Media reports on the situation seem highly sculpted by various sides such that I feel low confidence in any understanding on what’s happening on the ground. I think this will be increasingly true as memetic tools grow more sophisticated with more actors deploying them.
Both sides have a narrative that ignores all the inconvenient facts. To some degree that happens in all conflicts, but this seems to me much stronger than usual.
When I compare it with the war in Ukraine, at least both sides can agree that the Budapest Memorandum happened (regardless how they argue who violated it first); both sides can agree that their soldiers are shooting at each other (now that Putin stopped pretending that the “little green men” have nothing to do with Russia), etc. There is more agreement than disagreement among the opposing narratives.
I don’t feel like we have even this fundamental agreement on facts in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Most things said by one side are denied by the other. (“Holocaust never happened.” “Nakba never happened.”) Their narratives are like two parallel universes, not like two biased descriptions of the same reality.
The level of skepticism one needs to apply to every single statement of each side is just exhausting. But every time you express an opinion without double-checking everything, you end up being wrong.
Media reports on the situation seem highly sculpted by various sides such that I feel low confidence in any understanding on what’s happening on the ground. I think this will be increasingly true as memetic tools grow more sophisticated with more actors deploying them.
Both sides have a narrative that ignores all the inconvenient facts. To some degree that happens in all conflicts, but this seems to me much stronger than usual.
When I compare it with the war in Ukraine, at least both sides can agree that the Budapest Memorandum happened (regardless how they argue who violated it first); both sides can agree that their soldiers are shooting at each other (now that Putin stopped pretending that the “little green men” have nothing to do with Russia), etc. There is more agreement than disagreement among the opposing narratives.
I don’t feel like we have even this fundamental agreement on facts in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Most things said by one side are denied by the other. (“Holocaust never happened.” “Nakba never happened.”) Their narratives are like two parallel universes, not like two biased descriptions of the same reality.
The level of skepticism one needs to apply to every single statement of each side is just exhausting. But every time you express an opinion without double-checking everything, you end up being wrong.
Maybe the situation is complex enough that only actual, bonafide, geniuses need apply. Everyone else will just be adding to the noise.
Ah, that’s a great point. I hadn’t thought of that but I think it is very true, and is an important reason why it is hard to be confident.