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> Thus I came to realize that all these other memories from Eastern Europe and Communism that pop-up on today’s screens and “populate” the literature, have almo

> Thus I came to realize that all these other memories from Eastern Europe and Communism that pop-up on today’s screens and “populate” the literature, have almost nothing in common with me. And yet I lived under such a regime for thirty years! There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. There's no singular canonical experience that people in Yugoslavia share. Also, people can live a very oblivious normal life without knowing all the darks secrets of a system.

vidarh 5y ago
Yes, but he's not denying the other things happened, but pointing out pretty much exactly what you say: there's no singular canonical experience. But often we are presented a narrative of such a singular experience.
- luckylion 5y ago
  Do we though? We generally consider Iraq under Saddam not to be a good place to have lived in. A terrible place if you're a Kurd and your village gets attacked with nerve gas. And a bad place if you're an ordinary citizen that isn't specifically targeted because of his ethnicity, but there's always the risk of Uday Hussein driving by and just fancying murdering you for no particular reason. And yet, of course, the upper echelons lived very well. They had palaces, anything they wanted was imported for them from the West, even if not allowed for the average citizen. Certainly, they didn't complain about their villages being gassed, or their sons being tortured to death by the sociopath son of the dictator. But saying "there's no singular canonical experience" feels very strange in that regard, because there was, but with a few exceptions.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    You're making the point for me. You're presenting a narrative that the vast majority of Iraqis would also not have experienced. Most did not live in the regions that were gassed. Most did not have family who got tortured. That does not mean Saddam wasn't a psychopath and a brutal oppressor. The fact he did those things are enough to condemn him as the evil dictator he was. There's no need to erase other experiences.
    - luckylion 5y ago
      Nobody is "erasing" other experiences, they are just very uncommon. When talking about how "people in a country" live, you look at the average person. You don't say "but the King and his ministers live differently, we shouldn't erase their experiences". The inner circle always lives differently from the masses, but by definition, they are very few. Look at the lives of the many, not the few. And regarding Iraq: during Saddam's reign about a quarter of a million people were murdered or disappeared. There's a good chance that the majority of Iraqis did have someone in their family affected, though it might not have been their son, but a cousin or nephew.
      - vidarh 5y ago
        With respect to Saddam's mass murder the uncommon experience for Iraqis is is having been personally affected. That doesn't mean it wasn't an atrocity, or rather a series. And no, most people are not likely to have had someone affected, as most of them were focused on certain groups and areas. If you belonged to those groups you'd be disproportionately affected. If you did not, you might have gone most of your life without being affected without being any part of the.inner circle. This need to see suffering as universal to be valid is problematic, because very few atrocities affect a large portion of a population. That most don't does not jvalidate them.
        luckylion 5y ago
        The genocidal attacks on Kurds claimed somewhere between 50k - 180k. Kurds make up 20%-25% of the population, which would have been around 3-4 millions in 1988. If you kill 1-3% of a population, it's very likely that most families will be affected, especially in societies where families are large. Another ~100k Kurds and Shiite Arabs were killed during the '91 uprisings. Together, they make up more than half of the population. Unless Saddam was super surgical (#heWasnt), they were affected. Unless of course, by "personally affected", you mean they personally did die. But that would be a very strange idea.
        vidarh 5y ago
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    By extension of this way of telling a narrative, all Americans should fear for their lives the second a police officer stops their car because of the countless innocent black people murdered by the police. Stories of excessive police violence still make it to the news almost every week. However, most Americans don't need to fear for their lives by the police, and most Iraqis aren't Kurds. Most Iraqis weren't gassed or tortured either. You can't twist the narrative to pretend that the situation of the abused minorities are what the majority of the population experienced. Yes, they were living under their dictator's regime and no they were probably none too happy about the atrocities occurring, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a normal life outside that.
    - refurb 5y ago
      You’re really trying hard to draw equivalencies between two very different situations. In the US police kill less than 1,000 per year. Most are white people, many justifiably. So let’s overestimate and say 25% of those are murder. (Clearly not, but work with me). So 250 per year in a country of 350M. When the Kurds were gassed, a singular event, 3,000-5,000 people were killed. Random people, shelled by the Iraqi military for no reason other than living in the same place as rebellious Kurds. Iraq had a population of 16M at the time. Those are clearly two VERY different situation you’re trying to draw a parallel between.
      - vidarh 5y ago
        Misses the point which is not to justify or downplay either, but that most people lived a very different reality. That doesn't make the brutal mass murder of Kurds any more acceptable. It just underlines that trying to compress the story of those who lived in a given country in any period into just the atrocities is rarely going to be representative of everyone's lives.
        refurb 5y ago
        Ok, I see your point now. I do agree that these events don’t define the life of the general population.
stareblinkstare 5y ago
>There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. You just read a blog post of a personal anecdote. What were you expecting? A dissertation?
throwaway2331 5y ago
> There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. Because it doesn't feed the research machine! One anecdote is dismissed. Ten anecdotes are collected to start grifting for grants. And one hundred anecdotes gives you Empiricism (TM)! I've come to value anecdotes as a marker of "something is there." To throw them away completely is foolish. Have you read most research papers being pumped out? The methodologies are always flawed (dare I say, biased; ha!) towards favorable results (or atleast I hope. Some of the methodologies I've seen for biological research are so stupid, I refuse to believe someone came up with them in good faith).
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  There is definitely a replication crisis in academia, we should just have stricter requirements for what we consider science (especially in some fields which are terribly complicated and where you can find studies to prove something and its opposite) One anecdote should point us in a direction but it's not enough to prove anything.
- justsomehnguy 5y ago
  > I've come to value anecdotes as a marker of "something is there." AKA "there is a grain of joke in every joke". Not everything is bigger in Texas but this is a clear marker on some aspects of Texans self-perception. Which was exported so successfully it's now known not only in all other states but in other states too.

vidarh 5y ago

Yes, but he's not denying the other things happened, but pointing out pretty much exactly what you say: there's no singular canonical experience. But often we are presented a narrative of such a singular experience.

luckylion 5y ago
Do we though? We generally consider Iraq under Saddam not to be a good place to have lived in. A terrible place if you're a Kurd and your village gets attacked with nerve gas. And a bad place if you're an ordinary citizen that isn't specifically targeted because of his ethnicity, but there's always the risk of Uday Hussein driving by and just fancying murdering you for no particular reason. And yet, of course, the upper echelons lived very well. They had palaces, anything they wanted was imported for them from the West, even if not allowed for the average citizen. Certainly, they didn't complain about their villages being gassed, or their sons being tortured to death by the sociopath son of the dictator. But saying "there's no singular canonical experience" feels very strange in that regard, because there was, but with a few exceptions.
- vidarh 5y ago
  You're making the point for me. You're presenting a narrative that the vast majority of Iraqis would also not have experienced. Most did not live in the regions that were gassed. Most did not have family who got tortured. That does not mean Saddam wasn't a psychopath and a brutal oppressor. The fact he did those things are enough to condemn him as the evil dictator he was. There's no need to erase other experiences.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    Nobody is "erasing" other experiences, they are just very uncommon. When talking about how "people in a country" live, you look at the average person. You don't say "but the King and his ministers live differently, we shouldn't erase their experiences". The inner circle always lives differently from the masses, but by definition, they are very few. Look at the lives of the many, not the few. And regarding Iraq: during Saddam's reign about a quarter of a million people were murdered or disappeared. There's a good chance that the majority of Iraqis did have someone in their family affected, though it might not have been their son, but a cousin or nephew.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      With respect to Saddam's mass murder the uncommon experience for Iraqis is is having been personally affected. That doesn't mean it wasn't an atrocity, or rather a series. And no, most people are not likely to have had someone affected, as most of them were focused on certain groups and areas. If you belonged to those groups you'd be disproportionately affected. If you did not, you might have gone most of your life without being affected without being any part of the.inner circle. This need to see suffering as universal to be valid is problematic, because very few atrocities affect a large portion of a population. That most don't does not jvalidate them.
      - luckylion 5y ago
        The genocidal attacks on Kurds claimed somewhere between 50k - 180k. Kurds make up 20%-25% of the population, which would have been around 3-4 millions in 1988. If you kill 1-3% of a population, it's very likely that most families will be affected, especially in societies where families are large. Another ~100k Kurds and Shiite Arabs were killed during the '91 uprisings. Together, they make up more than half of the population. Unless Saddam was super surgical (#heWasnt), they were affected. Unless of course, by "personally affected", you mean they personally did die. But that would be a very strange idea.
        vidarh 5y ago
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  By extension of this way of telling a narrative, all Americans should fear for their lives the second a police officer stops their car because of the countless innocent black people murdered by the police. Stories of excessive police violence still make it to the news almost every week. However, most Americans don't need to fear for their lives by the police, and most Iraqis aren't Kurds. Most Iraqis weren't gassed or tortured either. You can't twist the narrative to pretend that the situation of the abused minorities are what the majority of the population experienced. Yes, they were living under their dictator's regime and no they were probably none too happy about the atrocities occurring, but that doesn't mean they didn't have a normal life outside that.
  - refurb 5y ago
    You’re really trying hard to draw equivalencies between two very different situations. In the US police kill less than 1,000 per year. Most are white people, many justifiably. So let’s overestimate and say 25% of those are murder. (Clearly not, but work with me). So 250 per year in a country of 350M. When the Kurds were gassed, a singular event, 3,000-5,000 people were killed. Random people, shelled by the Iraqi military for no reason other than living in the same place as rebellious Kurds. Iraq had a population of 16M at the time. Those are clearly two VERY different situation you’re trying to draw a parallel between.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      Misses the point which is not to justify or downplay either, but that most people lived a very different reality. That doesn't make the brutal mass murder of Kurds any more acceptable. It just underlines that trying to compress the story of those who lived in a given country in any period into just the atrocities is rarely going to be representative of everyone's lives.
      - refurb 5y ago
        Ok, I see your point now. I do agree that these events don’t define the life of the general population.

stareblinkstare 5y ago

>There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. You just read a blog post of a personal anecdote. What were you expecting? A dissertation?

throwaway2331 5y ago

> There's a reason why in scientific discussion anecdotal evidence is dismissed. Because it doesn't feed the research machine! One anecdote is dismissed. Ten anecdotes are collected to start grifting for grants. And one hundred anecdotes gives you Empiricism (TM)! I've come to value anecdotes as a marker of "something is there." To throw them away completely is foolish. Have you read most research papers being pumped out? The methodologies are always flawed (dare I say, biased; ha!) towards favorable results (or atleast I hope. Some of the methodologies I've seen for biological research are so stupid, I refuse to believe someone came up with them in good faith).

jokethrowaway 5y ago
There is definitely a replication crisis in academia, we should just have stricter requirements for what we consider science (especially in some fields which are terribly complicated and where you can find studies to prove something and its opposite) One anecdote should point us in a direction but it's not enough to prove anything.
justsomehnguy 5y ago
> I've come to value anecdotes as a marker of "something is there." AKA "there is a grain of joke in every joke". Not everything is bigger in Texas but this is a clear marker on some aspects of Texans self-perception. Which was exported so successfully it's now known not only in all other states but in other states too.