what happened here?

  • theoneIno@lemmy.mlEnglish
    121·
    2 days ago

    When did a convoy of tanks ever stop because of one person? I asked claude and it said there are no historical records on this, the only time a tank ever stopped was in this case.

    claude previously said this was not a show of chinese mercy, but after pointing that out it said “hmm good point” lol

    If it was so easy to stop tanks, there would be no wars, imagine if a single iraqi could stop the US invasion (or a single american citizen in Iraq), or if a single ukranian could stop russia, or even a single russian that is not ok with the war

    Tank Man should be a symbol of how peaceful the Chinese are, no tanks from almost any other country would ever have stopped. Hell, in South America the military police drives over innocent people with their huge ass semi tank SUVs all the time.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      I agree with the content of your post but the idea of having a political argument against a Shakespeare monkey is really funny.

      • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        Is this how people psychologically engaged with the internet previously? They just thought of it as a black box of “thoughts” that they’d interact with? Did people not realize there were/should be an actual human being behind the content of the words? I don’t get this appeal for chat bots, truly. What do people think language and conversation is FOR? It’s fundamentally social. Chat bots are like the masturbation of conversation. There’s no point other than self-pleasure if it’s not WITH another person, and while there’s nothing wrong with self-pleasure inherently, there is when people mistake it for the activity it mimics.

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          Maybe it could be helpful if the chat bots were truly intelligent and didn’t just hallucinate about history, science, math, or anything factual. If I had an oracle machine that could talk to me and have a deep conversation it’d probably be useful so I could learn a lot; but having a machine that’s correct 90% of the time and blatantly wrong 10% of the time is truly useless.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1662·
    3 days ago

    On the offchance that you’re actually here in good faith. The pop history belief in the west is that a bunch of unarmed innocent protestors were brutally massacred inside the square, this is false and no deaths of protestors occurred in the square. What actually went down is protestors murdered two unarmed negotiators and burned them alive sparking off things turning nasty, a military column then got ransacked and some protestors armed themselves. What followed were dozens of hours of battles across different streets in which hundreds of PLA and armed protestors died. I could post images of these burned negotiators but I’ll leave that to you to look up, they’re not hard to find and I don’t think it adds value to a historic discussion to post the gore when what matters is the version of events.

    I can do this two ways for you, I can show it with western liberal sources or I can show it with socialist sources. I’ll give you both.

    The Telegraph lays it out pretty reasonably in this article in my opinion, and since it’s a right wing tory rag so I assume no liberals are gonna accuse it of it being “commie propaganda” lmao.

    But don’t just take that as the only example. How about we also look back at old articles written at the time it actually occurred?

    CBS NEWS: “We saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had occurred in [Tiananmen Square]”

    BBC NEWS: “I was one of the foreign journalists who witnessed the events that night. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square”

    NY TIMES: In June 13, 1989, NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof – who was in Beijing at that time – wrote, “State television has even shown film of students marching peacefully away from the [Tiananmen] square shortly after dawn as proof that they [protesters] were not slaughtered.” In that article, he also debunked an unidentified student protester who had claimed in a sensational article that Chinese soldiers with machine guns simply mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square.

    REUTERS: Graham Earnshaw was in the Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3. He didn’t leave the square until the morning of June 4th. He wrote in his memoir that the military came, negotiated with the students and made everyone (including himself) leave peacefully; and that nobody died in the square.

    A Wikileaks cable from the US Embassy in Beijing (sent in July 1989) also reveals the eyewitness accounts of a Latin American diplomat and his wife: “They were able to enter and leave the [Tiananmen] square several times and were not harassed by troops. Remaining with students … until the final withdrawal, the diplomat said there were no mass shootings in the square or the monument.”

    If instead of me using western major news sources to support my point you’d somehow still want this from my communist perspective. These three pieces are pretty good:

    https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/

    https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/

    https://archive.ph/24zzF

    As for these tanks themselves. The video is of them leaving the square, and when held up like this I think they demonstrated a degree of restraint you wouldn’t see from any western military anywhere in the world.

    • WhiskeyOaks [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      304·
      3 days ago

      Thank you for providing a legitimate, well thought out response instead of just reacting like so many others here. I’ll read through it all here in a bit.

      • REgon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1071·
        3 days ago

        Plenty of people initially responded with sources and thought out texts. You got negativity when you decided to ignore those, act as if you had not received them and then solely engage with low effort dunks like mine own. You are not owed respect, you earn it by being respectful

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          32·
          2 days ago

          It’s always the way they do things. They ignore well thought out responses and pretend their opponents have no argument. Then they’ll try to save face by acting “civil” with a commenter like above.

          I love it when they show up, do the exact same thing as the previous 10000 libs before them, and then act shocked when we respond to their scripted nonsense the exact same way as before.

          • REgon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            18·
            2 days ago

            It’s so funny. Then they go back to their dens and complain that users here are too aggressive to have a polite discussion.
            You really nailed the button about how last step is trying to save face by being polite to someone. Happens every time, and some users here even fall for it lol.

            I hate their attitudes about how discussions should go (when they are the one with a heterodox view of course).
            Just the fucking ego in insisting ones uneducated view on something should be treated as valid as the mountains of research others have done. Never mind that their “opinion” is often just completely false. It’d be like barging in to a forum for environmentalists and then insisting you should have a discussion about climate change. And of course they never just say that’s what they want, instead they post some dumb meme and act glib.

            I should make a lib debatebro flowchart

      • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        891·
        3 days ago

        sorry but your post was the embodiment of the very-intelligent/fedposting archetype.

        If you wrote a polite question like “What happened in June 1989 in Tienanmen Square, is the tank man photo real?” or “What is the origin of this picture?” then you’d get a polite response.

        No one is obligated to be nice to you if you’re not respectful back.

        • WhiskeyOaks [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          511·
          3 days ago

          And yall don’t need to start every interaction by being a massive douchebag and acting like everyone is out get you. The actual language of my question is pretty innocuous (though, perhaps less so given the context of the instance, but still).

          If I asked if it was real, I would get answers biased by belief in the events legitimacy. I’m also not going to ask what the origins are as I already know where the image comes from. By very purposely asking such a vague question, I’m openly inviting people answer with the information that they deem important to the context of this image. By asking in this way and in this instance specifically, I have the greatest chance to learn and stumble into some new information. As with all things, there are extremely polarized opinions about Tianamen Square, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            86·
            3 days ago

            the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

            Typically untrue. The rest of your comment I agree with though, you do need to be aware that an instance like this is consistently trolled by smuglord smuglord liberals so people are on guard and view vagueness as indicative of bad-faith participation. Given that most people don’t want to waste their time with someone they know is acting in bad-faith the result is hostility and easy cheap responses instead.

            • WhiskeyOaks [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
              110·
              3 days ago

              Do you think the truth typically lies at the extremes of reason? In my experience Occams Razor holds in almost every situation, especially with controversial topics like this.

              • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
                37·
                2 days ago

                If you ever take a calculus or precalculus class, when you are testing for minima and maxima across a zone, you usually test the corners first. The wisdom therein is that you don’t know for sure whether you are starting out centered on the critical point.

                It’s the same thing for politics. You can’t assume that the observable range is equidistant from The Truth in all directions. In many cases, you’re going to have an edge or a corner that is closest. Starting out by saying “we’re going to define truth simply by the average of the opinions that are out there” assumes that all perspectives are equally reasonable, that the average of the masses is always right, that it does not need to evolve, and that it is immune to manipulation. All of these assumptions are deeply wrong. Using this approach, you are always going to end up defining truth by the principles of strangers, instead of developing your own principles.

              • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                94·
                3 days ago

                “Reason” isn’t something with extremes, normally. Events are events, the truth is in the evidence. Interpretations of the evidence can vary, but truth doesn’t vary. There’s nothing about being in the “middle” of two positions on what happened in a historical event that makes the median stance any more or less accurate than the stances themselves.

                As an example, Iraq with WMD. The US line was that Iraq had WMD, the Iraqi line was that they didn’t. The Iraqi line was 100% correct and the US line was 100% fabrication.

              • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                83·
                3 days ago

                Occam’s Razor has nothing to do with the truth being in the middle of two arbitrarily chosen positions you pseudointellectual lib.

                You’re just throwing out phrases that you think make you sound smart.

              • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                30·
                3 days ago

                Do you think the truth typically lies at the extremes of reason?

                yeah, pretty much always. What truth lied in the middle of the geocentrism debate? Does God exist or not? Can the truth be somewhere in the middle for any of the most important questions?

              • HelluvaBottomCarter [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                29·
                3 days ago

                Well yes because the truth is the truth and our reason is Calvinball that changes over time and space. Scientific advancement always happens at the edge of knowledge and reason. That’s how it advances. You have to question the existing premise in order to move past it. You’re the one moving, not reality.

                Occams Razor does not mean that the truth is always in the center of reason. It’s that all things being equal (aka equal evidence for all sides), the truth is the thing that requires the fewest assumptions. Your lack of awareness about the evidence (ie full video of Tienanmen Square) isn’t the thing that requires the least amount of assumptions. You’re just assuming you have all the information and acting on that. We’re not assuming the information, we have it. So ours requires one less assumption than you.

              • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                37·
                3 days ago

                I like this line of thinking, but I’m having a hard time using it to understand the phenomenon of crop circles.

                Explanation 1: it was a previously unknown spacefaring species that uses giant circles to communicate.
                Explanation 2: it was a couple middle aged Brits with some boards

                Does Occam’s Razor say that it was a couple of aliens with some boards, or it was a previously unknown advanced civilization of middle-aged British men?

              • DinosaurThussy [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                55·
                3 days ago

                Invoking Occam’s Razor here is conflating neutrality with simplicity which is not always the case. Most political dichotomies of opinion are social constructions which themselves have bias. While there is a kernel of truth to “the truth lies somewhere in the middle” (you should try to get a complete picture before reaching a conclusion), applying it to already-biased dichotomies and then landing in the middle is going to result in you favoring the original bias present in the construction.

                • WhiskeyOaks [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
                  16·
                  3 days ago

                  I would argue it does. One extreme wants to say; “Tienanmen Square was a horrible tragedy and China/ Communism is the evilest thing in the world”, likely not true, but also, neither China nor Communism have clean hands. The other extreme wants to say; “Nothing interesting happened with Tienanmen Square and the West/ Capitalism is the evilest thing in the world”, equally unlikely to be true, but also, neither the West or Communism have clean hands. In this case, Occam’s Razor implies that neither of these extremes is reasonable and that the true story is actually some composite of both. I’m not using Occam’s Razor as a form of neutrality, merely as a mechanism for determining when a reasonable conclusion can be made.

              • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
                41·
                3 days ago

                I know that 1+1=2 but some people think 1+1=3. So probably 1+1 is approximately 2.5 since objective truth usually lies somewhere between two ends huh.

                Now you could say that you don’t know enough about math to know either way and that would be fine too, but then you shouldn’t have an opinion on it or say anything about math at all

              • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                47·
                3 days ago

                No I think that when multiple people are telling history there is usually one that is correct and it’s usually the ones that were actually physically present at the time it occurred.

                There aren’t multiple liars, there are multiple liars and one person telling the truth. You aren’t seeking a “middle”, you’re seeking the person telling the truth. “The middle” would be incorrect as well, as it would be in-between the lie and the truth.

          • SovietBeerTruckOperator [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            39·
            3 days ago

            Did you really think saying “I’m curious, what happened here” wasn’t going to come off as smug and condescending? Did you really expect it to garner a civil and cordial response?

            Like actually? What did you think our reaction would be? I have a hard time believing you didn’t think you were gonna “troll” us and when we mounted a better response than you thought you decided to get pissy and start moaning about civility.

            • mathemachristian [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              24·
              2 days ago

              I think they were “curious” about the kind of response they would get, rather than the event itself but seeing that there are valid responses that they cant just dismiss snidly and everyone thinks they’re stupid they have to coddle their bruised ego by pretending they were curious about the actual event all along. As in pretend to themselves mainly to protect against their hurt feelings.

              It’s a punch to the ego to be laughed at by the people you thought you were smarter than and realising you actually have no clue about what you thought would be an easy dunk does hurt.

          • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            68·
            3 days ago

            there are extremely polarized opinions about Tianamen Square, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

            i-cant middle of what? The middle of your ass you’re speaking out of?

          • REgon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            53·
            3 days ago

            The interaction did not start out at that point, it went there after you made it obvious you were not even going to watch the video of the event you talked about.
            It’s being made clearer by you continually trying to rewrite the course of events.

            By very purposely asking such a vague question, I’m openly inviting people answer with the information that they deem important to the context of this image.

            You do not openly invite to a discussion about an event by hiding your intentions, that is by it’s very nature not an open discussion. Vague questions and answers also only lead to a bad discussion. A discussion which also requires interaction from you, which you have failed to do several times. If you wish to see an example of an open discussion, then go to the thread I’ve linked you.

            And now you are trying to save face, but t his too you’re unable to. Instead you make it all the more clearer you are acting in bad faith.

            As with all things, there are extremely polarized opinions about Tianamen Square, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

            So you did know what was going on? Why did you ask what happened then? Also of course you’re an enlightened centrist. The truth does not lie in the middle when the tale is one of lies and propaganda by the west, as many people have given you resources to see. You making this statement once again makes it clear you’re not engaging with the arguments given to you.

  • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1031·
    3 days ago

    Lmao, are you the person from that blahaj thread who said they were “toying” with the idea of coming here to own us with a picture from 1989?

    Have you watched the video?

    EDIT: Your account age is exactly as old as this comment.

  • oscardejarjayes [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    701·
    3 days ago

    It’s notable that Arthur Tsang Hin Wah, one of the two Tank Man photographers, was in the hotel to take the photo because he was beaten by students while taking photos on the 3rd.

  • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.socialEnglish
    611·
    3 days ago

    I very nearly thought this was a bit until I read the responses

    Doubtless, you’ll go back to your main instance and report back that you learned a new perspective and weren’t permabanned for ‘just asking questions’. Im excited for your upcoming post on MoG summarizing your experience

  • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    741·
    3 days ago

    The US realized that chauvinist losers like you could be easily duped into believing atrocity propaganda in order to drive down domestic support for China. Since westerners can only barely reach political object permanence, this lie works so effectively well.

    Since you had your turn with China, let me play your same game here: “I’m curious”

    what happened there?

    answer

    1985 MOVE bombing in Philadelphia where police dropped bombs on children and allowed a fire to spread.

    Every accusation is a confession.

    • theoneIno@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      mostly from so called “leftists” lol it’s so pathetic, anarcholibs and such hate “tankies” more than they hate imperialism and capitalism, it’s so disgusting

  • gramxi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    55·
    3 days ago

    🤖 this doesn’t look like anything to me

    Edit: okay after reading the thread, I guess this isn’t badposting. OP you gotta understand, in most places, this would have been removed for being a low quality post or be taken as intentional shitpost for people to joke about. You would have gotten many more sincere responses if you posed a question in the title and elaborated in the body what specific information you were seeking.

  • combat_brandonism [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    691·
    3 days ago

    of all the bait to post, the self own here is off the charts

    from the natopedia link someone posted

    The lead tank halted to avoid running him over; the man then climbed on top of the tank. The PLA soldiers operating the tank then opened a hatch used for entering and exiting the tank, and briefly talked to the man.

    smuglord cURiOuS

    • WhiskeyOaks [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      210·
      3 days ago

      If this were bait, then don’t you think it worked like a charm? Unfortunately for you though, I’m genuinely curious what yall have to say here. I may disagree with some of the opinions, but maybe I can learn something along the way.