zlacker

>>ilamon+(OP)
You can see this happen out in the open when Paul Graham (or anyone else) posts statistics about who's been killed, raw footage... he's immediately swarmed by people, some major players in the industry, accusing him of "antisemitism", which it most definitely is not.

>>smooth+Fw
It was certainly interesting to see Paul Graham, famous for his skepticism of China's COVID numbers, immediately embrace the Gaza Ministry of Health's death toll, without understanding how they themselves generate it.

>>richar+wB1
...is there any reason to doubt these figures? Is there any reason to suspect that Hamas is any less trustworthy than the Israeli government is?

>>JeffSn+MF1
Yes, of course there is reason to suspect Hamas is untrustworthy. I'm not trying to argue one should take Israel's word at face value (of course you should subject it to scrutiny as well), but yes, Israel, a liberal democratic state with a free press, strong left-wing movement, and the second biggest tech sector out of silicon valley, is far more trustworthy than Hamas, a repressive, fundamentalist, authoritarian regime with no free press. This doesn't mean they always tell the truth, but there is no equivalence between them and Hamas.

In terms of specific reasons to doubt the Gaza Health Ministry numbers specifically, I could go on forever about that, but I don't see the point of doing so on HN. It's not a tech-related question.

>>richar+QG1
I believe there is very little reason to assume the numbers are not accurate. Not only have their numbers been fairly accurate in previous conflicts, but also many US officials believe them to be accurate if not underreported.

It feels more like an Israeli attempt at using fog of war and the masses ignorance on the matter to soften the reaction and spread doubt about the real numbers. As this talking point was continously used by Israeli spokespersons even after US officials believed these numbers to be fairly accurate. I would be happy to be corrected, I wish the numbers are actually less, and would want this to be the reality.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-officials-have-gro...

>>keefle+sI1
"I believe there is very little reason to assume the numbers are not accurate."

How are the numbers generated?

>>richar+hH3
Not the OP, but does it matter if I specifically know how the numbers are generated? I'll absolutely appeal to authority and accept that the United States, various United Nations agencies, MSF, etc accept these numbers as reasonably accurate and acknowledge that they're in a far better position to understand the provenance of the data than I'll ever be.

>>Saucie+8S3
Great - I'll rely on scientific thinking -- nullius in verba -- and ask questions I'd ask anyone else about how they gather their data, how they know what they claim to know, etc. You believe in the church when it says the sun revolves around the earth.

>>richar+864
I don't have the arrogance to assume I can become a domain expert in everything that happens. At the end of the day these people are dead. Killed by Israel. And the world's experts agree. One UN official explained how after previous conflicts they've engaged in post-hoc investigations to ascertain the accuracy of the Gaza health ministry numbers and found them accurate. It's unfortunate for Israel that the numbers make it appear that they're committing a genocide. There are any number of strategies Israel could employ other than indiscriminate mass slaughter. They'd rather deny the numbers than stop incrementing them.

>>Saucie+No4
Nobody is asking you to be a domain expert. When it comes to almost any other issue, people ask how and demand evidence. But when it comes to Hamas's claims of a certain number of dead, nobody seems to ask "How do they calculate it? Are they looking at morgue data? Are they doing photographs of mass burial sites, as Ukraine did? What is their method?"

So people are asking you to be scientific and critical rather than to uncritically repeat the claims of a belligerent in combat.

Finally, I'm not sure if you're saying this facetiously or if you genuinely don't know what Israel is capable of, or the lengths its gone to to reduce civilian harm but Israel is not doing indiscriminate mass slaughter. That's what Hamas did on October 7.

>>richar+wA4
Ok, fair. My curiosity about methodology was satisfied when I saw an interview with a UN relief director who explained the retrospective examination of past casualty reporting that had happened.

I mean completely seriously that Israeli occupation forces are engaging in deliberate mass slaughter, including widely reported upon declarations of certain zones as safe for civilians followed by the bombing of those zones (https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-01-03-2024-...).