New War In Israel / Gaza

[Nivsch]

2 minutes ago, Raze said:

16,000 of the dead are women and children.

If these numbers of Hamas are real, that would mean every single man killed and some of the women or children were all hamas.

I didn't understand your sentence here.

[Raze]

Just now, Nivsch said:

I didn't understand your sentence here.

If I am understanding right you’re saying 15,000 killed are civilians and 10,000 killed are Hamas, with the overall dead being around 25,000.

But we also know 16,000 of the dead are women and children. Assuming they aren’t Hamas, that would mean every man killed was Hamas. Seems pretty unlikely.

[zurew]

You guys using and obsessively holding onto the civilian to combatant ratio and not the per capita version of it to prove genocidal intent, is still incredibly sad that you think thats a reliable way to assess anything.

[Nivsch]

12 minutes ago, zurew said:

You guys using and obsessively holding onto the civilian to combatant ratio and not the per capita version of it to prove genocidal intent, is still incredibly sad that you think thats a reliable way to assess anything.

Can you explain more?

Edited February 16 by Nivsch

[zurew]

44 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

Can you explain more?

I already shared the video in this thread a while back, but I will share it again. He uses examples to demonstrate whats the problem if you don't use the per capita version of it. 

So here is the video time stamped:

Quote

 

Imagine the three following scenarios scenarios:

 Let's just say you have a strategy of being as indiscriminate as possible. So you're just going to throw bombs on cities randomly so we can all agree that's thats maximally indiscriminate.

 

Example 1) So let's say that this city has a militant to civilian population of 50 to 50 , you kill everyone you randomly bomb the city you, kill everyone what's your civilian casualty ratio? it's 1 to 1 , so you killed everyone.

Example 2) Okay now let's say the city has a  civilian to militant population of  90% to 10% what's your civilian casualty ratio now? 9 to 1

Example 3) Now let's say you have a city with 10% civilians and 90% militants. what's your civilian casualty ratio now? 0.1 (even though you killed everyone and you didn't discriminate between who you wanted to kill) 

So in one case you look great (example 3) in another case you look terrible (example 2 ,where you ended up killing 9x more civilians than militants) in another case, you look so-so (example 1) , but what was your strategy the entire time? - to be as maximally indiscriminate as possible. So the problem is that civilian casualty ratio isn't actually tracking with what we mean by discernment or intent (or in other words, what we mean by discriminating between civilian and militant killings). 

So the issue with not  using the per capita version of the civilian to combat ratio, is that if you intent to be as maximally indiscriminate as possible and literally just kill everyone, you can look really good , depending on the relative proportions of how many militants and how many civilians you have in a population, so that's why it doesn't work.

 

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So what does work?

What does work way better, is a very simple tweak, it's just doing the per capita version of it.  So instead of Civilian casualty ratio it's [(militants killed divided by militant population) divided by (civilians killed divided by civilian population)]. So in other words, the percentage of militants killed divided by the percentage of civilians killed.

 

So let's go back to those three cases again using relative risk:

Example 1) if you kill everyone, (being maximally indiscriminate) 50/50 population what's your relative risk? well it's one, because civilians killed divided by civilian population is just going to come out as  one if you divded that by ( militants killed divided by militant population).

Example 2) In the second case (the 90% civilian vs 10) militant population) using the same calculation will have the same result of 1 .

Example 3)  (10% civilians vs 90% militant) using the same calculation will have the result of 1.

So calculating relative risk tracks the intention of genocide way better (cause in all 3 scenarios the attacker was completely indiscriminate and all of them ends up with the same number) compared to using the civilian to combat ratio, where you end up with different intention results, even though the attacker was completely indiscriminate.

 

Edited February 16 by zurew

[Leo Gura]

The civilian to combatant ratio on Oct 7th was something like 2:1.

[Nivsch]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

I already shared the video in this thread a while back, but I will share it again. He uses examples to demonstrate whats the problem if you don't use the per capita version of it. 

So here is the video time stamped:

 

Thank you. I will read again all your main explanation and graphs.

By the graphs you added based on this formulation, Israel is placed in the extreme careful side of the scale if I understood it right, In terms of casualities.

Not in material damage there the picture is different.

Edited February 16 by Nivsch

[zurew]

58 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

By the graphs you added based on this formulation, Israel is placed in the extreme careful side of the scale if I understood it right, In terms of casualities.

Yes, if we plug in the numbers to calculate the relative risk (RR) for this war , it will be high (the higher the RR, the higher the likelihood that militants are being targeted over civilians) and even if we use hamas friendly numbers, according to this metric , this is a quantitative evidence against the hypothesis that Israel is indiscriminately targeting everyone.

Here is the current ongoing unfinished project that this dude does, where he calculates the Relative Risk (RR) for multiple wars. People can look at this and can get a sense, how well or how bad it tracks genocidal intent.

There are explainers on the graph for how you need to interpret the graph.

 

Edited February 16 by zurew

[zurew]

Here is the same graph with civilian casualty ratio as well (all the orange supposed to show the civilian casualty ratio and the blue the relative risk).

Edited February 16 by zurew

[Nivsch]

4 hours ago, zurew said:

Here is the same graph with civilian casualty ratio as well (all the orange supposed to show the civilian casualty ratio and the blue the relative risk).

I understand it organaized from the best (left) to the worst (right) when we want to see both the most positive blue and the most negative orange which is the best outcome.

[zurew]

2 hours ago, Nivsch said:

we want to see both the most positive blue and the most negative orange which is the best outcome.

Yes, but ideally for the reasons I mentioned before , we should focus on relative risk (the blue) rather than on both or only on civilian casualty ratio. 

 

Now of course, none of these metrics are absolute. The more variables we add, the bigger picture we can get about the war, however the issue is with the weighing of all variables. For instance, in my view, relative risk has much more weight and is much more informative assessing genocidal intent, than damage done to buildings, but of course that damage shouldn't be ignored.

There are still of course ways to try to establish genocidal intent, but it will be hard, because you will have to explain how can you get such high relative risk, when you have genocidal intent in mind (and even there are other contradictory factors that you will have to blast through).

Now, do you need to establish genocidal intent on Israel's part to make criticism towards Israel? No, of course not, and a lot of people here in this thread and in other places as well seem to forget that you don't have to die on this hill (that you have to prove genocideal intent). You can defend the Palestinian side without needing to use weak and bad arguments to prove genocidal intent. There are a lot of others crisicisms and arguments you can make against Israel and such arguments will be much easier to defend and to establish (for example damage done to buildings or you can pick any other thing).

Regardless what side you are on (anyone who is reading this) - people need to stop using civilian casualty ratio to prove genocidal intent, because relative risk is just more reliable for that.

Edited February 16 by zurew

[Nivsch]

On 16.2.2024 at 1:00 PM, Leo Gura said:

The civilian to combatant ratio on Oct 7th was something like 2:1.

Yes this is when this parameter get completely out of meaning, when we know that their intention was to kill anyone indisciminantly, including Israeli Arabs even, as long there are placed in Israel.

[zurew]

3 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

when we know that their intention was to kill anyone indisciminantly

Yeah one of the strongest argument to support this is the fact that when Hamas first arrived on oct 7, there were no Israeli soldiers near them  (most of them were at home on a holiday). There were places where Israeli soldiers only arrived 4-6  or more hours after the attack, so at those places Hamas could literally do freely whatever they wanted and they still killed civilians (so , it would be nearly impossible to talk around how they werent intentionally targeting civilians).

Also what possible reasoning could be given attacking people at a music festival?

Btw im surprised this  still considered contentious for some people here.

[Nivsch]

@zurew Absolutely agree with you.

 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Nivsch said:

Yes this is when this parameter get completely out of meaning, when we know that their intention was to kill anyone indisciminantly, including Israeli Arabs even, as long there are placed in Israel.

What does it say about your government if even with their best intentions they are not more accurate than terrorists?

[hundreth]

32 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What does it say about your government if even with their best intentions they are not more accurate than terrorists?

It really doesn't say anything. Hamas stumbled upon an unprepared military outpost just as they stumbled upon a music festival. Dead jews are dead jews.

Hamas on the other hand, doesn't have clearly defined military outposts. There is no equivalent of a sitting duck unprepared Hamas base just waiting there. 

The Hamas civilian casualty rate is completely irrelevant. 

[Nivsch]

44 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What does it say about your government if even with their best intentions they are not more accurate than terrorists?

By "best intention" you mean that my government really try to not harm civilians and still not accurate at all in the outcome? Or that you mean that it doesnt really try in your opinion because otherwise the outcome would be different?

Edited February 17 by Nivsch

[Danioover9000]

@Leo Gura

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

What does it say about your government if even with their best intentions they are not more accurate than terrorists?

   So true! It's probably the biggest weakness in all arguments from Israel's side.

[Danioover9000]

   BTW, facts don't care about your feelings is wrong:

   All people care about is not facts, but feelings instead. Feelings don't care about facts, and facts depends on feelings.

   All people care about are stories, narratives, and metaphors. so @zurew  and your fancy graphs, it doesn't matter. All this:

On 2024-02-16 at 1:22 PM, zurew said:

Yes, if we plug in the numbers to calculate the relative risk (RR) for this war , it will be high (the higher the RR, the higher the likelihood that militants are being targeted over civilians) and even if we use hamas friendly numbers, according to this metric , this is a quantitative evidence against the hypothesis that Israel is indiscriminately targeting everyone.

Here is the current ongoing unfinished project that this dude does, where he calculates the Relative Risk (RR) for multiple wars. People can look at this and can get a sense, how well or how bad it tracks genocidal intent.

There are explainers on the graph for how you need to interpret the graph.

 

 

On 2024-02-16 at 2:33 PM, zurew said:

Here is the same graph with civilian casualty ratio as well (all the orange supposed to show the civilian casualty ratio and the blue the relative risk).

are facts that are subservient to biases and preferences and worldviews of any one ego. It's only persuasive and convincing because of the metanarratives and propaganda throughout the decades-centuries of this conflict between Israel and Palestine, and USA and Russia.

Edited February 17 by Danioover9000

[Leo Gura]

35 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

By "best intention" you mean that my government really try to not harm civilians and still not accurate at all in the outcome? Or that you mean that it doesnt really try in your opinion because otherwise the outcome would be different?

It's like if I was hunting for birds with sticks of dynamite and when the bird lands on your house I throw the dynamite through the window of your child's bedroom.