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The whole Bucha story still stinks to high heaven. I don't think nothing happened, but it seems like the number of killings of civilians that are actually backed by solid evidence can be counted in the tens, and is more in the class of wanton violence by undisciplined military units that both parties in this conflict have been engaging in whenever they were in an area with a hostile civilian population than anything resembling the systematic massacre the pro-UA press wants it to be. The initial messaging about it was chaotic, too - I still remember the strangely arranged shots of "streets full of corpses" that were circulated in the earliest days of the narrative, with the bodies wearing something resembling military fatigues with white armbands (before the Western press had realised that white armbands were and continue being used as friend identification by Russian units - Ukrainians use blue).
There is really no reason to assume that a few civilians killed by trashy soldiers shooting at everything that moves, in a chaotic situation where an expected victory was turning into a rout, would have translated into many more in a setting where the victory proceeded as expected. Of course it's plausible that there would have been a French-style resistance, which attracted many more participants who would die in their subsequent armed struggle - but resistance fighters are not hapless civilians.
Sorry, I don't engage in obvious falsehoods.
I have so many Kremlin apologists doubting that MH17 happened. I don't have time and energy to respond to all this. It is not very productive use of my time.
Doubting Bucha when we have so much confirmed evidence is pointless. It is what before we used to call FUD at the start of internet. I am that old.
Then don't. Either respond politely and according to the rules or not at all.
Specifically, do not accuse your opponents of being apologists. It's not constructive.
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I think it's fairly realistic to assume that many (maybe most?) of the civilian dead in Bucha who were shown on Western media were killed by Ukrainian units who reentered the town in retribution.
Uh...why would you assume that? What could possibly make that more likely?
It's more likely than the notion that all local civilian death were caused by the Russians. Also, many of the dead provably had white armbands, which at the time was already pretty much established to be the marker of local collaborators.
I wasn’t asking about all deaths. Why do you think “many or most” were killed by Ukrainians?
It is possible that the Ukrainian military slaughtered dozens or hundreds of their own citizens on reclaiming an unoccupied town. It is unlikely that they did so while encouraging foreign journalists to come document the scene as a propaganda coup. I find it much more likely that the invading army happened to kill some civilians to keep order or for sport. That’s an incredibly common human behavior.
As far as I know, the first press reports appeared days after the town was retaken. I think it's entirely possible that the Ukrainian units shot dozens of suspected or real collaborators as soon as they entered, killings which they very obviously blamed all on the Russians, and the Western press was happy to believe them. I also think it's rather likely that most of the local civilians that died did so as collateral damage during combat, mostly shelling. None of that means that the Russians didn't commit local atrocities.
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That argument is as relevant to this topic as if I brought up Ukraine apologists doubting that Azov is led by neonazis as an argument against a Bucha massacre.
I'm pretty sure the term was around long after the average Mottizen (wasn't our average age in the mid-thirties last time anyone polled?) started using the internet.
Anyway, I actually reviewed the Wikipedia page before making my initial response, and from what I can tell, there is still no evidence of more than some tens of victims from any party that is not either directly controlled by pro-Ukrainian interests or citing their numbers. We used to have mechanisms to get neutral information in these situations (e.g. the Indian observers in the Korean war, who also uncovered a lot of BS that was and is sometimes still being treated as fact in US reporting - just compare the account of the Geoje uprising in "This Kind of War" to what has by now even made it into the Wikipedia article); if this case is so clear-cut, why is nobody inviting a neutral party to investigate here?
As I said, I rest my case. You will probably ask next why no neutral party investigates ivermectin?
Are you unable to make your case without insinuating that those who disagree must also hold some other beliefs (that you presumably find it easier to argue against)? Unfortunately for you, I am not an Ivermectin believer.
Ivermectin is a good test how serious the person is. Obviously we all might have different beliefs, some of them will be wrong and others will be correct. I wouldn't disqualify anyone on that. But ivermectin issue is such a low bar that I use it as a filter whether a person takes time to verify his own opinions. I am sorry if it offends some.
It's not offensive really, just intellectually dishonest.
If you had any conviction you'd let your beliefs stand on their own without the need for ad hominem.
Filtering kooks not to waste your time may be appropriate in a lot of settings. Not here.
Believing ivermectin to be a cure for covid is intellectually lazy. Thanks for helping me to formulate what I meant with that.
But what does it mean to be intellectually dishonest? How is it different from just not being honest?
Honesty is the general category of being fair and straightforward. Intellectual honesty is that part of honesty that limits itself to Logos.
Ad hominem attacks are appeals to Ethos, to the credibility and authority of the speaker and are therefore subversive to the goal of discovering truth through reasoned discussion. Which is the declared goal of this forum.
For more on this, read Gorgias. Ethos is useful, but not to dialectic.
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The ivermectin enjoyers that I know were autistically combing through every study on the topic. Biased, stubborn, arrogant... there are many things one could call them before "intellectually lazy" starts making any sense.
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As a sidebar, I started in the internet around 1999, in the forum era. So I missed usenet and bbs. FUD is from that era? What corner of the internet was this? Asking sincerely, was it the anti-war crowd?
As I’m sure you know, FUD has now been taken up by pro-establishment types online. I’m curious about the lineage of the groups that use this term.
I don't know the history well. FUD just means Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. When internet was started (dialling in), everybody thought it will be a revolution but then spammers and FUD started. It can be about anything. It became clear that with open communications it is not easier to get true information as people are not inherently searching for truth but just want to express their opinions.
The great example is ivermectin effectiveness. Why this should be controversial? The story is very simple – we tried many things at the start of pandemic including ivermectin. There were some signals that it could be useful. But more studies were done and the signal disappeared. It happens with a lot of potential medicines. In about 10 prospective treatments only 1 passes final studies and are approved. Everybody can read data and this story. Starting from wikipedia and then Scott Alexander article for deeper interested laypersons. Specialists will simply read original sources. We have no controversy. Even Scott's assertion that it was ivermectin's anti-parasites effect that worked is a stretch and might not be true but I will assume that it is real.
Any information that somehow ivermectin effect is not resolved is FUD. I don't know why people continue bringing it up. Maybe they are really confused, maybe they have poor skills distinguishing real data from garbage, maybe they are propagandists or grifters. I don't care even if they are true believers. It is such a non-issue, not as close to that the earth is round but not that far either.
Obviously, sometimes we have to discuss things that the earth is round or that ivermectin is not effective. Usually with children or some learners. But it is boring to have such discussion in serious forums.
I'm sorry, is it your contention that it is the people who thought ivermectin could help who employed FUD? Not the establishment forces who proclaimed it horse medicine and dangerous?
I have spent some time studying things outside my professional field, for example, about economics. I am not an expert, far from it, but I am quite confident about some basic principles in economy. I read Noah Smith, Marginal Revolution and some others. Anyone interested can gain a similar level of understanding without studying economics at school, just purely for interest, not too deep and because it is quite important in our society. I started with many false beliefs, but took time to read a lot of things online, and now I can see consensus about these basic principles and how things work. Obviously there are many opinions about certain policies etc., but they do not differ in a fundamental way.
But then there are others who haven't given any thought about things at all but who listen to some populists and immediately form an opinion that they proclaim loudly as irrefutable truth. For example, I have taken interest in Milei, the president in Argentina. His reforms generally are viewed as good and necessary. There is no resistance from mainstream economists. Even World Bank has recommended many things that Milei has undertaken. Milei words usually are stronger than his work but even that can be understood due to Argentina's long stagnation and lack of growth.
But then other people demand that we need Milei in our country (Latvia) because our economy is in tatters. It is not objectively true. There is objectively vast difference between GDP between Argentina and Latvia. For some reason Latvia has experienced significant growth, its GDP has grown about 10 times in the last 30 years. It started below Argentina and overtook it and succeeded while Argentina's GDP during this time has mostly stayed flat. Obviously, the situation is completely different that one needs to provide special arguments why it is similar to Argentina because by all measures it is not.
Maybe some smart people have some insights about corruption, growth retarders etc. But most will simply repeat some slogans they have heard from Milei and others, mix them with some vitriol against “establishment”, Word Forum, Bill Gates or whatever is popular each season. When probed, they will admit that they don't know much, it is probably the first time someone has told them what is Argentina's GDP, how GDP is calculated but definitely know that it is a false measure and should not be used because it only hides the truth which is that everything is bad and the elite should be exposed for their crimes etc.
I am tired discussing with people who only want to proclaim their opinions and don't want to learn.
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It is a test if a person is serious and takes at least some time to check if their opinion about something, for example, his beliefs about ivermectin are valid. If I had never known anything about ivermectin, just read something on internet that it is good for covid or that is a poison that kills you, I wouldn't trust it too much, maybe with 5% confidence. If I was asked to provide an opinion, I would do some research, starting from wikipedia, Scott Alexander's article etc. If one cannot bother to do that, why should I listen to his or her opinion about ivermectin and other things?
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It's far older than that, originates in the 1920s and was a term of art in marketing in the 50s and 60s long before the Internet.
But it did get popular in computer circles when Amdahl left IBM and used it to describe the anti-competitive practices of his former employer. Then the torch of being computer Satan passed to Microsoft and it was applied to them until it became the general purpose term we see today, in a somewhat fitting return to its marketing roots.
ESR tells the story in the Jargon File.
Thanks, it is really interesting to know.
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Funny how tens of thousands dead in Gaza is collateral damage. A tiny, tiny fraction of the deaths when taking Kiev and people are losing their minds. They should go investigate the Libyan war, Afghan war, or the unprovoked full scale occupation of Iraq. Far, far worse than Bucha.
This is from the section: yes, bad things happened, but elsewhere even worse things happened...
Not just some random "elsewhere", but "where your allies were in charge". If you want to argue that a Russian control of Ukraine is undesirable because atrocities were committed under Russian auspices, then it surely is relevant if the side you want to control Ukraine instead committed greater atrocities in areas it dominated.
No, it is not. First of all, it is not of the same scale. Not of the same time, and not of the same magnitude either. Details are important.
Huh? Even the lowest-ball estimates of civilian Iraq War casualties are about 6x those for Ukraine. The wars have been going on for a similar amount of time, too.
On that matter, even in Ukraine, we have ample evidence of Ukrainians executing and torturing POWs and targeting civilians, which makes it through even though any Western organisation (and thus any organisation that you would trust) gets dogpiled (see the Aug 22 Amnesty report on Ukrainians using civilian facilities for cover) for daring to report about it.
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