged and what has not been alleged.
throwaway62654 stated that Russians destroyed Mariupol.
You opposed and made the statement about possible involvement of Ukrainians.
According to Russian sources all the war crimes are done by Ukrainians. Does it make Ukraine a subject to praesumptio culpae? Is it a reasonable framing? Should we from the beginning include Ukraine into that category? Should Ukraine always prove that it didn’t do all the horrible things while being invaded?
I can write an article that Mariupol was allegedly destroyed by North Korea (sorry for using absurdity). Will you include North Korea to the list of possible actors? Will it be useful? If not than what is the difference?
I don’t think anybody in this discussion is operating with the authority of the Ukrainian government, so this is a quite strange claim. I’m not calling on the Ukrainians to prove anything anywhere in this post.
I’m able to distinguish my epistemics from claims for what people should do and don’t mix that together. We are arguing here on a rationality forum and it’s helpful for rational reasoning to be able to think clearly about what’s true.
Yeah but by assuming things (directly or not) you are framing the discussion in a way which significantly influences perception of the topic.
I can substitute should with is it rational if it drives the point home better :)
Or I can expand shoulds to should we dilute our attention and efforts with statements which are most certainly false to find the truth.
Anyway I see we are kinda stuck here and I have nothing more to add.
It’s rational for Ukraine to engage in war propaganda that’s not always true. That’s generally what most countries do when they are at war.
I’d like to object that it’s rational. Sooner or later any lie will be revealed and the reputation/trust will be lost irrevocably. Without trust Ukraine will lose external and internal support and then the war. The risks are just not worth it.
It would be great if war propaganda lies would lead to irrevocably lost trust, but in most cases that’s not what happens. Most people excuse lies from people they consider to be on their side in war.
In any case, at the start of this war, we had false propaganda stories like the Ghost of Kyiv. They didn’t choose the strategy of not telling any lies and I’m not aware of any army doing that during a war.
Yes, they didn’t. And I think the story about the Ghost of Kyiv is net negative. But not all propaganda is equal. One thing is to lie about a mythic mighty pilot to comfort people (which is still bad imo) and completely other thing is to say that Ukrainians destroyed Mariupol, killed people in Bucha or spend millions to vilify Ukraine and poison EU in information space.
https://www.civic-synergy.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Words-and-Wars.-Ukraine-Facing-Kremlin-Propaganda.pdf