Article 13 and Article 11

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teo123
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

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brimstoneSalad wrote:What makes you think you even know enough to claim they believe it without evidence?
Because I've lived near Vukovar all my life. Am I then not qualified to have my opinion about recent history of Vukovar?
brimstoneSalad wrote:There's no reason to believe a commonly accepted massacre didn't happen
So, a massacre is true until proven false? That is, people are guilty until proven innocent? I don't understand what you are saying.
brimstoneSalad wrote:massacres are relatively common events historically speaking.
Well, considering how hard it is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a massacre happened... that's not quite a scientifically valid claim.
brimstoneSalad wrote:And it would take a phenomenal act of conspiracy to fabricate a massacre.
And a massacre also takes thousands of people colluding in a conspiracy.
Also, a massacre is very hard to be looking at, so there can be no reliable eye-witnesses of it.
brimstoneSalad wrote:One violates harder science (physics, biology) and the other doesn't.
If only things were that simple.
I have no bright idea how bombs are supposed to work, so, if I claim they do work, I may be making a statement that contradicts harder science. In fact, given what I know, bombs appear to contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It says that the efficiency of a heat engine must be less than 100%. In a bomb, you are supposed to put very little heat to activate it, yet get tremendous amount of mechanical energy and heat from it. Its efficiency as a heat engine would have to be much greater than 100%. Could it be that bombs are like anti-gravity-chambers, everyone thinks they exist (thanks to books and movies), yet they contradict basic physics?
Also, the story of the Massacre of Vukovar appears to contradict laws of philology. If the event is not mythological, how come do the names of people and places, such as Ovcara (=sheep's meat), Mesic (=meat-eater), Tudman (=foreign ruler), Vucic (=little wolf), Branimir Glavas (=the main peace-protector), Mile Dedakovic (=dear grandfather) and perhaps even Slobodan Milosevic (=one to whom freedom is dear), appear symbolic?
brimstoneSalad wrote:You need to study a lot more history,
Well, I am spending quite a lot of my time studying history. And discussions about methodology of history can be quite interesting, I suppose (though not the discussions about whether genocide is somehow real until proven false). For instance, Stephanus of Byzantium wrote, in "De Urbibus", near the passage saying that "Brettia" is the Illyrian word for "deer", that there is a stream on the island of Brac, also named "Brettia". Yet, today, there are no streams on the island of Brac, there are only a few freshwater springs near the shore, and there are also a few brackish water springs both in the hills and on the shore. Is it therefore reasonable to believe that the hydrology of the island has changed drastically and that, in ancient times and in the early Middle Ages (when Stephanus of Byzantium lived), there really was a stream somewhere on the island of Brac? Or is it more reasonable to believe that Stephanus of Byzantium somehow got mistaken about that?
brimstoneSalad wrote:It's just less of a big deal to go against consensus in something like linguistics as in physics, 
And it's even less of a big deal to deny mainstream history than to deny mainstream linguistics, right?
brimstoneSalad wrote:Are you proud of that?
Well, not particularly. But at least I was a free thinker, not blindly accepting what some authority was telling me. I just didn't put enough effort to properly investigate whether airplanes exist by myself.
brimstoneSalad wrote:If it results in them not talking about their beliefs.
Yeah, because the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire stopped Christianity from spreading, and the persecution of Muslims in Arabia in the early Middle Ages stopped Islam from spreading, and the persecution of Jews in Europe throught history caused Judaism to cease to exist.
brimstoneSalad wrote:they may be proven methods that are simply obscured.
And yet, for some reason, Google doesn't let us verify that, and it doesn't even let us verify the code of the program we need to install on our computer in order to use its services.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Post by brimstoneSalad »

teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 am Because I've lived near Vukovar all my life. Am I then not qualified to have my opinion about recent history of Vukovar?
No. Maybe if you were 80 years old and lived IN Vukovar all of your life, and thus would have witnessed as an adult what happened.

Teo, I know you don't understand this but you're still a child. Your experiences in this world are very limited and your personal anecdotes about what you speculate happened don't carry any weight, particularly considering your track record.
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 am
brimstoneSalad wrote:There's no reason to believe a commonly accepted massacre didn't happen
So, a massacre is true until proven false? That is, people are guilty until proven innocent? I don't understand what you are saying.
No, we assume a conspiracy theory is false until proven true.
The massacre being false would have to involve a conspiracy to fabricate it.
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 am
brimstoneSalad wrote:massacres are relatively common events historically speaking.
Well, considering how hard it is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a massacre happened... that's not quite a scientifically valid claim.
It's actually very easy to prove. There are plenty of mass graves where everybody died at the same time of similar injuries. Even ones we had no historical record of. Stop being an idiot and do five minutes of reading.
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 amAnd a massacre also takes thousands of people colluding in a conspiracy.
How can you not understand what a conspiracy is by now?

It takes a number of people FOLLOWING ORDERS, that isn't a conspiracy. No level of mass secret keeping is needed and it's common knowledge that soldiers are commanded.
You have an order that comes down the pipe, it's given and carried about immediately.

A massacre can also be accomplished by mass hysteria without a chain of command, and these things happen spontaneously and in a very short time-frame.
Large numbers of people are not sitting around and planning and conspiring (which is what makes a conspiracy) for days or weeks and then carrying it out... just a mass grave at the end.

The mass grave is pretty much always found, because it's hard to hide bodies (unless you have the facilities to cremate them).
Vukovar is no exception:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vukovar_m ... mass_grave
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 amAlso, a massacre is very hard to be looking at, so there can be no reliable eye-witnesses of it.
The soldiers who carried it out ultimately talk about it. To their families, to their preachers, etc. They won't always go on record, but that's not necessary to create common knowledge of the event.
Unless you think they're ordered to kill each other too. :lol:

There are always witnesses, but there are also almost always survivors because it's hard to carry something like that out perfectly.
Beyond that, there are friends and family of the people who are killed who live outside the area who have their friends or loved ones vanish and see the town is burnt down. Even if you don't find the mass grave, it's very easy to figure out people went missing, and it's very difficult to fabricate imaginary people and convince everybody they went missing. And then (as in most cases) you'd need *another* massive conspiracy to fake a mass grave.
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 amI have no bright idea how bombs are supposed to work, so, if I claim they do work, I may be making a statement that contradicts harder science. In fact, given what I know, bombs appear to contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It says that the efficiency of a heat engine must be less than 100%. In a bomb, you are supposed to put very little heat to activate it, yet get tremendous amount of mechanical energy and heat from it. Its efficiency as a heat engine would have to be much greater than 100%. Could it be that bombs are like anti-gravity-chambers, everyone thinks they exist (thanks to books and movies), yet they contradict basic physics?
Teo, this is even dumber than your claim airplanes don't exist.

Bombs are not complicated, and the fact you don't understand them is embarrassing enough, but this is worse.
All you need to believe is that bombs DO work because that's common knowledge and expert consensus.
Stop trying to speculate on things you don't understand. If you really want to know then just look it up. It would have taken less time than you writing this paragraph.

Bombs are stored chemical energy. Not at all like a small spark starting a fire. Nothing about that violates thermodynamics or is remotely complicated. :roll:
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 amAlso, the story of the Massacre of Vukovar appears to contradict laws of philology. If the event is not mythological, how come do the names of people and places, such as Ovcara (=sheep's meat), Mesic (=meat-eater), Tudman (=foreign ruler), Vucic (=little wolf), Branimir Glavas (=the main peace-protector), Mile Dedakovic (=dear grandfather) and perhaps even Slobodan Milosevic (=one to whom freedom is dear), appear symbolic?
Teo... just stop.

Vukovar obviously happened, and any assumptions you make that contradict that are obviously wrong. All this does is discredit your claimed linguistics knowledge in the same way claiming it didn't happen because you don't believe in bombs discredits any knowledge of physics or chemistry you might have claimed to have.
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 amIs it therefore reasonable to believe that the hydrology of the island has changed drastically and that, in ancient times and in the early Middle Ages (when Stephanus of Byzantium lived), there really was a stream somewhere on the island of Brac? Or is it more reasonable to believe that Stephanus of Byzantium somehow got mistaken about that?
Both seem viable: be agnostic until a geologist weighs in on the first possibility. Then go by whatever the geologist says.
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 amAnd it's even less of a big deal to deny mainstream history than to deny mainstream linguistics, right?
No, because history is usually corroborated by harder science like forensic archaeology.

You should assume all consensus among historians is corroborated.
Even history based only on accounts of ancient historians is pretty reliable as long as it's not highly political or religious in nature. There IS a lot of fraud and alteration of history by religious scribes (like Jesus inserts) because they're the ones copying it, and a little by kings/emperors etc.
You just have to look at political accounts from both sides and only form consensus on what they agree on. And obviously never trust a historical account of a miracle because that would violate physics.
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 amWell, not particularly. But at least I was a free thinker, not blindly accepting what some authority was telling me. I just didn't put enough effort to properly investigate whether airplanes exist by myself.
There is no "but" there. That's not a virtue. You should accept consensus unless there's stronger evidence against it.
teo123 wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:23 amYeah, because the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire stopped Christianity from spreading, and the persecution of Muslims in Arabia in the early Middle Ages stopped Islam from spreading, and the persecution of Jews in Europe throught history caused Judaism to cease to exist.
The persecution of Druids by Christians completely wiped them out to the point that we don't really know much of anything about their beliefs anymore. Muslims also wiped out many religions.
There are far more examples of persecution working than not. It *usually* works, and when it doesn't there's usually a reason for that.

For example, with Christianity, the active persecution was both short lived (only about ten years) and inconsistently practiced. Christians play it up... a LOT. It's most likely that the majority if Christians killed (and there don't seem to have been that many) actually turned themselves in because they had a cult of martyrdom... and even most who turned themselves in were probably turned away.

The Governor Arrius Antoninus was annoyed by the number of martyrdom hungry Christians turning themselves in and (after killing only a few) is quoted "If you want to die, you wretches, you can use ropes or precipices." He turned the rest away.

It seems most governors never spilled any Christian blood, and broadly ignored the law. They really didn't care much at all outside the capital. They didn't devote resources to hunting down Christians and even turned away Christians who turned themselves in. I mean, can you blame them? It's creepy. People keep coming to you asking you to kill them, it makes a mess and they *like it*... maybe you start telling them to piss off because you have murderers to execute and a province to rule and this is wasting your time.

The myth of broad Christian persecution, however, was very effective at spreading Christianity. It may be that the worst thing you can do if you want to get rid of a belief is to pass laws that a group is to be persecuted and make a couple martyrs, but then leave the other 99% untouched and fail to enforce those laws or stop them proselytizing in public.

If we had laws that Nazis were to be killed and we publicly executed a handful of them then just let them do their thing and spread their ideology and didn't crack down on them in any way, that might be really bad.

That's very different from *not* killing any of them and *not* making any martyrs and instead just taking their stuff off the internet and actually enforcing that.
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

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OK, let's say you are right. That Vukovar actually happened, and that there is evidence of it I am somehow unaware of, despite having studied Croatian history not only for school, but also for my interpretation of the names of places in Croatia.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Your experiences in this world are very limited and your personal anecdotes about what you speculate happened don't carry any weight, particularly considering your track record.
And how do you there aren't countless people here who feel like I do about Vukovar, yet are too afraid to say that?
brimstoneSalad wrote:It takes a number of people FOLLOWING ORDERS, that isn't a conspiracy.
OK, now, if you wanted to organize a massacre, would you know how to do that? You wouldn't even know where to begin with, right? So, why assume anybody can?
brimstoneSalad wrote:it's very difficult to fabricate imaginary people and convince everybody they went missing.
I am not quite sure that's the case. For decades, it was common knowledge that about 700'000 people were killed in Jasenovac, yet, today, it's accepted that the actual number is about 120'000, if not even lower. If it was possible to convince people that 700'000-120'000=580'000 imaginary people went missing, why would it be so hard to do that for the 3'000 or so people who, according to mainstream history, died in Vukovar? Similarly, historians can't seem to agree how many people died during the Holocaust, the estimates (ignoring the Holocaust deniers) range from 5'000'000 to 17'000'000.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Bombs are not complicated, and the fact you don't understand them is embarrassing enough, but this is worse.
Why would my ignorance of physics be embarrassing? Sure, there are a few students in my class at the university who solved the physics part of the maturity test better than I did (I solved 84%, while one student in my university class solved 97%), but nobody from my former high-school class solved it better than I did, which still means I understand physics better than vast majority of people, right?
brimstoneSalad wrote:Stop trying to speculate on things you don't understand.
And yet people are praising me for speculating on what the names mean.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Vukovar obviously happened,
Well, it's certainly less obvious than that the Earth is flat. Yet even Earth being flat is false.
brimstoneSalad wrote:All this does is discredit your claimed linguistics knowledge in the same way claiming it didn't happen because you don't believe in bombs discredits any knowledge of physics or chemistry you might have claimed to have.
And yet I've managed to publish three papers about linguistics in peer-reviewed journals, and I will, in all likelihood, manage to publish the fourth one (one in which I argue it's possible to argue for my theories using statistics and computer science) in some peer-reviewed journal.
How do you argue that some story is mythological, rather than historical? Showing that most of the names are symbolical is enough, isn't it?
brimstoneSalad wrote: Both seem viable: be agnostic until a geologist weighs in on the first possibility.
That's what I meant to do in the re-edited version of my paper (in the first version of my paper, I didn't mention that at all). The mainstream history appears to have simply ignored that passage about the supposed stream the island of Brac got its name from.
brimstoneSalad wrote:There is no "but" there. That's not a virtue.
And yet people are praising me for having figured out so much stuff about computer science (like how to make a compiler for your own simple programming language) by myself, and for trying to figure out what the names mean.
What do you think "freedom of thought" means? Why do you think it's valuable?
brimstoneSalad wrote:The persecution of Druids by Christians completely wiped them out to the point that we don't really know much of anything about their beliefs anymore.
I have no knowledge of that story. What I do know is that my history textbook tells me that the Romans killed about 5'000 Christians over a period of two centuries (between the Nero's Great Fire of Rome, blamed on Christians, and when Constantine the Great legalized other religions), and that many Christians gave up their faith out of fear.
brimstoneSalad wrote:People keep coming to you asking you to kill them, it makes a mess and they *like it*...
That was also happening during the Holocaust. Many Jews let themselves be tortured voluntarily and even tortured other Jews.
brimstoneSalad wrote:That's very different from *not* killing any of them and *not* making any martyrs and instead just taking their stuff off the internet and actually enforcing that.
Or maybe Nazis would then find another way to spread their propaganda, including convincing people not to trust the Internet as a medium (which they are doing already).
So, do you think that Facebook was right to ban me for saying what I think about Vukovar?
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

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teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 am OK, let's say you are right. That Vukovar actually happened, and that there is evidence of it I am somehow unaware of, despite having studied Croatian history not only for school, but also for my interpretation of the names of places in Croatia.
Teo, stop. That's so arrogant and petulant. Obviously there's information you're unaware of: I GAVE YOU SOME. If you doubted the massacre despite the mass grave then you're still a flat-Earther conspiracy theorist at heart.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amAnd how do you there aren't countless people here who feel like I do about Vukovar, yet are too afraid to say that?
What happened is a matter if FACT, not a feeling. It doesn't matter how many people *feel* the Earth is flat, it's false.
As I have already explained to you in detail, the only anecdotes that would be relevant to compete with the evidence would be people who lived IN Vukovar during the time period when the massacre happened. A number of people (not just one nut) who lived there during the massacre and claimed it didn't happen would be worth considering. We would still need to answer the question of the mass graves, though.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 am
brimstoneSalad wrote:It takes a number of people FOLLOWING ORDERS, that isn't a conspiracy.
OK, now, if you wanted to organize a massacre, would you know how to do that? You wouldn't even know where to begin with, right? So, why assume anybody can?
Aside from Nazi Germany, and tribal warfare, massacres are not usually organized. They're usually something that happens when things get out of hand (a lack of order) and commanders basically just ordering troops to open fire on the civilians.

They're usually poorly executed. If a massacre were really well planned, it would be hard or impossible to prove because they'd have planned what to do with the bodies so they couldn't be found, organize a group of the most loyal soldiers, etc.
I don't assume anybody CAN carry out a massacre without messing something up. There are inevitably survivors, whistle-blowers, and poorly hidden mass graves which were made in a panic in an ill conceived attempt to cover up what happened.

teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 am
brimstoneSalad wrote:it's very difficult to fabricate imaginary people and convince everybody they went missing.
I am not quite sure that's the case. For decades, it was common knowledge that about 700'000 people were killed in Jasenovac, yet, today, it's accepted that the actual number is about 120'000, if not even lower. If it was possible to convince people that 700'000-120'000=580'000 imaginary people went missing, why would it be so hard to do that for the 3'000 or so people who, according to mainstream history, died in Vukovar? Similarly, historians can't seem to agree how many people died during the Holocaust, the estimates (ignoring the Holocaust deniers) range from 5'000'000 to 17'000'000.
First, you can't compare rumors and political boasts to actual research. Stop pretending they're the same thing. Go with the actual research, be that Vukovar or Jasenovac.

Larger massacres are more complicated because (as above) they're harder to control. You get more survivors scattering and hiding (and many dying after leaving), and you end up with so many graves that it's hard to exhume them all. That's the main issue with Jasenovac. Modern estimates are most likely correct, though.

The Holocaust is complicated by the cremation and the large number of people who fled, as well as questions of which deaths to count. It just went on for so long. Do we count the brave Jews who were fighting back against the Nazis, or are those instead war casualties? Do we count the many people who were shot in the streets by police over a more extended period of time? The people executed for violating strict laws, but not in concentration camps? How about the people who died of starvation or disease in the ghettos but were not directly killed by Nazis?

A simple one-off massacre is much easier to define and estimate. There's not much actual disagreement by scholars on the numbers, but rather a question of what you group in with the Holocaust.

teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amWhy would my ignorance of physics be embarrassing? Sure, there are a few students in my class at the university who solved the physics part of the maturity test better than I did (I solved 84%, while one student in my university class solved 97%), but nobody from my former high-school class solved it better than I did, which still means I understand physics better than vast majority of people, right?
No, it means you scored better on test than other students in your very small high school class. Not only does that have a bad p value, you're taking a sample from a poor education system, and you're also ignoring an essential confounding variable AND context:

1. It's very conceivable that you would not be embarrassed about your physics knowledge in front of hillbillies who know virtually nothing about anything. The context here is educated company.

2. There's a good chance you DO know less than the hillbilly. It's entirely possible that you have less than zero net knowledge about physics. Somebody who knows the Earth is round and goes around the sun and also "knows" that according to physics bumblebees can't fly (a myth) likely knows less (net) than somebody who merely knows the Earth is round, because that incorrect knowledge about bees subtracts from the tally. Your brain is FULL of false knowledge and incorrect assumptions. I would not be surprised if you (in total) know less than nothing, and count among the most scientifically ignorant people in the world when it comes to your net knowledge. You could change that over night by throwing out your bad assumptions... but you won't.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amAnd yet people are praising me for speculating on what the names mean.
1. Praise is a very strong word if you don't understand the context. You're a child and they patted you on the head and said "good job" because you drew a pony with your crayons. People are praising you as one does a child. We all experienced this in high school despite our incompetence.

2. Linguistics is a soft science (again) and it's one of the more speculative fields. So, in context that's the least egregious thing you're doing.
Don't bring up the Hard vs. Soft science stuff again, but maybe keep your speculation to speculative fields. It doesn't belong in basic physics.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 am
brimstoneSalad wrote:Vukovar obviously happened,
Well, it's certainly less obvious than that the Earth is flat. Yet even Earth being flat is false.
There Earth is only "obviously flat" to an idiot, and it takes a conspiracy theory to assert it. The massacre in Vukovar is consensus, and there's overwhelming evidence for it that can only be disputed with a conspiracy theory. In both cases, denial of Vukovar and Flat-Earthism, it's the conspiracy theory side that's wrong.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amHow do you argue that some story is mythological, rather than historical? Showing that most of the names are symbolical is enough, isn't it?
No. You simply don't, not when there's already empirical evidence for something. You don't use a soft science to contradict a hard one. Again, don't reply to this point because it will only bring up the Hard/Soft science again.

teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amAnd yet people are praising me for having figured out so much stuff about computer science (like how to make a compiler for your own simple programming language) by myself, and for trying to figure out what the names mean.
What do you think "freedom of thought" means? Why do you think it's valuable?
I don't think reinventing wheels is important, and I think those people are making a mistake in praising you (as they'd do for any student who is taking an interest to try to encourage and boost ego) since your arrogance is already through the roof.

Freedom of thought is good for people with enough sense to use it wisely, but it's something you clearly don't have yet. Your track record is terrible, you just keep convincing yourself of wrong positions that go against mainstream science and history.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amWhat I do know is that my history textbook tells me that the Romans killed about 5'000 Christians over a period of two centuries (between the Nero's Great Fire of Rome, blamed on Christians, and when Constantine the Great legalized other religions), and that many Christians gave up their faith out of fear.
Far more were converting than left the faith, and martyrdom was a major draw. In any advertising campaign you have to weigh the numbers put off by the ad vs those attracted. Roman persecution was a roaring success.

Do you realize how many Christians that is a month? About two a month.
If we killed two Nazis a month, publicly, I have little doubt that the martyrs would only make matters worse.

You might benefit from reading Machiavelli. A light touch of persecution only emboldens opposition.
As much as I may disagree with what China is doing right now, they're doing it correctly. It takes absolute subjugation, it's very expensive and it's something Rome never invested in. You have to go all out, or you have to go to the negotiating table and try to make them happy and achieve loyalty that way.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amThat was also happening during the Holocaust. Many Jews let themselves be tortured voluntarily and even tortured other Jews.
Now you're spouting Nazi rhetoric? Where the hell did you "learn" that? Stormfront?
Can you site any mainstream historian reporting that anything like this actually happened in significant numbers? If it happened at all, it was probably a couple cases of mental illness.
If you're talking about people with some Jewish ancestry in the Nazi party, obviously: because race realism is bullshit, and there was no real way to define how ethnically Jewish somebody was.

Christianity was a religion built on Martyrdom; that's fundamentally different. It wasn't a complex mix of ancestry you can't control, and these people weren't exactly mentally ill, they were caught up in a cult and group thinking.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amOr maybe Nazis would then find another way to spread their propaganda, including convincing people not to trust the Internet as a medium (which they are doing already).
They may, but it's a severe handicap. All you have to do is slow the propagation of bad ideas to be less than the propagation of their correction.
People are de-converted from Nazism at a certain rate, so we just need to slow the conversion TO Nazism to lower its numbers.
We know even relatively small forces can bias for or against adoption of these ideas. For example, mandatory vaccination kills off anti-vaxx ideology because everybody is vaccinated and there's no longer a question for people to ask about whether they should (thus no longer a risk of getting bad information). Most people just vaccinate when it's mandatory and stop worrying about it.

teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:32 amSo, do you think that Facebook was right to ban me for saying what I think about Vukovar?
I don't know what you said. You know our moderation policies here are very lax. But categorically? As in banning people who deny massacres from social media? Yes, that was probably appropriate. They have no way to determine if you're a Nazi or not, and you saying things like that make it look like you are. With any cull there are always false positives.
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Post by teo123 »

brimstoneSalad wrote:you're taking a sample from a poor education system
Well, education system is poor everywhere in the world, isn't it? I mean, can you point me to a country which you consider to have a good education system?
Chinese people are allegedly better at mathematics than the rest of the world, the language education in Europe is probably better than it is in the rest of the world (even though almost everyone in Africa speaks three languages, but that's not so much because of their education systems), and the education system in the USA appears to be bad at both teaching languages and teaching science and math.
Even if you could prove the assertions such as that Chinese people tend to be better at math (which, as far as I know, has never been truly investigated), you need to consider alternative hypotheses, rather than simply attribute that to their education systems. It's often been hypothesized that some languages tend to facilitate mathematical think. For instance, the patterns in the names of the numbers are very clear in Chinese. They are significantly less clear in English (Why is 11 named "eleven"? Why is 17 named "seventeen" and not "ten-seven"?), and are a lot less clear in the languages such as Welsh.
Also, if you speak a language a lot of people speak, or a language closely related to it (English, German, or one of the Chinese languages), you need to spend less time learning languages, and you can spend more time learning science and mathematics. That could also be a correlating factor.
Overall, this "Croatia has a poor education system." thing you keep saying seems like a completely baseless assertion.
brimstoneSalad wrote:It's very conceivable that you would not be embarrassed about your physics knowledge in front of hillbillies who know virtually nothing about anything.
Well, hillbillies tend to have a lot more practical knowledge than the rest of us have, right? I mean, they are ones that know how to produce food.
brimstoneSalad wrote:I don't think reinventing wheels is important,
But if you haven't figured something out by yourself, your understanding of it is superficial at best, and most likely wrong, right? Once I memorized the LCS algorithm without properly understanding it. And it seemed to me that it would be useful for making a spell-checker. I tried to build a spell-checker using it and, needless to say, it was practically useless, because I misunderstood what the LCS algorithm actually does (what even is a "longest common subsequence").
Similarly, if you don't speak a language in which some linguistic law operates, your understanding of that linguistic law has to be superficial at best. I haven't studied the Chakavian dialect of Croatian (it's very different from the standard Croatian, to the point at which it's often considered a separate language in linguistic works), so my understanding of the peculiarities of the operation of the Havlik's Law in it can easily be wrong (but that doesn't interest me enough to look into it more).
brimstoneSalad wrote:Freedom of thought is good for people with enough sense to use it wisely, but it's something you clearly don't have yet.
And what criteria would you set for who should be allowed to think and/or speak freely? Having a high IQ? Well, my IQ is 120, it's quite a bit above average, yet you say I shouldn't try to think freely. Having good grades at school? Well, I was at the top of my high-school, and yet you say it isn't enough. Having published some peer-reviewed papers? Well, I have also done that, and yet you say it isn't enough. So, what is? Where do you draw the line between those who decide what people are allowed to say and those who can't decide that?
brimstoneSalad wrote:Now you're spouting Nazi rhetoric? Where the hell did you "learn" that?
Well, it's written in my history textbook.
Though it may be more because of the first president of Croatia, Franjo Tudman, being a Holocaust denier (claiming in his book, "Bespuća povijesne zbiljnosti", that the actual number of the Jews killed by the Nazis was around 750'000, rather than 6 million) than that being an actual consensus among historians (Franjo Tudman was a professional historian, though). If I am not mistaken, Franjo Tudman also claimed that (some Jews colluding with the Nazis) in that book, citing (if I remember correctly) Ante Ciliga, and Ante Ciliga was an Anti-Fascist. I don't have the time to check it right now.
Either way, it's written both in my textbook and in some work of a professional historian I've read a part of.

Anyway, what do you think, how can I be happy if I believe there was a large massacre less than 20 miles from here and less than 30 years ago? If there was, then something like that can happen again, right? And how can I be happy if I know large number of people around me are forced to be dishonest by the government?
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Post by Minos »

I'm sorry for long due response, as I'm not an frequent reader.
teo123 wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 11:19 am
brimstoneSalad wrote:The less hackers know about how your code works the safer it is.
Can you point me to some study that confirms that? It seems to me it doesn't play a big role, if it doesn't even have the opposite effect.
I think, that brimstoneSalad is referring to "security through obscurity", but that has been debunked a long time ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_ ... _obscurity).

Open sourced code is usually more secure, because anyone can review it and report bugs (and lot of people does it). Some big companies are even offering rewards in terms of money. That is their way to convince grey hats to do the right thing (report) instead of selling exploit on black market.

Regarding searching algorithms and biased results I'd recommend these three videos by Smarter Every Day:
* Manipulating YouTube - https://youtu.be/1PGm8LslEb4
* Twitter platform Manipulations - https://youtu.be/V-1RhQ1uuQ4
* People are manipulating you on Facebook - https://youtu.be/FY_NtO7SIrY
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Post by brimstoneSalad »

teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 am Well, education system is poor everywhere in the world, isn't it? I mean, can you point me to a country which you consider to have a good education system?
It's relative, but you can find top ten and even top 40 lists online.
https://www.master-and-more.eu/en/top-4 ... the-world/
You're unlikely to ever find Croatia on those lists.

Yes, Croatia has a particularly bad education system, and there are a lot of reasons for that:
http://www.ijf.hr/eng/competitiveness/lowther.pdf

A lot of it is linked to funding and GDP, but it won't be possible to really fix without more government transparency and accountability. I've explained to you before Croatia's corruption problem, and I'm not going to have this conversation again.

Croatia may not have THE worst system in the world, but it's among the world's worst systems.
I don't have time for your patriotic bullshit, and I'm not going to spend a week arguing the well known fact that your education system sucks: a fact that you are good evidence of despite your supposed "good grades".
teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 amyou need to consider alternative hypotheses, rather than simply attribute that to their education systems. It's often been hypothesized that some languages tend to facilitate mathematical think.[...]
Also, if you speak a language a lot of people speak, or a language closely related to it (English, German, or one of the Chinese languages), you need to spend less time learning languages, and you can spend more time learning science and mathematics. That could also be a correlating factor.
It doesn't matter what is causing the output of Croatia's education system to be ignorance and propaganda. You can blame it on the language if you want (not supported by evidence, but fine). The fact is that you being in the top 10% of a pile of shit output still makes you shit for brains. Your top 10% is more like the bottom 10% in countries with better systems. Your appeal to your "high grades" is fallacious because it fails to take into account the context.
teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 amOverall, this "Croatia has a poor education system." thing you keep saying seems like a completely baseless assertion.
You are the one making the claim that your "high grades" make you competent or qualified. I've debunked this multiple times so you need to drop it.

teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 amWell, hillbillies tend to have a lot more practical knowledge than the rest of us have, right? I mean, they are ones that know how to produce food.
I'm sure I would be embarrassed about my lack of knowledge when it comes to fertilizer distribution practices, but we're talking about physics here.
What is wrong with you? Why can't you stay on topic or comprehend what points are relevant or not?

teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 amBut if you haven't figured something out by yourself, your understanding of it is superficial at best, and most likely wrong, right?
Wrong.
teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 amOnce I memorized the LCS algorithm without properly understanding it. And it seemed to me that it would be useful for making a spell-checker. I tried to build a spell-checker using it and, needless to say, it was practically useless, because I misunderstood what the LCS algorithm actually does (what even is a "longest common subsequence").
That's because you jump to conclusions without understanding things. People don't have to re-invent an LCS algorithm to understand correctly what it is for and what it does.

teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 amSimilarly, if you don't speak a language in which some linguistic law operates, your understanding of that linguistic law has to be superficial at best.
No teo, the correct analogy here would be you claiming that you have to INVENT a new language from scratch where a law operates, simulating its evolution, in order to understand the language law.
Really not interested in these red herring you're peddling.
teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 amAnd what criteria would you set for who should be allowed to think and/or speak freely? Having a high IQ? Well, my IQ is 120, it's quite a bit above average, yet you say I shouldn't try to think freely. Having good grades at school? Well, I was at the top of my high-school, and yet you say it isn't enough. Having published some peer-reviewed papers? Well, I have also done that, and yet you say it isn't enough. So, what is? Where do you draw the line between those who decide what people are allowed to say and those who can't decide that?
No teo, your IQ is not high. 120 is like prime Dunning Kruger territory.
And NO, as I have explained multiple times now (and will not be explaining again) your "good grades" don't mean anything without context. Don't make that argument again.
And NO, as we went into AT LENGTH in the soft science/hard science thread, publishing papers in linguistics doesn't give you any special insight into any other science and particularly not hard science. Don't bring this up again.

What's necessary for free thought is not a high IQ, but critical thinking skills coupled with a little humility and self-doubt.
Those are things you can learn, but not until you disavow yourself of this arrogance and these broad epistemological misconceptions.

teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 am
brimstoneSalad wrote:Now you're spouting Nazi rhetoric? Where the hell did you "learn" that?
Well, it's written in my history textbook.
Though it may be more because of the first president of Croatia, Franjo Tudman, being a Holocaust denier[...]
I have told you in the past not to trust Croatian text books. I'm not going to get into this.

Teo, if you want to eat up all of this propaganda I'm not going to waste time stopping you. Do it on your own time, though.
Don't spread Nazi shit on this forum.
teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 amAnyway, what do you think, how can I be happy if I believe there was a large massacre less than 20 miles from here and less than 30 years ago? If there was, then something like that can happen again, right? And how can I be happy if I know large number of people around me are forced to be dishonest by the government?
Now we get to the REAL reason you believe this garbage.

Teo, even YOU should know better.
This is the same argument as Christians saying "How can I be happy knowing I will die and there's no heaven?" or "How can I be happy without a personal relationships with a benevolent omniscient omnipotent being I know is looking out for me?"

Some times the truth sucks Teo. You don't just get to change reality to be what you want it to be to make yourself feel better.
Your government is corrupt as f*ck, your education system is shit, it's under-funded and riddled with propaganda from your corrupt government, and yes people get massacred sometimes where you live. And yes, you could conceivably be next. And yes, most of the people around you are brainwashed by propaganda or have their speech stifled by your corrupt government. The political context suggests a large massacre is less likely to happen today than 30 years ago, but it could happen and your government isn't exactly on a great track for improvement in transparency and accountability.

You can try to keep your head down and hope it doesn't happen to you, you can get out of that country and go live somewhere else, or you can be a reformer and try to fix the system... and possibly die a martyr in the process. Those are basically your three options.

Eating up this propaganda to make yourself feel better with delusions isn't necessarily going to protect you, though, and being a neo-Nazi isn't going to make you happy.
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Minos wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 1:54 pmI think, that brimstoneSalad is referring to "security through obscurity", but that has been debunked a long time ago
Ah, not really, no. Obscurity is only recommended against as an exclusive layer of security. Your code should be otherwise secure and not rely on obscurity, but it's still used as a complimentary approach.

Kind of how you don't go vegan to treat cancer as an alternative to chemotherapy, but it could be good adjunct therapy in combination with chemo (e.g. lower methionine diet for some cancers).
Wikipedia wrote:Security through obscurity (or security by obscurity) is the reliance in security engineering on the secrecy of the design or implementation as the main method of providing security for a system or component of a system. A system or component relying on obscurity may have theoretical or actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers believe that if the flaws are not known, that will be sufficient to prevent a successful attack. Security experts have rejected this view as far back as 1851, and advise that obscurity should never be the only security mechanism.
Minos wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 1:54 pmSome big companies are even offering rewards in terms of money. That is their way to convince grey hats to do the right thing (report) instead of selling exploit on black market.
That's very smart, but you don't need to be open source to do that.

You can employ well evidenced mechanisms for security then obfuscate as an additional (weaker) layer and frequently update (to strengthen the obfuscation so hackers have less time), and in my understanding that is still best practice.
Wikipedia wrote:Knowledge of how the system is built differs from concealment and camouflage. The efficacy of obscurity in operations security depends by whether the obscurity lives on top of other good security practices, or if it is being used alone.[7] When used as an independent layer, obscurity is considered a valid security tool.[8]

In recent years, security through obscurity has gained support as a methodology in cybersecurity through Moving Target Defense and cyber deception.[9] NIST's cyber resiliency framework, 800-160 Volume 2, recommends the usage of security through obscurity as a complementary part of a resilient and secure computing environment.[10] The research firm Forrester recommends the usage of environment concealment to protect messages against Advanced Persistent Threats.[11]
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Post by teo123 »

Do you mean to say I am a Neo-Nazi and brainwashed by the Croatian government, @brimstoneSalad?
I don't think I am. A Neo-Nazi would deny the genocides done by Germany and Croatia (Jasenovac, Holocaust), while exaggerating the massacres whose primary victims were Croatians or Germans (Bleiburg, Vukovar, Dresden...). The Srebrenica massacre (done by Croatians and Serbians to Bosnians), though, is being denied both by the far-left and the far-right in Croatia. The views I expressed here would be considered far-left, and not far-right, right?
The Croatian government certainly doesn't support Vukovar denial. In school, we are forced to sing songs about the horrors of Vukovar, and we are being praised for writing essays about them (admittedly, some of those essays and songs are touching even to me, even though I don't think they are telling the truth).
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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Post by brimstoneSalad »

teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 2:50 pm A Neo-Nazi would deny the genocides done by Germany and Croatia (Jasenovac, Holocaust),
I feel like you've done more than your fair share of that kind of denial.
teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 2:50 pmwhile exaggerating the massacres whose primary victims were Croatians or Germans (Bleiburg, Vukovar, Dresden...).
If we're talking literal political affiliation and not the general sense of massacre denialism. I'll grant that you're an equal opportunity denialist. That's not better, though.

Why not just accept consensus of historians?
teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 2:50 pmThe views I expressed here would be considered far-left, and not far-right, right?
The left isn't usually in the habit of denying validity to victims of war crimes, no matter what side of a political dispute they're on. Leftists typicall side with victims rather than with tribal loyalty.
teo123 wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 2:50 pmadmittedly, some of those essays and songs are touching even to me, even though I don't think they are telling the truth
The only question is whether the numbers are in line with consensus. If they say the bad guys were eating the babies and laughing through blood soaked teeth, then that's probably not accurate.
Look at the fact claims, and just see if they are in line with consensus. Shouldn't be hard.

If you're out to "disprove" something you'll always be able to convince yourself with bad evidence. What matters is what actual experts say.
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