5 ms·

IMO this has little to do with AI, and a lot more to do with people becoming more accustomed to the fact that war is filled with propaganda, and not just from '

IMO this has little to do with AI, and a lot more to do with people becoming more accustomed to the fact that war is filled with propaganda, and not just from 'the other side.' For instance literally all of the evidence for the Iraq War was fake. The high level insider was a taxi driver and thief [1], the rock solid evidence (receipts) of Iraq trying to purchase 'yellowcake' uranium in Niger was a forgery [2], and of course the "mobile biological weapons laboratories" were run of the mill hydrogen balloon refilling stations. [3] Literally all of the "Irrefutable and Undeniable" [4] evidence was fake. But who'd have had the audacity to make such claims back then? Now it's a lot more justifiable to immediately doubt any piece of evidence, or even multiple pieces. And so when ever more people see some emotionally charged damning evidence, their reaction is no longer to race to the desired opinion. Even if AI image generation didn't exist, there'd be plenty of people doubting this right now, for good reason. And I think this is a very good thing. This is perhaps the one and only nice benefit of a low fertility rate. With an ever aging population more and more people are going to have the wisdom of having lived through these events. With any luck it might even help keep us out of WW3. --- [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant) [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_Iraqi_mobile_weapons_laboratories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_Iraqi_mobile_we... [4] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...

sillysaurusx 3y ago
Hah. Sorry for the empty comment, but it’s so funny that you and I both simultaneously pointed out the Iraq war was based on fake information. And I just realized that 20-somethings today didn’t get to experience what that was like firsthand. Your point about lived experience is fantastic; hats off to you.
- suunsuun 3y ago
  what was it like to experience it firsthand?
  - ok123456 3y ago
    Maddening. The war planners expected everyone to be completely credulous. It was watching your country go to war on unverifiable "evidence" collected through a game of whisper-down-the-ally. If you expressed doubt, you were unpatriotic and wanted another 9/11. If you wanted to cut the losses and end it, you wanted to 'cut and run' and wanted another 9/11. If you presented everything to a smart 8 year old, they would said it sounded dubious.
    - stickfigure 3y ago
      Meh, it wasn't so clearcut. You have to remember that Hussein himself deliberately encouraged the belief that he had chemical weapons (perhaps thinking it would be a deterrent) and that he did, in fact, use chemical weapons against the Kurds in previous years. The information was bad, but it certainly wasn't clear to an 8 year old and probably wasn't even clear to Bush & Co. Given the incredible effort that the US military spent trying to hunt down WMDs after the war, it's clear the belief was genuine. That doesn't make their decisions good, but it makes them somewhat understandable. I was 30 when the Iraq war started. I had mixed feelings then and to be honest, I still have mixed feelings. I cry not one single tear for Saddam Hussein, though the population of Iraq deserved a better outcome.
      - marcosdumay 3y ago
        Brazilian here. Around here, comedians were just repeating the evidence to get people to laugh. It was so clear cut that it didn't need explanation. But then it stopped being funny when the US actually acted on it.
      - ok123456 3y ago
        It was pretty clear cut to the point that France, Germany, Russia and China voted against Resolution 1441 in the UN, and there was unprecedented demonstrations across the globe against it. The only reason that we suspected he had chemical war systems is that the US sold him those chemical war systems in the 1980s to use against Iran. I'm not sure how ready or what level of disrepair they were in 20 years later. Removing Saddam absolutely was wrong strategically, and lead to about a million people dying.
PoignardAzur 3y ago
> But who'd have had the audacity to make such claims back then? Dominique de Villepin, famously.
- suunsuun 3y ago
  just googled him. was the clearstream II thingy some CIA Op to get people like de Villepin out of the way cuz he don't play along with fake stuff?
  - lgeorget 3y ago
    Ah that would sure be big if true. But I don't think CIA had had to make anything up if they wanted something against him. He had a long enough career in French politics and as a Jacques Chirac's sidekick to have had time to get involved into Clearstream-level schemes.
jncfhnb 3y ago
Ah yes, the elders with their famed media literacy
- Retric 3y ago
  20 years ago when the Iraq war started I knew ‘elders’ who said it was all fake at the time. And they got this opinion just from watching the news coverage. What stuck with me was the description that intelligence can support any story as long as you only pay attention to the bits you want. Decades of watching the same dog and pony show lets you see just a little behind the curtain.
  - suunsuun 3y ago
    hm. that's exactly my experience with my Ukrainian and Russian elders. they watched the news, made a couple of phone calls into Ukraine and Russia and didnmt believe the German media would run the stories as they did. "the Americans did it again", they all agreed.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    The Vietnam war was another one of these fake incidents (the torpedo boats), used as an excuse for war.
GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
Don't forget about the allegations of Iraq killing babies in hospitals, corroborated by eyewitness testimony to Congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
oefrha 3y ago
> And so when ever more people see some emotionally charged damning evidence, their reaction is no longer to race to the desired opinion. You sure about that? Every time I go on social media, I see people falling over each other on holy crusades based on prescribed ideology and the flimsiest of evidence, thanks in no small part to selective reporting and double standards of the nationalistic/partisan media outlets they subscribe to. In addition, whatever you believe in, there's always a good number of people ready to feed you often bullshit evidence to confirm your world view; the echo chamber effect is stronger than ever. Do you really think people conditioned to this environment can really resist orchestrated state propaganda broadcasted on all national media (for instance, how often do you see "(anonymous) government/military official says blah blah" on all of them)?
dragonwriter 3y ago
> But who'd have had the audacity to make such claims back then? Except for, I think, the specifics of the high level insider, each of those claims was widely made in the major media and/or in the same UNSC meeting in which Powell presented the fake evidence before the war (in the latter case, by UN weapon inspectors), in both cases with fairly extensive receipts; the mobile labs were, for instance, debunked with details including the UK origin, the date of sale, and, IIRC, copies of official UK government documents concerning them in a major article in the Guardian before the war. There was also detailed reporting on how the UK government knew the US evidence in general false and that the evidence was deliberately being manufactured and a policy narrative. There were also articles in the major US press, with extensive details, about the lack of support within the US intelligence community for the officiak narrative and the details of how and organizationally by whom within the government the “intelligence” as propaganda operation was being run. In the wave of bloodthirst and Islamophobia post-9/11, which had barely subsided at all by 2003, no one (effectively, for all the political difference it made) in the US (and not enough people in the UK) cared about the facts, but the official narrative was debunked widely, in near real-time, in the major media.

sillysaurusx 3y ago

Hah. Sorry for the empty comment, but it’s so funny that you and I both simultaneously pointed out the Iraq war was based on fake information. And I just realized that 20-somethings today didn’t get to experience what that was like firsthand. Your point about lived experience is fantastic; hats off to you.

suunsuun 3y ago
what was it like to experience it firsthand?
- ok123456 3y ago
  Maddening. The war planners expected everyone to be completely credulous. It was watching your country go to war on unverifiable "evidence" collected through a game of whisper-down-the-ally. If you expressed doubt, you were unpatriotic and wanted another 9/11. If you wanted to cut the losses and end it, you wanted to 'cut and run' and wanted another 9/11. If you presented everything to a smart 8 year old, they would said it sounded dubious.
  - stickfigure 3y ago
    Meh, it wasn't so clearcut. You have to remember that Hussein himself deliberately encouraged the belief that he had chemical weapons (perhaps thinking it would be a deterrent) and that he did, in fact, use chemical weapons against the Kurds in previous years. The information was bad, but it certainly wasn't clear to an 8 year old and probably wasn't even clear to Bush & Co. Given the incredible effort that the US military spent trying to hunt down WMDs after the war, it's clear the belief was genuine. That doesn't make their decisions good, but it makes them somewhat understandable. I was 30 when the Iraq war started. I had mixed feelings then and to be honest, I still have mixed feelings. I cry not one single tear for Saddam Hussein, though the population of Iraq deserved a better outcome.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      Brazilian here. Around here, comedians were just repeating the evidence to get people to laugh. It was so clear cut that it didn't need explanation. But then it stopped being funny when the US actually acted on it.
    - ok123456 3y ago
      It was pretty clear cut to the point that France, Germany, Russia and China voted against Resolution 1441 in the UN, and there was unprecedented demonstrations across the globe against it. The only reason that we suspected he had chemical war systems is that the US sold him those chemical war systems in the 1980s to use against Iran. I'm not sure how ready or what level of disrepair they were in 20 years later. Removing Saddam absolutely was wrong strategically, and lead to about a million people dying.

PoignardAzur 3y ago

> But who'd have had the audacity to make such claims back then? Dominique de Villepin, famously.

suunsuun 3y ago
just googled him. was the clearstream II thingy some CIA Op to get people like de Villepin out of the way cuz he don't play along with fake stuff?
- lgeorget 3y ago
  Ah that would sure be big if true. But I don't think CIA had had to make anything up if they wanted something against him. He had a long enough career in French politics and as a Jacques Chirac's sidekick to have had time to get involved into Clearstream-level schemes.

jncfhnb 3y ago

Ah yes, the elders with their famed media literacy

Retric 3y ago
20 years ago when the Iraq war started I knew ‘elders’ who said it was all fake at the time. And they got this opinion just from watching the news coverage. What stuck with me was the description that intelligence can support any story as long as you only pay attention to the bits you want. Decades of watching the same dog and pony show lets you see just a little behind the curtain.
- suunsuun 3y ago
  hm. that's exactly my experience with my Ukrainian and Russian elders. they watched the news, made a couple of phone calls into Ukraine and Russia and didnmt believe the German media would run the stories as they did. "the Americans did it again", they all agreed.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  The Vietnam war was another one of these fake incidents (the torpedo boats), used as an excuse for war.

GartzenDeHaes 3y ago

Don't forget about the allegations of Iraq killing babies in hospitals, corroborated by eyewitness testimony to Congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

oefrha 3y ago

> And so when ever more people see some emotionally charged damning evidence, their reaction is no longer to race to the desired opinion. You sure about that? Every time I go on social media, I see people falling over each other on holy crusades based on prescribed ideology and the flimsiest of evidence, thanks in no small part to selective reporting and double standards of the nationalistic/partisan media outlets they subscribe to. In addition, whatever you believe in, there's always a good number of people ready to feed you often bullshit evidence to confirm your world view; the echo chamber effect is stronger than ever. Do you really think people conditioned to this environment can really resist orchestrated state propaganda broadcasted on all national media (for instance, how often do you see "(anonymous) government/military official says blah blah" on all of them)?

dragonwriter 3y ago

> But who'd have had the audacity to make such claims back then? Except for, I think, the specifics of the high level insider, each of those claims was widely made in the major media and/or in the same UNSC meeting in which Powell presented the fake evidence before the war (in the latter case, by UN weapon inspectors), in both cases with fairly extensive receipts; the mobile labs were, for instance, debunked with details including the UK origin, the date of sale, and, IIRC, copies of official UK government documents concerning them in a major article in the Guardian before the war. There was also detailed reporting on how the UK government knew the US evidence in general false and that the evidence was deliberately being manufactured and a policy narrative. There were also articles in the major US press, with extensive details, about the lack of support within the US intelligence community for the officiak narrative and the details of how and organizationally by whom within the government the “intelligence” as propaganda operation was being run. In the wave of bloodthirst and Islamophobia post-9/11, which had barely subsided at all by 2003, no one (effectively, for all the political difference it made) in the US (and not enough people in the UK) cared about the facts, but the official narrative was debunked widely, in near real-time, in the major media.