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I do really wish someone smart and good at critical thinking would sit down and invest a lot of research into which claims by both sides are accurate and which are propaganda. This would be so good for the world
@paulg Why think he was targeted by the IDF during an aid dropoff, versus, eg, shot by Hamas? I am not lying, I am not pretending to neutrality, I see tweets from both sides convincingly debunking the other side and I feel like I do not know what the IDF is doing in Gaza right now.
@DanielleFong @Aella_Girl there are Palestinians and Israelis who have seen the whole thing and do agree on what is happening. There is one reality unfolding. The fractured tunnels are not inevitable https://t.co/n6rbzZnWr4
@DanielleFong @Aella_Girl you do have to understand that a lot of Israeli propaganda about arabs is rooted in truth. There is a lot of hate & ignorance & tribalism & victimhood https://t.co/hP1vAgfEhl
@AzizAbuSarah "I've lived in Jerusalem all my life, it's amazing how little we know about each other. Palestinians & Israelis really never get to meet, never get to talk to each other" this really shook me. much of the deep hatred is caused directly by not knowing anything about the other https://t.co/fGzEjWqepe
@Aella_Girl https://t.co/DLBfA0un7N
@ESYudkowsky @paulg no, you’re being the perfect idiot for the situation. postulating unattainably high standards for establishing truth, w/o assessing power dynamics of how truth is established on the ground and adapting your model, you become (deliberately) pacified into epistemic ambivalence.
@Aella_Girl This would be easier if Israel allowed journalists to enter Gaza. Some of them will be biased but among a diverse group, there will be lots of uncomfortable and undeniable truths uncovered, from many different angles.
@Aella_Girl we have plenty of information that's mostly agreed upon, from the videos of 10/7 to the rough casualty numbers in Gaza. and almost everyone decided where they stand long before it all came out. so what good for the world would a bit more reporting do?
@yashkaf @Aella_Girl I think certain key claims being strongly proven or strongly disproven in a way that seems to transcend sectarian preferences would change a lot of minds as to whether bad/good can be applied so clearly. Which wouldn't change the #'s supporting either side, but would calm them.
@Aella_Girl smarts and critical thinking cannot establish facts; you have to trust someone on the ground. unfortunately, everyone on the ground is incentivized to lie, or must rely on others incentivized to lie to fill in gaps in their data
@Aella_Girl I’m surprised about the claim that the pro-Israel side produces as much deceptive content as the anti-Israel side. Is there an equal&opposite account to @GAZAWOOD1? I’m not aware of any purported documentation that Israelis are staging deceptive video footage on a daily basis.
What are you uncertain about? There’s a mountain of incontrovertible evidence that atrocities were committed on 10/7. There’s also a mountain of incontrovertible evidence that atrocities were and are being committed in Gaza. You’d have to be soft in the head or willfully ignorant to believe otherwise.
I don't think that's possible, given that it's information regarding a warzone, which is dangerous to retrieve information from, that is mediated by all kinds of competing interests who all benefit from making both false and true claims. Critical thinking really can't help you distinguish quality propaganda from reality, unless you have access to first hand information.
I am Jewish, but not Israeli, and have lived my whole life in Australia and the US What has brought me to the Israeli side in the last year is not anything Israel has or hasn't done. It's all disastrously sad. It's the falsehoods about history being relentlessly pushed by people who I thought were friends and allies. If they are willing to lie about things that 5 minutes with a reference book could verify, this makes it very hard to view them as honest brokers about what is happening in the middle of an urban war
@Aella_Girl Why? Both sides are awful. Netanyahu empowered Hamas, and allowed Oct 7th to happen, and all of Hamas leadership live like Kings in places like Dubai and London. Innocents die for the machinations of the absolute demons in power.
@Aella_Girl I think the issue is incentive alignment in those pushing various things, not quality of analysis. Why would anyone have a reason to do transparent or neutral analysis here? If you paid $X and trusted it, even more incentive to subvert by paying more.
The world wouldn't listen, though We get tribal news bc the demand is for tribal news I call this epistemic dark age the epistemic crisis, brought on by social media and the replacement of expertise with popularity *you are a rare case that is both popular and seeks truth, building expertise*
I bother to actually go into profiles of most "interesting"/influential posts on both sides. (Yes I hate myself apparently). One can find dubious stuff on every other account if one bothers to scroll the profile back a couple years. Pro-Israels sometimes post discredited evidence, and enable "see Israel is all lies" bias. They also do the same mistake many of us Ukrainians do: openly call for the annihilation of the attacker Drezden/Hiroshima-style (we also privately and sometimes publicly say "just erase the whole russia already – but we'd never DO it ffs). Also the same Gazawood1 sometimes posts that certain gory vid is fake (a few turn out real) and that's then amplified. Also, some of the most viral pro-israeli accs happen to be "viral masters from distant lands" that often don't shy away from posting AI stuff and other outrage-farming nonsense that doesn't help anyone but them. Pro-Gazans are often provably strongly antisemitic, with deep hatred of all jews in Hollywood and US corporations, and ignore other faiths/races in all those. They also often openly hate the USA "for all their meddling in the world and genocide of the indigenous american peoples etc" up to conspiracy stuff like airplanes disappeared by UFOs. Often notoriously silent or openly supportive of Oct7 in their comments. @Cyabra did a good analysis on anti-israeli X posts post Oct7 and found up to HALF being pushed by bots. I'm saying - DEEP delving into profiles you find half-convincing often pays off. I've seen this "at home", Russia has been pushing the "Ukrainians bombed poor Donbass for eight years" fake and are still doing it. Right until the lte Prigozhin and his ilk made numerous public statements admitting that it's all Russian set-up and of course it was the Ru-army there all along, just as in Crimea. But hot damn the bots were convincing. 🤷♂️
@Aella_Girl That is definitely not the problem. The problem is that people cannot understand the problem. Secular Christian Missionaries built schools, hospitals, soup kitchens. Palestinians find this profoundly HUMILIATING. Israel providing food-aid is a source of humiliation.
@Aella_Girl Why do you care when politically you’re a none entity? Even if you had the truth, what would you do with it? Post. No one cares if you post, it doesn’t do anything, and you don’t even know where to start forming a political entity, something which can actually exert force.
@Aella_Girl Just say they are lying and post some surveys about why pedophilia might be good. You are really not being the Socrates you think you are. https://t.co/F8K7RubA1n
