this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
407 points (95.7% liked)
Technology
59534 readers
3183 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
And what is their estimate of preference falsification? It's just ~10%, no?
What impact does this level of preference falsification have with respect to the % of russians who support the invasion of Ukraine, annexation of its territories and extermination of Ukrainian identity?
We go from ~75% to ~65% with preference falsification w.r.t. support for the above, is that not the case?
Do the numbers cited (less preference falsification) in support of the war not fall under the definition of "strong majority"? Is 65% not a strong majority?
Don't the authors clearly state that their methodology (even with weights) likely underestimates the true level of support?
Their numbers (for support of the invasion of Ukraine) align with other polling methods; which is damning for the "innocent Russians just got played a bad hand, they are not really genocidal imperialists" narrative.
Why did you leave out these numbers? I don't understand. They clearly reference them. Why would you do this?
But you would never accept any methodology or research that doesn't show what you want to see. Be honest! It's not about the research or the numbers for you.
So why bring up "accurate figures"?
White washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians leads to 100 of thousands of deaths, 10 of thousands people being tortured (UN stated that 95% of Ukrainian POWs were tortured, and that doesn't include civilians) and millions having their livelihoods ruined.
And I am just referencing Ukraine. There are many other examples. The russians killed 5% of the civilian population of Chechnya in the 90s. That would be equivalent to killing 7 million russian civilians.
In that particular study, yes, they measured a ~10% difference in support when using the list method vs directly asking.
I didn't mention the exact figure because if you read the study, you would see that even they claim this isn't a perfect method.
There could be many more supporters of the war, but there could also be many fewer.
As they say, they sampled a relatively liberal demographic, so it's likely that the national average result from this survey would be higher, which would certainly help your argument.
But they also say that there's "empirical evidence that list experiments reduce response bias but do not eliminate it entirely (Rosenfeld et al. 2016)."
Like I said earlier, I'm not a statistician, so I have no idea if the bias can be estimated to have been reduced by 90% or 20%.
All I know is that you shouldn't jump to conclusions, especially when there's many external factors at play.
I'm willing to be proven wrong, and I don't appreciate your attempts to strawman me as somebody who isn't.
I'll admit that I'm biased because I want to believe that most people over there aren't terrible, and in my anecdotal experience, they have been. So yes, I'm more likely to be skeptical of results that indicate the opposite, especially if they don't properly account for the external social influences at play.
I've never stated that there isn't a large percentage of Russians who are genocidal imperialists, I'm arguing that we should try and figure out the facts before claiming that the overwhelming majority of the population are that way.
The way you jump to the opposite conclusion without definitive evidence leads me to believe that you are also biased in your beliefs.
I'm not sure what this argument is trying to accomplish anyway?
I'm not convinced that 'white washing' the beliefs of the Russian population are to blame.
What Russia is doing is fucking horrific, there's no argument to be had there. But should the entire population be monstrified for the actions of their government?
Instead of just slapping a label on the entire population, we should be working on lowering those statistics, and spreading awareness that there's a huge percentage of Russians who disagree with their government.
The people over there need to know that they aren't alone in their beliefs, and that they have more like-minded supporters than they realise.
Otherwise the thought of fighting back and enacting change seems hopeless.
Can you stop trying to imply that I didn't read the study? What are you trying to achieve with such petty passive aggressive jabs?
Of course it's not a perfect method, but it aligns with other studies (quantitative direct polling and other list experiments, as well as qualitative). It also aligns with long term historical studies around positive attitudes of the russian population towards imperialism (increase in approval of government following invasions, annexations and genocides) over the past ~30 years.
How am I trying to strawman you? Critiquing your reliance on annecdotal experience (that funnily enough mirror my own - although I don't claim my anecdotal experience means anything) is a straw man?
Show evidence for your framing around "let's not jump to conclusions"!
What external factors? What external social influences? Be clear and direct in your claims and back them up with something more than "I feel so"!
Show how these factors are important! Going back to my original post, fully uncensored YouTube has been a click away for every russian with smartphone until recently, is this not the case? Can the same not be said about telegram?
What am I trying to accomplish with my argument?
To show reality and not let well meaning, but completely unverified platitudes (that contradict all research and even history) get in the way explaining the nature of russian imperialism.
You're not convinced that white washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians is relevant because you don't have to deal with the cruelty and degeneracy of the russians.
Why should we not make russians who support genocidal imperialism (both conceptually and as implemented by their leaders) responsible? Are they children? Of course they should pay for their actions.
And what if the reality is that a strong majority of russians are not interested in implementing any kind of change in their society?
Or that the russia as a society has dug itself into such a hole (supporting putin for 25 years and supporting genocidal imperialism for ~35 years) that there is no easy way out other than violence; something the absolute majority of allegedly "opposition minded" russians are not willing or able to engage in.
By the way, that's totally understandable; but in that case they shouldn't talk about magical fantasies of a democratic russia of the future appearing out of no where.
Let's say for the sake of argument I agree with your take that genocidal imperialism of russia since it's founding is not representative of current russian society.
How and when do you expect any changes to happen?
How - I am not asking for in-depth details, just a general outline that goes beyond "somehow in the future".
When - 5 years? 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?
Addendum question - while we wait for these changes, what would you like people in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya and Belarus to do? Please be specific.
How would you sort those who support war from those who don't?
It would depend on the geo-political context, currently there are less viable options.
In a different context, beyond the main mass of hardcore criminal (several million russian) that require strict punishments, you could leverage a legal proof method.
Every russian signs a legal paper outlining and their overall support for genocidal imperialism, putin, knowingly promoting false russian propaganda and so on.
Based on the of level severity of their support for genocidal imperialism, they would have to pay financial compensation and engage in global community service work (de-mining in Syria, junior janitor in an infectious disease hospital in rural Africa).
The legal paper would have a clause stating that if you claim you never supported genocidal imperialism (as certified in the legal paper), but later evidence comes up that you were actually supportive of russian degeneracy, you lose all your assets and will be required to do two decade of global community service (or go to jail). This clause would be valid indefinitely for the life of the person.
Note, I am not saying the above-mentioned approach is viable right now. I am trying to show that there methods to create incentives for russians to be open about their support for genocidal imperialism.