Comment by michaelmrose
2 years ago
> think most people here can subtract 10 from 100 and get 90. Am I the only genius on HN? I hope not. Help us all if I am.
TLDR: You are the only HN genius who forgot to multiply by allowed collateral damage.
They suggest based on thin evidence that it selects 90% Hamas associates given relatively clean data at start of conflict. There are oh so many things wrong with this.
- Hamas is the local government. Those who don't participate in the fighting aren't lawful targets in the first place
- They preferentially strike homes during the night maximizing collateral damage in order to obtain a higher chance of killing the target. They set the acceptable losses at 20–100 based on rank and importance of the target.
- Their initial accuracy was assessed by vetting a small sample earlier in the conflict.
What happens to your targeting as the conflict proceeds? Your known targets die, flee, and move around. New soldiers are recruited but don't provide clear intelligence from a chaotic warzone of their present status. You would logically expect such a system's accuracy to decline towards randomness as such a conflict proceeds and intelligence and targets become thinner on the ground. There is no reason to accept the initial 90% targeting accuracy on faith.
Even where we accept we must not forget to multiply by acceptable collateral damage.
I'm apparently at least one genius on HN that doesn't multiply unrelated sources.
I took each claim as coming from a separate source because the article specifies that they did.
By itself, a claim of 10% allowance, implies a 10% allowed civilian casualty rate.
Also, if you down vote, it prevents me from commenting. If you just want to get the last word in, say so. You're not important enough for me to care if I do.
Neither is this hearsay article.
More telling, you completely dodged the racism in Gaza's charter. Swept it under the rug.
Israel is bad for using AI, but it doesn't bother you that Gaza wants to kill all civilians?
Really, I think that last one makes moot all of your points entirely.
You can't downvote direct responses nor does a downvote prevent a response. YOu might find that the reply button is not present on a comment immediately after it is made. If you click on the stamp eg "1 hour ago" you will note the reply button is evident and can be used.
The predicted false targeting rate is explicitly NOT the civilian casualty rate nor is it even supposed to be. You are seizing dishonestly on a low number because it appears justifiable.
It's not the overall civilian casualty rate which appears to be 2–3x nor the expected casualty rate of AI guided bombing of residences which appears to be much higher yet. It does appear that the maximum allowable rate according to Israeli policy is 21x for such bombing raids.
It does prevent you from posting for an hour. The reply button is present. You get a "you're posting too fast" message.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524
So in summary what you're saying is, we should go with hearsay and sum all hearsay together, multiply all false claims and use those to guide our government.
Nice.
Hey, why do we use significant figures to guide our multiplication?
Anyway even if we do believe all hearsay, you have to admit kill 99.999999999% of civilians is still a better policy then kill 100% (Gaza's policy).
So your other points still don't matter.
You've opted to defund the kill some policy while still funding the kill all policy. And simultaneously you're critiquing it. You have to admit, there's not just a little bias there. It's something deeper.
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82% of the so-called “Palestinians” approved of October 7th Massacre back in October. 75% approve of it in March 2024. For every armed terrorist there were 5-10 Gazans perpetrating the atrocities on October 7th. Every other house in Gaza is full of weapons. “There are no innocents in Dresden”, Winston Churchill