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They didn't say that. Your reading comprehension is poor.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
abtinf 1y ago
> If you look at a map of our military bases, we have many bordering China. I think our total number is close to 900. I would grant them the benefit of the doubt if English wasn’t their native language, but they’d identified as a US citizen elsewhere in the thread and their name strongly implies native speakership. In the US, this conversational construction in this context is most reasonably interpreted as the second sentence completing the thought in the first. If a manager asks an employee “how many dents are on the bumber?” A response of “I think the total number is close to 900”, that would be in reference to just the dents on the bumper, not all over the car. Also, elsewhere in the thread, they’ve acknowledged they simply made the number up (by just repeating what a GPT said).
- mark_l_watson 1y ago
  No, I asked Gemini 2.5 Pro in ‘deep research’ mode to give me an estimate.
- layer8 1y ago
  The sentence starts with “If you look at a map of our military bases”, which refers to all US military bases, not just the ones bordering China. The second sentence refers to that totality of bases. I’d grant that there is a bit of ambiguity, but insinuating an “insane claim” is jumping the gun on a misreading that should have been fairly obvious in light of the “insanity”.
infecto 1y ago
Perhaps English is not your native language. It at best comes across that many of the 900 are surrounding China and at worst that the 900 is referring to China.
- keybored 1y ago
  > > Our main problems involve under the table unreported to the public military expenditures. If you look at a map of our military bases, we have many bordering China. “Many” could be dozens or hundreds or over half. It’s poorly phrased to the point of being meaningless. > > I think our total number is close to 900. Total in the world.
  - infecto 1y ago
    Glad you read it that way. The OP wrote it with a narrative of China which is already perplexing since we are mostly talking about Korean and Japanese bases but framing it as around China. You could read it either way. It’s poorly worded and click baity.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

> If you look at a map of our military bases, we have many bordering China. I think our total number is close to 900. I would grant them the benefit of the doubt if English wasn’t their native language, but they’d identified as a US citizen elsewhere in the thread and their name strongly implies native speakership. In the US, this conversational construction in this context is most reasonably interpreted as the second sentence completing the thought in the first. If a manager asks an employee “how many dents are on the bumber?” A response of “I think the total number is close to 900”, that would be in reference to just the dents on the bumper, not all over the car. Also, elsewhere in the thread, they’ve acknowledged they simply made the number up (by just repeating what a GPT said).

mark_l_watson 1y ago
No, I asked Gemini 2.5 Pro in ‘deep research’ mode to give me an estimate.
layer8 1y ago
The sentence starts with “If you look at a map of our military bases”, which refers to all US military bases, not just the ones bordering China. The second sentence refers to that totality of bases. I’d grant that there is a bit of ambiguity, but insinuating an “insane claim” is jumping the gun on a misreading that should have been fairly obvious in light of the “insanity”.

infecto 1y ago

Perhaps English is not your native language. It at best comes across that many of the 900 are surrounding China and at worst that the 900 is referring to China.

keybored 1y ago
> > Our main problems involve under the table unreported to the public military expenditures. If you look at a map of our military bases, we have many bordering China. “Many” could be dozens or hundreds or over half. It’s poorly phrased to the point of being meaningless. > > I think our total number is close to 900. Total in the world.
- infecto 1y ago
  Glad you read it that way. The OP wrote it with a narrative of China which is already perplexing since we are mostly talking about Korean and Japanese bases but framing it as around China. You could read it either way. It’s poorly worded and click baity.