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 ambrimstoneSalad 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.