*** The Official MAGAposting thread ***

[MadMojoMonkey]

The meat of this conversation hinges on ong fiercely adhering to being skeptical about every piece of information coming out of the fog of war, whereas poopy wants to believe some of it is true.

I'm kinda in awe of ong's ability to remain logically distant from this and to provide a fairly consistently independent perspective.

Though it is frustrating, to have every piece of information you try to use to understand what's actually happening called into question.
I feel that on poopy's side of things, too.


I think ultimately ong's right. We can't trust any single piece of information, and the echo chamber of news can make it seem like something is coming from multiple sources when it's just a lot of repetition w/o fact-checking.

But I also think that when a preponderance of evidence in live videos coming not only from the war zone but also from nearby countries receiving refugees does allow for a statistical accumulation of tenuous, untrusted information to congeal into something real.


Like, I don't trust any word from any captured Russian soldier about them not knowing where they were going or why. That's easy to tell troops to say. I do trust that at least some captured Russians are being treated well and given access to some communication to call their families.

It's impossible to know of all that was staged to paint a picture for me. I've seen only a few videos of that happening. It could be the reality on the ground is that never actually happens unless there's someone trying to film it to propagandize things.

I can't know.

It's a shitshow.



***
That nuclear reactor is leagues more advanced than the Chernobyl reactor. It's not even the same kind of reactor.
It would take a dedicated bombarding of the reactor itself (not nearby buildings) to cause a nuclear disaster. More accurately, it would take a bombarding of the containment chambers, which are underground and made from 1 m thick steel.

A fire on the site cannot cause a disaster. A stray or ricochet bomb/missile is not enough.
Those can kill the plant, but not release any nuclear materials.
It would take a dedicated bombarding to release the nuclear materials.

This is a modern nuclear plant, not a 60 year old one.

[CoccoBill]

This is a modern nuclear plant, not a 60 year old one.

Well kinda, the construction started in 1980, though it's been modernized recently. Still wouldn't call it modern, but at least a generation ahead of Chernobyl. From what I was quickly able to gather, the PWR design that it uses is significantly safer than the Chernobyl RBMK, in that it should auto-shutdown in case of cooling failure or runaway reaction.

[OngBonga]

I'm kinda in awe of ong's ability to remain logically distant from this and to provide a fairly consistently independent perspective.

lol thanks, but I think it's evidence of sociopathy. Maybe decades of the west declaring war on foreign lands has desensitised me.

I'm in no doubt that a lot of the time, I'm blinded by my mistrust of the authorities. But I'm also in no doubt that people like poop are often blinded by their trust of the same authorities. There is always more than one side of the story. Always. And there are rarely any good guys when it comes to war.

[CoccoBill]

'm kinda in awe of ong's ability to remain logically distant from this and to provide a fairly consistently independent perspective.

Another take would be that if you're equally skeptical of all information, you're also equally willing to accept any information. Just as an example, later independent research into the Ukraine reporting on kills in 2014 was found to be pessimistic, the real losses for Russia were higher. So far the US has more or less confirmed the numbers they have been reporting.

You can just assume that everyone is lying, and to an extent you would probably be right. There are still levels to this game, and Russia is finding all new levels at the moment. Ukrainian junkie neo-nazi administration has been bombing their own civilians? Ok yeah. There's skepticism and there's willful ignorance.

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1499783085055004680

[Poopadoop]

Another take would be that if you're equally skeptical of all information, you're also equally willing to accept any information.

I think you just have to weigh the probabilities of things based on evidence. If you're willing to entertain every far-fetched scenario as being plausible, you're not doing thinking right imo. A lot of things are "possible" in the sense they can't be disproven; that doesn't mean you should believe them.

Ong likes to paint me as this naive guy who continuously falls for gov't propaganda when it comes to NATO, but when I habitually call out gov't propaganda in the Brexit thread, he tells me to go back to Canada.