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I have otherwise intelligent friends who have unfortunately become immersed in Russian propaganda. With a straight face they will say that everything we see out

I have otherwise intelligent friends who have unfortunately become immersed in Russian propaganda. With a straight face they will say that everything we see out of Ukraine is a lie. That it is Ukraine bombing their own cities just to make Russia look bad. It's absolutely fantastic to me how people can just suspend reality and start believing the most absurd notions.

brvsft 4y ago
> That it is Ukraine bombing their own cities just to make Russia look bad. So you know how I feel about people suggesting that Russia bombed the Nord Stream pipeline.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  Who cares about the Nord Stream these days? It was completely discredited even before it was blown up, just like Schroeder. Nobody wants it, not even the people who pushed for it inside Germany, not to mention other countries.
  - brvsft 4y ago
    So first I was told that Russia blew it up to cut off natural gas supplies so that some European nations would have a very cold and bad winter. Now it's discredited even before it was blown up. Okay.
    - msm_ 4y ago
      I think NordStream is a great example. It was a big deal. I'm actually surprised that you're the only one that mentioned it. Everyone (I know and discussed with) agrees that Ukrainians obviously didn't bomb their cities, but everyone (including me) would also prefer to blame Russia for exploding NordStream, even if that doesn't make sense (unless it was a huge false flag). It's a tough pill to swallow, but (at least in my circles) most people did it and after the initial shock entertain the possibility that it was actually done by the US/EU. Just to be clear: it doesn't really change my perspective on the war or anything else - whoever did this was putting pressure on Russia and I support it. This move made "peace supporters" sponsored by Russia toothless, and cemented European support for Ukraine.
      - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
        > It's a tough pill to swallow Why? There are only benefits and no downsides.
thrown123098 4y ago
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medo-bear 4y ago
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0xy 4y ago
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- Taurenking 4y ago
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- K5EiS 4y ago
  Poland was an accident and a Russian missile did land close to the border. What snake island hoax? Ghost of Kyiv was started by a youtuber.
  - 0xy 4y ago
    1. An accident they first blamed on Russia (false flag), then denied, now continue to deny. Notably, they haven't apologized. They haven't helped the families. They don't care. Friendly fire on civilians in NATO countries? They can't even own up to it. 2. Ukraine claimed the Snake Island soldiers were killed in action, when in reality none were. 3. Ukraine supported, magnified and repeated the lie. The official Ukraine Twitter account magnified the false claim, repeatedly. All three of those things are clear propaganda.
    - K5EiS 4y ago
      1. It was a fair assumption to make, not a false flag. 2. Because they lost all contact with them and the ship started shooting at the island. 3. Because the concept of the Ghost of Kyiv went from one pilot to represent the entire airforce.
fxtentacle 4y ago
Just for the sake of argument: How do you believe the Ukranian military will conquer/liberate [1] those areas under Russian control? My impression is that by now, both sides have heavily bombed some areas. [1] That word depends on which newspaper you read.
- medo-bear 4y ago
  i keep reading reports that russians have run out of ammo and their soldiers are fighting with shovels now [1] so it must be the ukranians [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64855760 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64855760
  - K5EiS 4y ago
    > "armed with only 'firearms and shovels'" You left out the firearms part
    - polotics 4y ago
      A shovel is the most essential tool of infantry, if you can't dig your trench quickly, you are a dead man much faster...
      - khochesh_kushat 4y ago
        Is affixing shovels and charging enemy positions very common historically?
        throwaway742 4y ago
        Yes it was quite common. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIGIBJeRfnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIGIBJeRfnQ
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Truth is the first casualty of war. These stories have been going on since April of last year. https://www.newsweek.com/russian-army-days-away-running-out-resources-military-experts-say-1688025 https://www.newsweek.com/russian-army-days-away-running-out-... Each side is basically creating an echo chamber for their citizens to believe, so they will keep supporting an ongoing war until “the other side” is “100% defeated” so it “can’t attack us again”. I have seen this rhetoric in every proxy war, including Yemen since 2014 and Syria even before that. Sadly the same thing repeats in every conflict but most people don’t know that.
ed_elliott_asc 4y ago
A little bit like how people can still believe an election was “stolen”?
- FredPret 4y ago
  2016 or 2020?
  - calderknight 4y ago
    Both I presume.
    - ed_elliott_asc 4y ago
      And all future ones with such rigid controls in place
  - michaelt 4y ago
    2000, my boy Al Gore was robbed by that butterfly ballot UX
    - akimball 4y ago
      No, it was Roger Stone and SCotus that overturned the vote in Florida.
      - tossawayone23 4y ago
        No it was karl rove using internet connected hacked election machines.
        akimball 4y ago
        You're thinking of the Alabama and Ohio Senate races.
      - CamperBob2 4y ago
khochesh_kushat 4y ago
The other one that seems common seems to be a belief that if only you cede as much territory as possible to anyone who threatens you as soon as possible, then you can prevent a war and surely they won't come back and ask for more.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Which should quickly becomes obvious wouldn’t work with even a little bit of thought. Ceding territory to the faintest of threats is like catering to the whims of a high school bully: the only thing it does is invite more bullying, not only from the original bully but from others too. It’s practically shouting through a megaphone, “I’m a punching bag! Please come punch me, I won’t resist!”
sdrinf 4y ago
The Kremlin has been extremely busy with psyops deployment over the past year. See https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/disinformation-roulette-the-kremlins-year-of-lies-to-justify-an-unjustifiable-war/ https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/disinformatio... for a full report. | It's absolutely fantastic to me how people can just suspend reality and start believing the most absurd notions. There are three specific components to this. * It's important to understand, that brains are fundamentally survival machines, and agnostic to truth. If it gives delta-advantage, brains itself lie, hallucinate, and make up falsehoods to justify, and rationalize whatever that advantage is. * Living in a society introduces linear dependencies on other people's beliefs. Knowing, or behaving-as-if-knowing a "truth" when that "truth" is being negatively selected for, leads to a disadvantage, leads to no one actively speaking up for it, leads to only ever hearing the "pro" side. This is doubly so, when the party line has boots attached to it. * If you look at that list of lies above, you notice how extreme length they went. There is a bug in the brain, whereby when being told a big enough lie, internally the brain goes "surely this couldn't all be lies, right?", adjusts a little bit on the basis of "propaganda", then assumes the rest as "truth". This has been term'd "big lie": the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
- concordDance 4y ago
  > that brains are fundamentally survival machines, and agnostic to truth. It isn't true that brains are agnostic to the truth. Having an accurate model of the bits of reality you'll encounter is quite important for survival (a superstitious tribesperson won't believe that they can throw fireballs at incoming lions). > Knowing, or behaving-as-if-knowing a "truth" when that "truth" is being negatively selected for, leads to a disadvantage, leads to no one actively speaking up for it, leads to only ever hearing the "pro" side. Something we are sadly finding out for ourselves these days... with professors being removed from their positions for giving a platform to other academics with unpopular views: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1
- deleted 4y ago
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favaq 4y ago
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favzq 4y ago
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- irl_chad 4y ago
  Mate, it’s democracy vs dictatorship. Russia didn’t invade the US, it invaded Ukraine. We would keep fighting even without US support. Freedom is non-negotiable.
  - favzq 4y ago
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    - irl_chad 4y ago
      There wasn’t much support in the very beginning - sure, some javelins and NLAWs. Whether they were the difference maker is unclear. I see a lot of American “free thinkers” (who all think the same) push the argument that it was US provocations that lead to the war. While there are many many many (many…) counters to that, I will let the russians themselves offer their counter. Check out Putin’s essays on Ukraine - he (and the majority of russians) hold a deep belief that Ukraine is just part of russia, and that it should be returned to russia. As far as picking friends - who is giving military aid to help repel an aggressor, and who is killing, raping, torturing civilians?
    - polotics 4y ago
      Can you detail what you mean by "US-instigated provocation". As far as I understand the only provocation is helping show with Ukraine that ethnic/cultural Rus people can live and indeed prosper in a democratic society, so the ills of Russia are demionstrably Putin-mafia induced.
  - potatototoo99 4y ago
    If it were non-negotiable you wouldn't have compulsory conscription.
    - 4y ago
concordDance 4y ago
Ukraine is indeed firing artillary at their own cities, but not to make Russia look bad, but to defeat the Russian forces inside those pretty much abandoned cities.
- deleted 4y ago
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- practice9 4y ago
  The artillery war is in the eastern parts of the country. For the major cities like the ones in the link, I think more damage was done by Russia striking with cruise rockets and/or air-dropped bombs like FAB-250 or FAB-500. At least for a moment while Russia had air superiority they dropped bombs like this on Mykolaiv. It's very easy to attribute the rocket strikes against the civilians (example: the horrible one in Dnipro[1]) to Russia, as they don't really try to cover up anything.[2][3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dnipro_residential_building_airstrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dnipro_residential_buildi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Russian_strikes_against_Ukrainian_infrastructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Russian_stri... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremenchuk_shopping_mall_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremenchuk_shopping_mall_attac...
  - pydry 4y ago
    IIRC the Dnipro attack was the one where Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych was summarily fired for admitting that the residential building was hit because the missile was shot down by Ukrainian anti aircraft missiles. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/17/ukrainian-adviser-quits-after-claims-over-russian-missile-that-killed-dozens https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/17/ukrainian-advi...
    - practice9 4y ago
      I don't think the presidential advisor has access to military data. And the videos floating around show the incoming missile at high speed. IMO, if it really was hit, the trajectory would be different. The recent attack in Zaporizhya is similar: https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2023/mar/22/cctv-russian-missile-hits-zaporizhzhia-apartment-block-urkaine-video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2023/mar/22/cctv-rus...
haconBagrid 4y ago
Yeah, even in this thread there are several of them. It is so mind-boggling that some people just believe Russian lies.
- concordDance 4y ago
  I see no comments stating that Ukraine is bombing its own cities to make Russia look bad. I think you're making stuff up.
  - haconBagrid 4y ago
    You forgot /s :)
    - concordDance 4y ago
      Uh, I don't see a /s in your post?
- Friederbasten 4y ago
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  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    >homosexual fuck yeah >transexual fuck yeah >anti-White Sad that brown people get consideration now ? >multiracial fuck yeah >Zionist source? >pedophilic You mean the pedophilia that those who fling these accusations away end up being guilty of ?
  - khochesh_kushat 4y ago
    What a grab bag of bigotry, it's almost impressive to smush all that together into one grand conspiracy. For bonus points though consider adding "round earth liars", and it's almost a shame it's missing some kind of ivermectin related point.
    - 4y ago
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
Same for me: People that argument that the western world, NATO and Ukraine were antagonizing Russia and it‘s a just war. I can‘t wrap my head around this mindset. I minimized my interactions with those friends.
- typeofhuman 4y ago
  Did you consider evaluating or researching their claims? From your comment, it suggests you're rejecting information that doesn't align with your preconceived notions. This is a common bias we all suffer from. But we should be aware of it and try to work against it at times, especially when the consequence is dissolving friendships.
  - mongol 4y ago
    It really isn't neccessary. Following current events over the course of decades would tell you all that is needed. No need to "research" obvious lies.
- bilqis 4y ago
  It’s not a just war, it’s a Russian imperialistic aggression, but let’s not pretend that there weren’t so many enablers and provocateurs on the NATO/US side. Minsk agreements were basically abandoned from the start and no one enforced them, EU ignored Crimea annexation and continued pumping billions of dollars into Russia (you can see these billions now in form of rockets and bombs in Ukraine), NATO has been expanding to the East and antagonising paranoid Russia.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    > NATO has been expanding to the East and antagonising paranoid Russia. It's actually independent states which chose to align themselves with NATO instead of Russia. Interestingly in some countries it was the post-communists who spearheaded the effort. Tells you all you need to know about what happens to anyone who choses Russia over the west. It's rarely, if ever a good deal.
Freak_NL 4y ago
Here in the Netherlands such voices exist, but they are quite fringe and limited to the usual crowd. In part this is due to the downing of flight MH17 in 2014 by a Russian surface-to-air missile fired by a Russian crew operating in the Donbas to support the separatists (not with the intent of shooting down a commercial passenger plane obviously). The deaths of almost 200 Dutch and the subsequent investigation and trial leave little room for doubting that Russia is the aggressor here.
- irl_chad 4y ago
  Unfortunately I don’t know much about the Dutch perspective on this. As an American, this is the kind of thing that gets America to go to war - why didn’t the Netherlands decide to intervene after MH17?
  - dannyw 4y ago
    All signs point to the downing of MH17 as an accident. That's not solid foundation for casus belli.
    - newjersey 4y ago
      I would have agreed with you had Russia accepted that it made a mistake. In the absence of something small as an acknowledgment and a formal apology (followed up by large monetary compensations for the victims’ families), it isn’t obvious to me how anytime can assume it was an accident. The apology should have come immediately after the incident, without anyone asking for it. It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. - Epictetus
      - throwaway744678 4y ago
        It is very well possible that it happened through discrete diplomatic channels (and then someone forgot to post it on HN)
      - haconBagrid 4y ago
bilqis 4y ago
I think we should be critical of any information that is coming from states engaged in the war and their supporters. I imagine Ukraine is generating as much false information as Russia, prime example is information about losses in personnel and equipment, both sides report small numbers of their own losses and astronomical losses suffered by the enemy. I think we will learn actual truths about this horrific war only after decades has passed and historians will be able to dig out all the Russian crimes, all civilian and militant’s death tolls. I hope this war will stop as soon as possible, it creates nothing but piles of corpses and destroyed cities. I can’t imagine how Ukraine will build itself up after all this is over.
- colordrops 4y ago
  It's a form of propaganda to shame anyone who doesn't believe things unconditionally. The comment you are replying to is an example, using shame and insults to herd you into their preferred narrative.
  - M4v3R 4y ago
    > It's a form of propaganda to shame anyone who doesn't believe things unconditionally. Not necessarily. If someone doesn’t believe something that is universally believed and for what there exist undeniable evidence (for example the fact that the Earth is round) then shaming this kind of thinking is not propaganda, it’s just stating the fact.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      No, everything, absolutely everything must be ascertained with a critical eye, backed by evidence. Even the curvature of the earth, which thankfully is relatively easy to prove to yourself. Nevertheless, it does not have special status compared to any other piece of knowledge. You can excuse people for mistakenly believing in falsehoods like flat earth when the wool is being actively pulled over their eyes in a dozen other ways, from religion, political propaganda, corporate lies for profit, and predatory employment practices. Why are shame and insults fair game for flat earth but not Christianity or unquestioning patriotism or support for capitalism? Shame and insults only cause people to dig in their heels deeper. If your goal is to raise the veil of ignorance you are failing. Everyone is ignorant in many ways. And your point isn't even relevant. Scientific facts and politically charged events aren't even remotely the same when it comes to ascertaining truth value. Never in history has there been a war where only one side spews propaganda.
fuoqi 4y ago
>That it is Ukraine bombing their own cities They do bomb them. Or do you think it's the Russian or rebel forces bombed Luhansk and Donetsk since 2014, and the Zaporizhia nuclear plant since the war started? There is a ton of blatant lies being told by the pro-Ukranian side before and after the start of the war. For example, the infamous "air conditioner explosion" was later confirmed to be a targeted strike of the Luhansk state administration building by the Ukrainian government. Of course, it goes in both directions.
- concordDance 4y ago
  And note that just because there are pro Ukrainian lies does not mean the Ukrainian and Russian governments and media mouthpieces lie the same amount! I personally do not have the data to make an informed assessment, but I would be unsurprised if the Ukrainian side lies less than half as much as the Russian one.
  - 0xy 4y ago
    They lied about bombing civilians in Poland, and continue to deny they are responsible in 2023. Of course, this was after they blamed Russia.
    - armada651 4y ago
      You mean the anti-air rockets that landed in Poland after they were fired to protect civilians against Russian missile strikes? That "bombing" of Poland?
      - thdespou 4y ago
        It's funny how twisted is the whole narrative just to justify their actions. Pathetic.
      - pydry 4y ago
        Yes, that missile. Zelensky contradicted western reports that it was Ukrainian AA and stated repeatedly that it was a Russian missile attack on NATO territory.
cpach 4y ago
Very sad. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
newsclues 4y ago
There are two sides of an information/propaganda war currently fighting. After the last few years of information war at home, it doesn’t surprise me that people are sucked into the false narratives of both sides rather than taking the time and effort to try and make sense and discern truth ourselves.
- ImHereToVote 4y ago
  You mean, do your own research?
  - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
    Looks like we got ourselves a READER over here boys.
smcl 4y ago
There are people here on HN who do this, and not just the green-name accounts that get spun up, spew nonsense for a few days before being downvoted to the point that they're shadowbanned. There are years-old accounts who do carry a lot of water for Putin - a mixture of this blatant denialism and jUsT aSkInG qUeStIoNs.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
  Do you believe the US wanted to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine? Or that it was displeased with the invasion? Just asking questions.
  - smcl 4y ago
    Don't know if you're trolling, or making a joke but I'll bite just once: I believe it doesn't matter, that Russia was going to invade whether the US wanted to stop or encourage them, whether they were displeased or excited or even if they were indifferent to the matter altogether. There are a lot of people who remove any agency from Putin or Russia and talk like Joe Biden himself texted all the various Generals in the Russian Army instructing them to invade and that Putin just ran with it out of embarrassment.
    - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
      You believe US motivation “doesn’t matter” here - why? Because it has no influence over the situation? In that case, idk what we’re even arguing about. If however the world’s dominant imperial superpower *does* have some influence, then its motivation and goals *do* matter. Right?
      - smcl 4y ago
        Ah ok you're one of those. Alright, have fun on HN :)
        JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
hnarn 4y ago
> otherwise intelligent friends Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ukraine bombing its own cities to make Russia “look bad” is such a claim. As is most conspiratorial claims regarding Covid, and so on ad nauseam. I think that if you see “intelligent” people that have a hard time navigating a scientific and methodological way of finding out the truth, such as when you discard these extraordinary claims due to the lack of extraordinary evidence, maybe you need to re-evaluate what “intelligent” actually means, or how you qualify it. The most intelligent people I’ve ever met are filled with doubt, because they have the skill I just mentioned. Faced with extraordinary claims they respond “that’s strange, I wonder if it can be substantiated” — they do not respond by fervently trying to convince anyone they meet that something REALLY crazy is going on and we all need to figure out the “real” state of things IMMEDIATELY without regard for method and process. What I might agree with you in, is that conspiratorial thinking much like alcoholism or gambling addiction, obviously CAN “infect” very intelligent people, because they are at the end of the day just people. But an intelligent person with a mental illness does not make them less intelligent, nor does it make that mental illness more “real”. The real and fundamental problem underneath all of this is the so-called “post truth society” we’re increasingly moving into, where what’s actually true doesn’t seem to matter anymore, and people just feel like they’re combatants in a war of ideas, and the more they push their ideas regardless of their truthfulness, the more true that idea becomes. That might be true for ideology, or cultural movements, but it’s not true for investigative journalism and scientific exploration.
- colordrops 4y ago
  What makes you the arbiter as to what is an "extraordinary claim"?
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    I do think this is a legitimate question. The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions. It seems precarious to apply different levels of scrutiny to claims based on such a basis.
agumonkey 4y ago
We're molecules in a weird soup, nothing is really fixed... depending on the emotional context, the tension of the era, the global fatigue, objectivity can take a massive blow. Social childish regression in a way.
HopenHeyHi 4y ago
It is a confluence of a great many things. Here is Bertrand Russell on his meeting with Vladimir Lenin in 1920: https://youtu.be/6TK9c-caEcw?t=65 https://youtu.be/6TK9c-caEcw?t=65 Lenin: Oh we're not establishing peasant proprietorship, it is, you see there are poor peasants and rich peasants and we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants and they soon hang them from the nearest tree. *cackle* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra It predates modern day Russian, Soviets, or even Bolsheviks. It goes back to Mensheviks who initially developed such psyops to get into and hold power. They had their own inspirations of course but this is really where this evil exploded. It isn't some big secret - the ends justify the means, so lie, make false equivalencies, get people all stirred up and questioning reality and sow distrust as much as possible. Once you get in power you'll put things in order what could possibly go wrong? Things are dire and can't get any worse, so get in power by all means necessary. With the backdrop of the Cold War they turned it outwards, if you aren't familiar you can get a good feel for the vibe from any Adam Curtis documentary, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation The problem is that once trust collapses and nobody believes in the media, the institutions, and everybody is aware that people lie -- the trick really is to get you to lie also, even a little bit -- a society can get completely untethered from reality. > It's absolutely fantastic to me how people can just suspend reality and start believing the most absurd notions. A lot of conspiracies do end up true, coverups are a thing, who can you trust? What even is real? It is not that your friends are bad people or lack critical reasoning skills. They got shaken out of solid ground and now are in a question-everything mindset. Very effective. Tragically so.
willcipriano 4y ago
Ukraine did have that whoopsie where they launched a missle into Poland and blamed it on the Russians: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-zelenskiy-says-russian-missiles-hit-poland-significant-escalation-2022-11-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-zelenskiy-says... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/16/poland-president-missile-strike-probably-ukrainian-stray https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/16/poland-preside...
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  You know they didn't launch a missile on purpose but were shooting down a Moscovian rocket, do you?
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    You know Russia is just invading Ukraine to fight nazis right? Or do we not take press releases at face value, totally uncritically?
sbst32 4y ago
In many cases it's a form of a psychological defense - it's way too difficult to live in a reality where your country is killing droves of innocent people so your brain can switch to the "let's pretend that it's a giant lie and continue on" mode. It's the path of the least resistance: "we are the good guys, they are the bad guys, I can live with myself, all is good".
- luckylion 4y ago
  That may be the case for some Russians (though for those living abroad? I'm not sure, there's a reason they're living abroad after all), but for Germans in Germany or Americans born and raised in the US? It seems to me that at least for these cases, it's more of an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing. They've lost connection to the society around them and perceive it as hostile, so anything that the mainstream (or the government as the mainstream's enforcer) views negatively they automatically view in a more positive light. And since their enemy is always lying, they'll eat up anything that agrees with that position.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    I don’t know about Germany, but in the U.S. it’s almost exclusively people who have established a group identity which demands that they recognize the Biden administration (and generally the American left) as the foremost evil in the world.
keithalewis 4y ago
I also have seemingly intelligent friends who believe 2000 years ago a woman gave birth to a child without having intercourse. Us human are great at making up stories.
fauxpause_ 4y ago
People decide who their enemy is and call it a day. A lot of people decide that enemy is their own governments. They’re not smart. They treated wisdom as a dump stat and figure they could compensate with int.
- yks 4y ago
  Westerners deciding in droves that their governments are the worst and Russia is never at fault is suspicious though. I guess if those Westerners equally despised Russia, that would show some integrity, but what we see is people “deciding” to assist Russia in its endeavors even when those endeavors are stealing foreign children. Like when there was a post about ICC’s warrant for Putin here, of course the commenters arrived with “how dare the West prosecute crimes”
  - fauxpause_ 4y ago
    Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd frontman falls into this group. It sucks. The guy who wrote so much about the negative impact of war. But then you think about how much hatred he seemed to have for his government and it’s not hard to see him falling for any narrative that supports that view. It sucks. Humans just suck. Bigotry is just a subset of the same misguided reasoning that 95% of people seem to use for forming their opinions.
  - pydry 4y ago
    >Westerners deciding in droves that their governments are the worst and Russia is never at fault is suspicious though. I guess if those Westerners equally despised Russia, that would show some integrity This was the Soviet attitude to dissident Andrei Sakharov. Because he said he did not care about American atrocities, and that he only had an opinion on Soviet atrocities, they used this to try and discredit him. Do you think the Soviets were correct to vilify him for this? >Like when there was a post about ICC’s warrant for Putin here, of course the commenters arrived with “how dare the West prosecute crimes” After the Hague invasion act and the subsequent refusal by the ICC to prosecute western war crimes it kind of became kind of a joke of an institution. Look, all you have to do is threaten them with violence and they back down! This is why South Africa, for instance, has explicitly refused to respect the warrant. Russia is now considering cloning the Hague invasion act. As with most Russian evils it tends to treat US behavior as a template for what it can get away with and since US citizens havent been so good at holding their own country to account...
rossdavidh 4y ago
What is oddest about this one, which I have not heard before btw, is that Russia claims (boasts) of bombing Ukrainian cities, especially the electricity infrastructure.
FuriouslyAdrift 4y ago
You can shut down someones rational mind simply by getting them deeply emotional or stressed. Any primal emotion works: fear, lust, anger, anxiety, shame, etc. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4774859/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4774859/
Spooky23 4y ago
The Russians are really good at this stuff. The 2016 elections in the US were the culmination of years of work. The Russians used their weird news network and social media operations to magnify useful idiots, promote QAnon, and create maximum chaos.
- macinjosh 4y ago
  Now that is a conspiracy theory
once_inc 4y ago
Before responding: please note that I do not believe Ukraine bombed itself, or that I diminish the suffering and casualties that have happened since the war. This site allows you to select a number of streets and see a before/after picture. The site does not allow you to select the many streets that are entirely unchanged, or of which the changes are minimal or even positive (if those even exist). Propaganda exists in every war, and comes from both sides. The intelligence test isn't to chose which side is right, it is to discern which bit of information is taken out of context, blown out of proportion, or factually incorrect. Is Russia wrong for starting a war? Yes. Is it completely its fault and totally unprovoked? Probably not. Is the Ukraine completely free of sin? Also probably not. War sucks.
- kriops 4y ago
  Please explain how it could conceivably NOT be completely Russia’s fault that they chose to aggress another country with the casus belli being made up history that wouldn’t pass as legitimate justification even if it were true.
  - adolph 4y ago
    Is this a reading comprehension test? The g-parent comment notes “Is Russia wrong for starting a war? Yes.”
    - throwaway8689 4y ago
      Can you address the 'unprovoked' part? Reading comprehension here involves reading a whole paragraph.
      - adolph 4y ago
        There is no need to address “unprovoked”. If it were provoked, would it make the invasion unwrong? Edit: s/we’re/it were/
        4y ago
Georgelemental 4y ago
In my opinion, the undeniable horror of Russia's crimes makes it even more important to point out when Ukrainian forces do something bad as well, and to push back against it. Russia is overall committing far more evil than Ukraine, but if we have a mindset of "as long as we are less evil than the Russian government it's OK" then that leaves a lot of room for us to fall. That being said: it's totally true that military forces aligned with Ukraine have shelled Ukrainian cities, in Donestk and Luhansk. Usually it is to strike at Russian military targets, but sometimes it is extremist factions like Azov who genuinely want to kill civilians and children. There is plenty of video evidence.
yks 4y ago
This trope unfolds in an even more absurd way in the Russian-speaking media space, where participants are trained in genocidal thinking. Every bombing of a Ukrainian city is met with a cheering applause and reveling in how those Ukrainians got what “they deserve”, but then (or simultaneously?) the narrative switches into “Ukrainians bomb themselves”.
stanleydrew 4y ago
Ah yes, the false flag accusation. I've noticed it's almost always the first thing propagandists turn to, probably because it's effective and basically unfalsifiable. It allows you to project your prior beliefs onto the actors in any situation.
- glogla 4y ago
  Also, the Russian have their experience with false flags (a while back with Finland and recent ones with apartment bombings) and as it often is with propagandists, accusations are also confessions.
eruci 4y ago
Meaningless lives, Absurdity thrives.
nateabele 4y ago
The real mind-hack is that people believe it's exclusively one or the other, and argue vociferously against the other side. George Orwell once wrote of the Spanish Civil War: "Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’." This has always happened, and it's still happening. Anybody remember the Ghost of Kyiv, or the 'fuck you' surrender? No, 'everything we see out of Ukraine' is not a lie (which in itself is a false dichotomy: we've seen plenty of 'facts' framed in a way that's explicitly misleading), but the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence of the past ~year, not to mention the rest of human history, suggests that a lot of it probably is.
- dzikimarian 4y ago
  Yeah, but constructing morale-boosting urban legend such as Ghost of Kiev is a bit different, than Russians trying to imply that Ukrainians are nazis who will systematically destroy own cities to make Russian saviors look bad. Don't you think?
- skybrian 4y ago
  Yes, it happens, but for Ukraine, I think you’re concentrating on small media-friendly stories and deemphasizing a larger amount of consensus reality. For example, there’s little argument over where the front lines are and how they’ve changed. There are maps. Sometimes there is temporary confusion when things are changing quickly.
Mizoguchi 4y ago
Are they Russians living in Russia? A good friend of mine is Russian and from his recent trip to Moscow to see his relatives his conclusion was they are helpless when it comes to changing their optics on the invasion of Ukraine. And these are highly educated people, including lawyers and doctors, definitely not dumb. Growing up under a dictatorial regime myself I know how effective the influx of propaganda can be, combine that with high levels of paranoia (the west is out to get us!) and distrust among family members, friends and neighbors (you learn how to keep your opinions to your self because you never know who's going to snitch) and what you get is a large portion of the population which doesn't belong to the stereotypical undecuated and easily manipulated bunch supporting a regime involved in war crimes. Not rare at all.
twawaaay 4y ago
The problem is that normal people are easy to manipulate by people who know what they are doing. All our history is pretty much masses of people manipulated to hate other nations so that ruling class / political / spiritual leaders can get what they want. Do you think Germans somehow evolved to a different, mean, heartless kind of being before and during WWII? No, they were normal people who were manipulated by people who were somehow skilled in manipulation. In my opinion there are only two things that can meaningfully save nations from sliding into darkness. One is teaching empathy to other people regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, race, occupation, upbringing, age, religion, class or nationality. And another is teaching history of the world so that people can see connection between what is happening contemporarily and some stupid things humanity has done in the past.
4bpp 4y ago
There are always people who go through mental contortions to justify to themselves that their own side is spotless. However, in this case there is a common and much more valid objection that the framing is hypocritical, or at least based on a different and much less appealing set of standards than the implied "attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime and humanity must unite to punish whoever engages in it". Consider for example Mosul after the US-led campaign to recapture it in 2016 (https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2018/4/29/mosul-post-isil-a-city-struggling-to-rebuild https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2018/4/29/mosul-post-isil-...), which looks as devastated as any fought-over city in Ukraine; NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999 (https://balkaninsight.com/2012/06/11/nato-99-bombing-in-pictures/ https://balkaninsight.com/2012/06/11/nato-99-bombing-in-pict...), which seems to be well on par with Russia's bombing of Ukraine's backline cities in this war; and indeed Ukraine's own bombing of Donetsk since 2014 (referred to in words at https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-idUKKBN0GK12020140820 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-idUKKBN0GK..., and captured on video in a documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JovKkDvAU9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JovKkDvAU9Y) that mostly seemed to be criticised only based on the author's politics). In all of these cases, the criticism of the invasion itself was already much more ambivalent in Western society - I went to a protest against the Iraq war in 2003 as a schoolkid in Germany, and was accused of "childish anti-Americanism" for it by a teacher - and the attendant destruction was nearly universally shrugged off as somewhere between "sad, but that's just how war is" and "to save this city we had to destroy it". Suggestions that the US government or its allies should face repercussions or even a war crimes trial were widely dismissed as far-left ravings (and one should not forget that when this was actually tried, they sanctioned the ICC (https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-why-has-the-icc-excluded-the-us-from-war-crimes-probe/a-59367096 https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-why-has-the-icc-excluded-t...)). Considering that the remedy for this particular case of violence implicitly suggested by the authors of OP's website seems to be to militarily empower the US and its allies further, I think the moral case being made looks rather less clear-cut.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
We don't naturally approach narrative with science or sound logic. These are intentional acts. They must be learned and applied. Intelligence is a broad categorization. It is unlikely to apply exhaustively to any person. Propaganda takes an obvious lie, and surrounds it with acceptable narratives. Those surrounding narratives are attached to emotional identity. Once a person accepts the surrounding narratives as part of their identity, they have implicitly accepted the obvious lie. Whether or not they accept the lie as stated directly is a matter of semantic argument, not logical deduction. We are not machines. We do not follow a series of instructions based on logic and arithmetic. We are mammals. A machine cannot accept vague narratives. It must be explicit about every logical connection, because everything it is and does is written in a "context-free grammar". Since all context-free grammars can be translated into pure mathematical functions, machine belief is pure logic. Humans do not have that feature. We use "context-dependent grammar" to communicate. That means our narratives can, and often do, include ambiguous conclusions. This is a powerful tool: we can express unknowns without resolving them. This allows us to extend our knowledge outside of what is already known. It allows us to work with vague data, draw impossible conclusions, then put those conclusions to the test. This is the foundation for science itself, yet science is not the only path ahead. Ambiguity must be resolved with decision. Not only is it a lot of work to decide every time language gets ambiguous, making that decision at that step in the process makes the decision itself as arbitrary as possible. Thankfully, we have an optimization: worldview. By constructing a system of beliefs, we essentially give ourselves a precomiled library of narratives. Whenever we interpret ambiguous language, we can quickly check our library for a narrative that resolves the ambiguity. Of course, this really gets into the weeds: language is full of complex high-order patterns, and any one of them can contain or resolve ambiguity. Multiple narratives may resolve an ambiguity ambiguously: effectively moving the problem instead of solving it. Because humans build a worldview out of narratives, that worldview can contain flawed logic, and even outright contradictions. It still works, because any time a person tries to resolve an ambiguity using a conflicted set of worldview narratives, they simply choose which narrative applies to that ambiguity. This choice is most easily determined by emotion: what result feels right. People don't get their narratives exclusively from the outside. We also invent new narratives. I suspect that we do this by hallucinating fictional stories that bridge the narrative gaps in our worldview. If you have ever talked with someone who has Autism Spectrum Disorder, you may have noticed a pattern of direct questions and dry logical answers. It's well known that people with ASD have difficulty directing their focus away from external stimulus. Studies have also shown that people with ASD report more hallucinated physical experiences than people without ASD. I suspect this leads to a fundamental need for logically categorized worldview: if you can't ignore a narrative, you probably need to find room for it in your existing worldview. If you are already bombarded with both real and hallucinated simulation, you will probably feel too worn out to hallucinate your own narratives, which would make narrative gaps and contradictions stressful. If you have ever talked to (or read about) someone who has taken a trip on LSD, psilocybin, etc., you may have noticed a pattern of wildly fictional stories, some of which continue well after the trip as a part of the person's worldview. Hallucinagens are known to cause many arbitrary and random connections across the brain; where connections would normally follow the "grooves" that were carved by lived experience. The experience of a trip is well known to help restructure unwanted patterns of behavior (like addiction), and also to result in new unwanted behavior patterns (like fear and anxiety). Because hallucinagens don't replace cognition entirely with the noise of hallucination, having someone else guide the experience can be very effective. Without guidance, it's possible for negatively engaging hallucinations (like fear or anxiety) to become a focus of the experience, carve new grooves in the brain, and become a lingering experience after the trip has ended. How can we intentionally curate our worldview? Critical thinking allows us to reconsider the narratives we hold as beliefs objectively. We can copy those narratives into a place that is totally detached from emotion, and criticize them. By doing this intentionally, we can more easily accept the result, and change our worldview. This is like hallucination, but following the strict rules of logic. We can also accept narratives from trusted sources. If we feel confident that someone else has already performed the critical thinking, it's easy to accept their result as a shortcut. The obvious problem here is that that person may be wrong, or even dishonest. The more insidious problem is that that person is not likely to share all of the narratives in their own worldview: instead they share only the narratives they changed. The worldview you apply that change to may be compatible but different, resulting in a completely different result. We may also continue living without any intentional curation. A conflicted worldview does not inherently need resolution. Many stories contain contradictions that remain unsolved until the end: maybe you are living in the middle of your story, and find the conflicts exciting. Living this way is called "cognitive dissonance". Like two notes a half step apart create many harmonic voices, two contradicted narratives allow for a very large set of potential resolving narratives. A life lacking direction is full of possibilities. Dissonance is uncomfortable: our reaction to it may be to resolve it with critical thinking, but simple avoidance is a much shorter path to comfort. If we want to help people change their beliefs, we should focus on the narratives that construct those beliefs. In order to know what those are in the first place, we must practice empathy. It's hard work, and it feels like the wrong strategy. Even worse, it feels insidious, because intentional empathy is very similar to propaganda.

brvsft 4y ago

> That it is Ukraine bombing their own cities just to make Russia look bad. So you know how I feel about people suggesting that Russia bombed the Nord Stream pipeline.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
Who cares about the Nord Stream these days? It was completely discredited even before it was blown up, just like Schroeder. Nobody wants it, not even the people who pushed for it inside Germany, not to mention other countries.
- brvsft 4y ago
  So first I was told that Russia blew it up to cut off natural gas supplies so that some European nations would have a very cold and bad winter. Now it's discredited even before it was blown up. Okay.
  - msm_ 4y ago
    I think NordStream is a great example. It was a big deal. I'm actually surprised that you're the only one that mentioned it. Everyone (I know and discussed with) agrees that Ukrainians obviously didn't bomb their cities, but everyone (including me) would also prefer to blame Russia for exploding NordStream, even if that doesn't make sense (unless it was a huge false flag). It's a tough pill to swallow, but (at least in my circles) most people did it and after the initial shock entertain the possibility that it was actually done by the US/EU. Just to be clear: it doesn't really change my perspective on the war or anything else - whoever did this was putting pressure on Russia and I support it. This move made "peace supporters" sponsored by Russia toothless, and cemented European support for Ukraine.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
      > It's a tough pill to swallow Why? There are only benefits and no downsides.

thrown123098 4y ago

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medo-bear 4y ago

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0xy 4y ago

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Taurenking 4y ago
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K5EiS 4y ago
Poland was an accident and a Russian missile did land close to the border. What snake island hoax? Ghost of Kyiv was started by a youtuber.
- 0xy 4y ago
  1. An accident they first blamed on Russia (false flag), then denied, now continue to deny. Notably, they haven't apologized. They haven't helped the families. They don't care. Friendly fire on civilians in NATO countries? They can't even own up to it. 2. Ukraine claimed the Snake Island soldiers were killed in action, when in reality none were. 3. Ukraine supported, magnified and repeated the lie. The official Ukraine Twitter account magnified the false claim, repeatedly. All three of those things are clear propaganda.
  - K5EiS 4y ago
    1. It was a fair assumption to make, not a false flag. 2. Because they lost all contact with them and the ship started shooting at the island. 3. Because the concept of the Ghost of Kyiv went from one pilot to represent the entire airforce.

fxtentacle 4y ago

Just for the sake of argument: How do you believe the Ukranian military will conquer/liberate [1] those areas under Russian control? My impression is that by now, both sides have heavily bombed some areas. [1] That word depends on which newspaper you read.

medo-bear 4y ago
i keep reading reports that russians have run out of ammo and their soldiers are fighting with shovels now [1] so it must be the ukranians [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64855760 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64855760
- K5EiS 4y ago
  > "armed with only 'firearms and shovels'" You left out the firearms part
  - polotics 4y ago
    A shovel is the most essential tool of infantry, if you can't dig your trench quickly, you are a dead man much faster...
    - khochesh_kushat 4y ago
      Is affixing shovels and charging enemy positions very common historically?
      - throwaway742 4y ago
        Yes it was quite common. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIGIBJeRfnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIGIBJeRfnQ
- EGreg 4y ago
  Truth is the first casualty of war. These stories have been going on since April of last year. https://www.newsweek.com/russian-army-days-away-running-out-resources-military-experts-say-1688025 https://www.newsweek.com/russian-army-days-away-running-out-... Each side is basically creating an echo chamber for their citizens to believe, so they will keep supporting an ongoing war until “the other side” is “100% defeated” so it “can’t attack us again”. I have seen this rhetoric in every proxy war, including Yemen since 2014 and Syria even before that. Sadly the same thing repeats in every conflict but most people don’t know that.

ed_elliott_asc 4y ago

A little bit like how people can still believe an election was “stolen”?

FredPret 4y ago
2016 or 2020?
- calderknight 4y ago
  Both I presume.
  - ed_elliott_asc 4y ago
    And all future ones with such rigid controls in place
- michaelt 4y ago
  2000, my boy Al Gore was robbed by that butterfly ballot UX
  - akimball 4y ago
    No, it was Roger Stone and SCotus that overturned the vote in Florida.
    - tossawayone23 4y ago
      No it was karl rove using internet connected hacked election machines.
      - akimball 4y ago
        You're thinking of the Alabama and Ohio Senate races.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago

khochesh_kushat 4y ago

The other one that seems common seems to be a belief that if only you cede as much territory as possible to anyone who threatens you as soon as possible, then you can prevent a war and surely they won't come back and ask for more.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
Which should quickly becomes obvious wouldn’t work with even a little bit of thought. Ceding territory to the faintest of threats is like catering to the whims of a high school bully: the only thing it does is invite more bullying, not only from the original bully but from others too. It’s practically shouting through a megaphone, “I’m a punching bag! Please come punch me, I won’t resist!”

sdrinf 4y ago

The Kremlin has been extremely busy with psyops deployment over the past year. See https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/disinformation-roulette-the-kremlins-year-of-lies-to-justify-an-unjustifiable-war/ https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/disinformatio... for a full report. | It's absolutely fantastic to me how people can just suspend reality and start believing the most absurd notions. There are three specific components to this. * It's important to understand, that brains are fundamentally survival machines, and agnostic to truth. If it gives delta-advantage, brains itself lie, hallucinate, and make up falsehoods to justify, and rationalize whatever that advantage is. * Living in a society introduces linear dependencies on other people's beliefs. Knowing, or behaving-as-if-knowing a "truth" when that "truth" is being negatively selected for, leads to a disadvantage, leads to no one actively speaking up for it, leads to only ever hearing the "pro" side. This is doubly so, when the party line has boots attached to it. * If you look at that list of lies above, you notice how extreme length they went. There is a bug in the brain, whereby when being told a big enough lie, internally the brain goes "surely this couldn't all be lies, right?", adjusts a little bit on the basis of "propaganda", then assumes the rest as "truth". This has been term'd "big lie": the use of a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

concordDance 4y ago
> that brains are fundamentally survival machines, and agnostic to truth. It isn't true that brains are agnostic to the truth. Having an accurate model of the bits of reality you'll encounter is quite important for survival (a superstitious tribesperson won't believe that they can throw fireballs at incoming lions). > Knowing, or behaving-as-if-knowing a "truth" when that "truth" is being negatively selected for, leads to a disadvantage, leads to no one actively speaking up for it, leads to only ever hearing the "pro" side. Something we are sadly finding out for ourselves these days... with professors being removed from their positions for giving a platform to other academics with unpopular views: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1 https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/resignation.html?m=1
deleted 4y ago
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favaq 4y ago

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favzq 4y ago

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irl_chad 4y ago
Mate, it’s democracy vs dictatorship. Russia didn’t invade the US, it invaded Ukraine. We would keep fighting even without US support. Freedom is non-negotiable.
- favzq 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - irl_chad 4y ago
    There wasn’t much support in the very beginning - sure, some javelins and NLAWs. Whether they were the difference maker is unclear. I see a lot of American “free thinkers” (who all think the same) push the argument that it was US provocations that lead to the war. While there are many many many (many…) counters to that, I will let the russians themselves offer their counter. Check out Putin’s essays on Ukraine - he (and the majority of russians) hold a deep belief that Ukraine is just part of russia, and that it should be returned to russia. As far as picking friends - who is giving military aid to help repel an aggressor, and who is killing, raping, torturing civilians?
  - polotics 4y ago
    Can you detail what you mean by "US-instigated provocation". As far as I understand the only provocation is helping show with Ukraine that ethnic/cultural Rus people can live and indeed prosper in a democratic society, so the ills of Russia are demionstrably Putin-mafia induced.
- potatototoo99 4y ago
  If it were non-negotiable you wouldn't have compulsory conscription.
  - 4y ago

concordDance 4y ago

Ukraine is indeed firing artillary at their own cities, but not to make Russia look bad, but to defeat the Russian forces inside those pretty much abandoned cities.

deleted 4y ago
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practice9 4y ago
The artillery war is in the eastern parts of the country. For the major cities like the ones in the link, I think more damage was done by Russia striking with cruise rockets and/or air-dropped bombs like FAB-250 or FAB-500. At least for a moment while Russia had air superiority they dropped bombs like this on Mykolaiv. It's very easy to attribute the rocket strikes against the civilians (example: the horrible one in Dnipro[1]) to Russia, as they don't really try to cover up anything.[2][3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dnipro_residential_building_airstrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dnipro_residential_buildi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Russian_strikes_against_Ukrainian_infrastructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Russian_stri... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremenchuk_shopping_mall_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremenchuk_shopping_mall_attac...
- pydry 4y ago
  IIRC the Dnipro attack was the one where Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych was summarily fired for admitting that the residential building was hit because the missile was shot down by Ukrainian anti aircraft missiles. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/17/ukrainian-adviser-quits-after-claims-over-russian-missile-that-killed-dozens https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/17/ukrainian-advi...
  - practice9 4y ago
    I don't think the presidential advisor has access to military data. And the videos floating around show the incoming missile at high speed. IMO, if it really was hit, the trajectory would be different. The recent attack in Zaporizhya is similar: https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2023/mar/22/cctv-russian-missile-hits-zaporizhzhia-apartment-block-urkaine-video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2023/mar/22/cctv-rus...

haconBagrid 4y ago

Yeah, even in this thread there are several of them. It is so mind-boggling that some people just believe Russian lies.

concordDance 4y ago
I see no comments stating that Ukraine is bombing its own cities to make Russia look bad. I think you're making stuff up.
- haconBagrid 4y ago
  You forgot /s :)
  - concordDance 4y ago
    Uh, I don't see a /s in your post?
Friederbasten 4y ago
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- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  >homosexual fuck yeah >transexual fuck yeah >anti-White Sad that brown people get consideration now ? >multiracial fuck yeah >Zionist source? >pedophilic You mean the pedophilia that those who fling these accusations away end up being guilty of ?
- khochesh_kushat 4y ago
  What a grab bag of bigotry, it's almost impressive to smush all that together into one grand conspiracy. For bonus points though consider adding "round earth liars", and it's almost a shame it's missing some kind of ivermectin related point.
  - 4y ago

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

Same for me: People that argument that the western world, NATO and Ukraine were antagonizing Russia and it‘s a just war. I can‘t wrap my head around this mindset. I minimized my interactions with those friends.

typeofhuman 4y ago
Did you consider evaluating or researching their claims? From your comment, it suggests you're rejecting information that doesn't align with your preconceived notions. This is a common bias we all suffer from. But we should be aware of it and try to work against it at times, especially when the consequence is dissolving friendships.
- mongol 4y ago
  It really isn't neccessary. Following current events over the course of decades would tell you all that is needed. No need to "research" obvious lies.
bilqis 4y ago
It’s not a just war, it’s a Russian imperialistic aggression, but let’s not pretend that there weren’t so many enablers and provocateurs on the NATO/US side. Minsk agreements were basically abandoned from the start and no one enforced them, EU ignored Crimea annexation and continued pumping billions of dollars into Russia (you can see these billions now in form of rockets and bombs in Ukraine), NATO has been expanding to the East and antagonising paranoid Russia.
- Tade0 4y ago
  > NATO has been expanding to the East and antagonising paranoid Russia. It's actually independent states which chose to align themselves with NATO instead of Russia. Interestingly in some countries it was the post-communists who spearheaded the effort. Tells you all you need to know about what happens to anyone who choses Russia over the west. It's rarely, if ever a good deal.

Freak_NL 4y ago

Here in the Netherlands such voices exist, but they are quite fringe and limited to the usual crowd. In part this is due to the downing of flight MH17 in 2014 by a Russian surface-to-air missile fired by a Russian crew operating in the Donbas to support the separatists (not with the intent of shooting down a commercial passenger plane obviously). The deaths of almost 200 Dutch and the subsequent investigation and trial leave little room for doubting that Russia is the aggressor here.

irl_chad 4y ago
Unfortunately I don’t know much about the Dutch perspective on this. As an American, this is the kind of thing that gets America to go to war - why didn’t the Netherlands decide to intervene after MH17?
- dannyw 4y ago
  All signs point to the downing of MH17 as an accident. That's not solid foundation for casus belli.
  - newjersey 4y ago
    I would have agreed with you had Russia accepted that it made a mistake. In the absence of something small as an acknowledgment and a formal apology (followed up by large monetary compensations for the victims’ families), it isn’t obvious to me how anytime can assume it was an accident. The apology should have come immediately after the incident, without anyone asking for it. It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. - Epictetus
    - throwaway744678 4y ago
      It is very well possible that it happened through discrete diplomatic channels (and then someone forgot to post it on HN)
    - haconBagrid 4y ago

bilqis 4y ago

I think we should be critical of any information that is coming from states engaged in the war and their supporters. I imagine Ukraine is generating as much false information as Russia, prime example is information about losses in personnel and equipment, both sides report small numbers of their own losses and astronomical losses suffered by the enemy. I think we will learn actual truths about this horrific war only after decades has passed and historians will be able to dig out all the Russian crimes, all civilian and militant’s death tolls. I hope this war will stop as soon as possible, it creates nothing but piles of corpses and destroyed cities. I can’t imagine how Ukraine will build itself up after all this is over.

colordrops 4y ago
It's a form of propaganda to shame anyone who doesn't believe things unconditionally. The comment you are replying to is an example, using shame and insults to herd you into their preferred narrative.
- M4v3R 4y ago
  > It's a form of propaganda to shame anyone who doesn't believe things unconditionally. Not necessarily. If someone doesn’t believe something that is universally believed and for what there exist undeniable evidence (for example the fact that the Earth is round) then shaming this kind of thinking is not propaganda, it’s just stating the fact.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    No, everything, absolutely everything must be ascertained with a critical eye, backed by evidence. Even the curvature of the earth, which thankfully is relatively easy to prove to yourself. Nevertheless, it does not have special status compared to any other piece of knowledge. You can excuse people for mistakenly believing in falsehoods like flat earth when the wool is being actively pulled over their eyes in a dozen other ways, from religion, political propaganda, corporate lies for profit, and predatory employment practices. Why are shame and insults fair game for flat earth but not Christianity or unquestioning patriotism or support for capitalism? Shame and insults only cause people to dig in their heels deeper. If your goal is to raise the veil of ignorance you are failing. Everyone is ignorant in many ways. And your point isn't even relevant. Scientific facts and politically charged events aren't even remotely the same when it comes to ascertaining truth value. Never in history has there been a war where only one side spews propaganda.

fuoqi 4y ago

>That it is Ukraine bombing their own cities They do bomb them. Or do you think it's the Russian or rebel forces bombed Luhansk and Donetsk since 2014, and the Zaporizhia nuclear plant since the war started? There is a ton of blatant lies being told by the pro-Ukranian side before and after the start of the war. For example, the infamous "air conditioner explosion" was later confirmed to be a targeted strike of the Luhansk state administration building by the Ukrainian government. Of course, it goes in both directions.

concordDance 4y ago
And note that just because there are pro Ukrainian lies does not mean the Ukrainian and Russian governments and media mouthpieces lie the same amount! I personally do not have the data to make an informed assessment, but I would be unsurprised if the Ukrainian side lies less than half as much as the Russian one.
- 0xy 4y ago
  They lied about bombing civilians in Poland, and continue to deny they are responsible in 2023. Of course, this was after they blamed Russia.
  - armada651 4y ago
    You mean the anti-air rockets that landed in Poland after they were fired to protect civilians against Russian missile strikes? That "bombing" of Poland?
    - thdespou 4y ago
      It's funny how twisted is the whole narrative just to justify their actions. Pathetic.
    - pydry 4y ago
      Yes, that missile. Zelensky contradicted western reports that it was Ukrainian AA and stated repeatedly that it was a Russian missile attack on NATO territory.

cpach 4y ago

Very sad. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.

newsclues 4y ago

There are two sides of an information/propaganda war currently fighting. After the last few years of information war at home, it doesn’t surprise me that people are sucked into the false narratives of both sides rather than taking the time and effort to try and make sense and discern truth ourselves.

ImHereToVote 4y ago
You mean, do your own research?
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
  Looks like we got ourselves a READER over here boys.

smcl 4y ago

There are people here on HN who do this, and not just the green-name accounts that get spun up, spew nonsense for a few days before being downvoted to the point that they're shadowbanned. There are years-old accounts who do carry a lot of water for Putin - a mixture of this blatant denialism and jUsT aSkInG qUeStIoNs.

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
Do you believe the US wanted to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine? Or that it was displeased with the invasion? Just asking questions.
- smcl 4y ago
  Don't know if you're trolling, or making a joke but I'll bite just once: I believe it doesn't matter, that Russia was going to invade whether the US wanted to stop or encourage them, whether they were displeased or excited or even if they were indifferent to the matter altogether. There are a lot of people who remove any agency from Putin or Russia and talk like Joe Biden himself texted all the various Generals in the Russian Army instructing them to invade and that Putin just ran with it out of embarrassment.
  - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago
    You believe US motivation “doesn’t matter” here - why? Because it has no influence over the situation? In that case, idk what we’re even arguing about. If however the world’s dominant imperial superpower *does* have some influence, then its motivation and goals *do* matter. Right?
    - smcl 4y ago
      Ah ok you're one of those. Alright, have fun on HN :)
      - JPws_Prntr_Fngr 4y ago

hnarn 4y ago

> otherwise intelligent friends Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ukraine bombing its own cities to make Russia “look bad” is such a claim. As is most conspiratorial claims regarding Covid, and so on ad nauseam. I think that if you see “intelligent” people that have a hard time navigating a scientific and methodological way of finding out the truth, such as when you discard these extraordinary claims due to the lack of extraordinary evidence, maybe you need to re-evaluate what “intelligent” actually means, or how you qualify it. The most intelligent people I’ve ever met are filled with doubt, because they have the skill I just mentioned. Faced with extraordinary claims they respond “that’s strange, I wonder if it can be substantiated” — they do not respond by fervently trying to convince anyone they meet that something REALLY crazy is going on and we all need to figure out the “real” state of things IMMEDIATELY without regard for method and process. What I might agree with you in, is that conspiratorial thinking much like alcoholism or gambling addiction, obviously CAN “infect” very intelligent people, because they are at the end of the day just people. But an intelligent person with a mental illness does not make them less intelligent, nor does it make that mental illness more “real”. The real and fundamental problem underneath all of this is the so-called “post truth society” we’re increasingly moving into, where what’s actually true doesn’t seem to matter anymore, and people just feel like they’re combatants in a war of ideas, and the more they push their ideas regardless of their truthfulness, the more true that idea becomes. That might be true for ideology, or cultural movements, but it’s not true for investigative journalism and scientific exploration.

colordrops 4y ago
What makes you the arbiter as to what is an "extraordinary claim"?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  I do think this is a legitimate question. The criterion for extraordinality seems often to be whether it contradicts someone's preconceptions. It seems precarious to apply different levels of scrutiny to claims based on such a basis.

agumonkey 4y ago

We're molecules in a weird soup, nothing is really fixed... depending on the emotional context, the tension of the era, the global fatigue, objectivity can take a massive blow. Social childish regression in a way.

HopenHeyHi 4y ago

It is a confluence of a great many things. Here is Bertrand Russell on his meeting with Vladimir Lenin in 1920: https://youtu.be/6TK9c-caEcw?t=65 https://youtu.be/6TK9c-caEcw?t=65 Lenin: Oh we're not establishing peasant proprietorship, it is, you see there are poor peasants and rich peasants and we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants and they soon hang them from the nearest tree. *cackle* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra It predates modern day Russian, Soviets, or even Bolsheviks. It goes back to Mensheviks who initially developed such psyops to get into and hold power. They had their own inspirations of course but this is really where this evil exploded. It isn't some big secret - the ends justify the means, so lie, make false equivalencies, get people all stirred up and questioning reality and sow distrust as much as possible. Once you get in power you'll put things in order what could possibly go wrong? Things are dire and can't get any worse, so get in power by all means necessary. With the backdrop of the Cold War they turned it outwards, if you aren't familiar you can get a good feel for the vibe from any Adam Curtis documentary, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation The problem is that once trust collapses and nobody believes in the media, the institutions, and everybody is aware that people lie -- the trick really is to get you to lie also, even a little bit -- a society can get completely untethered from reality. > It's absolutely fantastic to me how people can just suspend reality and start believing the most absurd notions. A lot of conspiracies do end up true, coverups are a thing, who can you trust? What even is real? It is not that your friends are bad people or lack critical reasoning skills. They got shaken out of solid ground and now are in a question-everything mindset. Very effective. Tragically so.

willcipriano 4y ago

Ukraine did have that whoopsie where they launched a missle into Poland and blamed it on the Russians: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-zelenskiy-says-russian-missiles-hit-poland-significant-escalation-2022-11-15/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-zelenskiy-says... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/16/poland-president-missile-strike-probably-ukrainian-stray https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/16/poland-preside...

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
You know they didn't launch a missile on purpose but were shooting down a Moscovian rocket, do you?
- willcipriano 4y ago
  You know Russia is just invading Ukraine to fight nazis right? Or do we not take press releases at face value, totally uncritically?

sbst32 4y ago

In many cases it's a form of a psychological defense - it's way too difficult to live in a reality where your country is killing droves of innocent people so your brain can switch to the "let's pretend that it's a giant lie and continue on" mode. It's the path of the least resistance: "we are the good guys, they are the bad guys, I can live with myself, all is good".

luckylion 4y ago
That may be the case for some Russians (though for those living abroad? I'm not sure, there's a reason they're living abroad after all), but for Germans in Germany or Americans born and raised in the US? It seems to me that at least for these cases, it's more of an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing. They've lost connection to the society around them and perceive it as hostile, so anything that the mainstream (or the government as the mainstream's enforcer) views negatively they automatically view in a more positive light. And since their enemy is always lying, they'll eat up anything that agrees with that position.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  I don’t know about Germany, but in the U.S. it’s almost exclusively people who have established a group identity which demands that they recognize the Biden administration (and generally the American left) as the foremost evil in the world.

keithalewis 4y ago

I also have seemingly intelligent friends who believe 2000 years ago a woman gave birth to a child without having intercourse. Us human are great at making up stories.

fauxpause_ 4y ago

People decide who their enemy is and call it a day. A lot of people decide that enemy is their own governments. They’re not smart. They treated wisdom as a dump stat and figure they could compensate with int.

yks 4y ago
Westerners deciding in droves that their governments are the worst and Russia is never at fault is suspicious though. I guess if those Westerners equally despised Russia, that would show some integrity, but what we see is people “deciding” to assist Russia in its endeavors even when those endeavors are stealing foreign children. Like when there was a post about ICC’s warrant for Putin here, of course the commenters arrived with “how dare the West prosecute crimes”
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd frontman falls into this group. It sucks. The guy who wrote so much about the negative impact of war. But then you think about how much hatred he seemed to have for his government and it’s not hard to see him falling for any narrative that supports that view. It sucks. Humans just suck. Bigotry is just a subset of the same misguided reasoning that 95% of people seem to use for forming their opinions.
- pydry 4y ago
  >Westerners deciding in droves that their governments are the worst and Russia is never at fault is suspicious though. I guess if those Westerners equally despised Russia, that would show some integrity This was the Soviet attitude to dissident Andrei Sakharov. Because he said he did not care about American atrocities, and that he only had an opinion on Soviet atrocities, they used this to try and discredit him. Do you think the Soviets were correct to vilify him for this? >Like when there was a post about ICC’s warrant for Putin here, of course the commenters arrived with “how dare the West prosecute crimes” After the Hague invasion act and the subsequent refusal by the ICC to prosecute western war crimes it kind of became kind of a joke of an institution. Look, all you have to do is threaten them with violence and they back down! This is why South Africa, for instance, has explicitly refused to respect the warrant. Russia is now considering cloning the Hague invasion act. As with most Russian evils it tends to treat US behavior as a template for what it can get away with and since US citizens havent been so good at holding their own country to account...

rossdavidh 4y ago

What is oddest about this one, which I have not heard before btw, is that Russia claims (boasts) of bombing Ukrainian cities, especially the electricity infrastructure.

FuriouslyAdrift 4y ago

You can shut down someones rational mind simply by getting them deeply emotional or stressed. Any primal emotion works: fear, lust, anger, anxiety, shame, etc. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4774859/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4774859/

Spooky23 4y ago

The Russians are really good at this stuff. The 2016 elections in the US were the culmination of years of work. The Russians used their weird news network and social media operations to magnify useful idiots, promote QAnon, and create maximum chaos.

macinjosh 4y ago
Now that is a conspiracy theory

once_inc 4y ago

Before responding: please note that I do not believe Ukraine bombed itself, or that I diminish the suffering and casualties that have happened since the war. This site allows you to select a number of streets and see a before/after picture. The site does not allow you to select the many streets that are entirely unchanged, or of which the changes are minimal or even positive (if those even exist). Propaganda exists in every war, and comes from both sides. The intelligence test isn't to chose which side is right, it is to discern which bit of information is taken out of context, blown out of proportion, or factually incorrect. Is Russia wrong for starting a war? Yes. Is it completely its fault and totally unprovoked? Probably not. Is the Ukraine completely free of sin? Also probably not. War sucks.

kriops 4y ago
Please explain how it could conceivably NOT be completely Russia’s fault that they chose to aggress another country with the casus belli being made up history that wouldn’t pass as legitimate justification even if it were true.
- adolph 4y ago
  Is this a reading comprehension test? The g-parent comment notes “Is Russia wrong for starting a war? Yes.”
  - throwaway8689 4y ago
    Can you address the 'unprovoked' part? Reading comprehension here involves reading a whole paragraph.
    - adolph 4y ago
      There is no need to address “unprovoked”. If it were provoked, would it make the invasion unwrong? Edit: s/we’re/it were/
      - 4y ago

Georgelemental 4y ago

In my opinion, the undeniable horror of Russia's crimes makes it even more important to point out when Ukrainian forces do something bad as well, and to push back against it. Russia is overall committing far more evil than Ukraine, but if we have a mindset of "as long as we are less evil than the Russian government it's OK" then that leaves a lot of room for us to fall. That being said: it's totally true that military forces aligned with Ukraine have shelled Ukrainian cities, in Donestk and Luhansk. Usually it is to strike at Russian military targets, but sometimes it is extremist factions like Azov who genuinely want to kill civilians and children. There is plenty of video evidence.

yks 4y ago

This trope unfolds in an even more absurd way in the Russian-speaking media space, where participants are trained in genocidal thinking. Every bombing of a Ukrainian city is met with a cheering applause and reveling in how those Ukrainians got what “they deserve”, but then (or simultaneously?) the narrative switches into “Ukrainians bomb themselves”.

stanleydrew 4y ago

Ah yes, the false flag accusation. I've noticed it's almost always the first thing propagandists turn to, probably because it's effective and basically unfalsifiable. It allows you to project your prior beliefs onto the actors in any situation.

glogla 4y ago
Also, the Russian have their experience with false flags (a while back with Finland and recent ones with apartment bombings) and as it often is with propagandists, accusations are also confessions.

eruci 4y ago

Meaningless lives, Absurdity thrives.

nateabele 4y ago

The real mind-hack is that people believe it's exclusively one or the other, and argue vociferously against the other side. George Orwell once wrote of the Spanish Civil War: "Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’." This has always happened, and it's still happening. Anybody remember the Ghost of Kyiv, or the 'fuck you' surrender? No, 'everything we see out of Ukraine' is not a lie (which in itself is a false dichotomy: we've seen plenty of 'facts' framed in a way that's explicitly misleading), but the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence of the past ~year, not to mention the rest of human history, suggests that a lot of it probably is.

dzikimarian 4y ago
Yeah, but constructing morale-boosting urban legend such as Ghost of Kiev is a bit different, than Russians trying to imply that Ukrainians are nazis who will systematically destroy own cities to make Russian saviors look bad. Don't you think?
skybrian 4y ago
Yes, it happens, but for Ukraine, I think you’re concentrating on small media-friendly stories and deemphasizing a larger amount of consensus reality. For example, there’s little argument over where the front lines are and how they’ve changed. There are maps. Sometimes there is temporary confusion when things are changing quickly.

Mizoguchi 4y ago

Are they Russians living in Russia? A good friend of mine is Russian and from his recent trip to Moscow to see his relatives his conclusion was they are helpless when it comes to changing their optics on the invasion of Ukraine. And these are highly educated people, including lawyers and doctors, definitely not dumb. Growing up under a dictatorial regime myself I know how effective the influx of propaganda can be, combine that with high levels of paranoia (the west is out to get us!) and distrust among family members, friends and neighbors (you learn how to keep your opinions to your self because you never know who's going to snitch) and what you get is a large portion of the population which doesn't belong to the stereotypical undecuated and easily manipulated bunch supporting a regime involved in war crimes. Not rare at all.

twawaaay 4y ago

The problem is that normal people are easy to manipulate by people who know what they are doing. All our history is pretty much masses of people manipulated to hate other nations so that ruling class / political / spiritual leaders can get what they want. Do you think Germans somehow evolved to a different, mean, heartless kind of being before and during WWII? No, they were normal people who were manipulated by people who were somehow skilled in manipulation. In my opinion there are only two things that can meaningfully save nations from sliding into darkness. One is teaching empathy to other people regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, race, occupation, upbringing, age, religion, class or nationality. And another is teaching history of the world so that people can see connection between what is happening contemporarily and some stupid things humanity has done in the past.

4bpp 4y ago

There are always people who go through mental contortions to justify to themselves that their own side is spotless. However, in this case there is a common and much more valid objection that the framing is hypocritical, or at least based on a different and much less appealing set of standards than the implied "attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime and humanity must unite to punish whoever engages in it". Consider for example Mosul after the US-led campaign to recapture it in 2016 (https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2018/4/29/mosul-post-isil-a-city-struggling-to-rebuild https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2018/4/29/mosul-post-isil-...), which looks as devastated as any fought-over city in Ukraine; NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999 (https://balkaninsight.com/2012/06/11/nato-99-bombing-in-pictures/ https://balkaninsight.com/2012/06/11/nato-99-bombing-in-pict...), which seems to be well on par with Russia's bombing of Ukraine's backline cities in this war; and indeed Ukraine's own bombing of Donetsk since 2014 (referred to in words at https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-idUKKBN0GK12020140820 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-idUKKBN0GK..., and captured on video in a documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JovKkDvAU9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JovKkDvAU9Y) that mostly seemed to be criticised only based on the author's politics). In all of these cases, the criticism of the invasion itself was already much more ambivalent in Western society - I went to a protest against the Iraq war in 2003 as a schoolkid in Germany, and was accused of "childish anti-Americanism" for it by a teacher - and the attendant destruction was nearly universally shrugged off as somewhere between "sad, but that's just how war is" and "to save this city we had to destroy it". Suggestions that the US government or its allies should face repercussions or even a war crimes trial were widely dismissed as far-left ravings (and one should not forget that when this was actually tried, they sanctioned the ICC (https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-why-has-the-icc-excluded-the-us-from-war-crimes-probe/a-59367096 https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-why-has-the-icc-excluded-t...)). Considering that the remedy for this particular case of violence implicitly suggested by the authors of OP's website seems to be to militarily empower the US and its allies further, I think the moral case being made looks rather less clear-cut.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

We don't naturally approach narrative with science or sound logic. These are intentional acts. They must be learned and applied. Intelligence is a broad categorization. It is unlikely to apply exhaustively to any person. Propaganda takes an obvious lie, and surrounds it with acceptable narratives. Those surrounding narratives are attached to emotional identity. Once a person accepts the surrounding narratives as part of their identity, they have implicitly accepted the obvious lie. Whether or not they accept the lie as stated directly is a matter of semantic argument, not logical deduction. We are not machines. We do not follow a series of instructions based on logic and arithmetic. We are mammals. A machine cannot accept vague narratives. It must be explicit about every logical connection, because everything it is and does is written in a "context-free grammar". Since all context-free grammars can be translated into pure mathematical functions, machine belief is pure logic. Humans do not have that feature. We use "context-dependent grammar" to communicate. That means our narratives can, and often do, include ambiguous conclusions. This is a powerful tool: we can express unknowns without resolving them. This allows us to extend our knowledge outside of what is already known. It allows us to work with vague data, draw impossible conclusions, then put those conclusions to the test. This is the foundation for science itself, yet science is not the only path ahead. Ambiguity must be resolved with decision. Not only is it a lot of work to decide every time language gets ambiguous, making that decision at that step in the process makes the decision itself as arbitrary as possible. Thankfully, we have an optimization: worldview. By constructing a system of beliefs, we essentially give ourselves a precomiled library of narratives. Whenever we interpret ambiguous language, we can quickly check our library for a narrative that resolves the ambiguity. Of course, this really gets into the weeds: language is full of complex high-order patterns, and any one of them can contain or resolve ambiguity. Multiple narratives may resolve an ambiguity ambiguously: effectively moving the problem instead of solving it. Because humans build a worldview out of narratives, that worldview can contain flawed logic, and even outright contradictions. It still works, because any time a person tries to resolve an ambiguity using a conflicted set of worldview narratives, they simply choose which narrative applies to that ambiguity. This choice is most easily determined by emotion: what result feels right. People don't get their narratives exclusively from the outside. We also invent new narratives. I suspect that we do this by hallucinating fictional stories that bridge the narrative gaps in our worldview. If you have ever talked with someone who has Autism Spectrum Disorder, you may have noticed a pattern of direct questions and dry logical answers. It's well known that people with ASD have difficulty directing their focus away from external stimulus. Studies have also shown that people with ASD report more hallucinated physical experiences than people without ASD. I suspect this leads to a fundamental need for logically categorized worldview: if you can't ignore a narrative, you probably need to find room for it in your existing worldview. If you are already bombarded with both real and hallucinated simulation, you will probably feel too worn out to hallucinate your own narratives, which would make narrative gaps and contradictions stressful. If you have ever talked to (or read about) someone who has taken a trip on LSD, psilocybin, etc., you may have noticed a pattern of wildly fictional stories, some of which continue well after the trip as a part of the person's worldview. Hallucinagens are known to cause many arbitrary and random connections across the brain; where connections would normally follow the "grooves" that were carved by lived experience. The experience of a trip is well known to help restructure unwanted patterns of behavior (like addiction), and also to result in new unwanted behavior patterns (like fear and anxiety). Because hallucinagens don't replace cognition entirely with the noise of hallucination, having someone else guide the experience can be very effective. Without guidance, it's possible for negatively engaging hallucinations (like fear or anxiety) to become a focus of the experience, carve new grooves in the brain, and become a lingering experience after the trip has ended. How can we intentionally curate our worldview? Critical thinking allows us to reconsider the narratives we hold as beliefs objectively. We can copy those narratives into a place that is totally detached from emotion, and criticize them. By doing this intentionally, we can more easily accept the result, and change our worldview. This is like hallucination, but following the strict rules of logic. We can also accept narratives from trusted sources. If we feel confident that someone else has already performed the critical thinking, it's easy to accept their result as a shortcut. The obvious problem here is that that person may be wrong, or even dishonest. The more insidious problem is that that person is not likely to share all of the narratives in their own worldview: instead they share only the narratives they changed. The worldview you apply that change to may be compatible but different, resulting in a completely different result. We may also continue living without any intentional curation. A conflicted worldview does not inherently need resolution. Many stories contain contradictions that remain unsolved until the end: maybe you are living in the middle of your story, and find the conflicts exciting. Living this way is called "cognitive dissonance". Like two notes a half step apart create many harmonic voices, two contradicted narratives allow for a very large set of potential resolving narratives. A life lacking direction is full of possibilities. Dissonance is uncomfortable: our reaction to it may be to resolve it with critical thinking, but simple avoidance is a much shorter path to comfort. If we want to help people change their beliefs, we should focus on the narratives that construct those beliefs. In order to know what those are in the first place, we must practice empathy. It's hard work, and it feels like the wrong strategy. Even worse, it feels insidious, because intentional empathy is very similar to propaganda.