Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

the307.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 832 posts

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#431

Post by richardfeynman »

dang wrote: post #230
richardfeynman wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi @dang. Here is a factual comment of mine that does not break the rules which, along with many other comments on one side of the Israel/Palestine issue, was unnecessarily and unjustifiably flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45832233

I think that one is borderline but, in the context of a topic this divisive, borderline is not so bad, so I've unflagged it.

@dang Here is another comment of mine on this thread that is substantive, responding directly to the issue, and not a personal attack, but was still flagged. I'm an HN user for 15 years, have reviewed the rules, and don't think this violates any (except that I used the word "balls"?). I agree with the other commenters that flagging is being abused here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223274

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#432

Post by oa335 »

tptacek wrote: post #370
ada1981 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. The reports are 42 total killed, 12 civilians including 2 children. "Operation Grim Beeper" (seriously) on Wikipedia cites these numbers from Lebanese government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...

The figure of merit in a military strike is casualties, not KIA; it's the "wounded" part you actually care about (in fact, in some tactical situations, wounding is preferable to killing, as it ties up adversary logistical resources). Since the pagers that were targeted were exclusively used by Hezbollah (which fought an actual civil war with the Lebanese security forces specifically in order to establish its own tele…

> it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated.

Have you provided any sources at all for you numerous claims throughout this thread? Would it also me rational to draw a the conclusion that someone who has provided no sources at all is also engaging in “motivated reasoning”? At least be consistent.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#433

Post by richardfeynman »

dang wrote: post #356
kyboren wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't so much to litigate each flagged comment, just to highlight how pervasive the flag abuse problem is. And of course, when the flag abusers 'defect' and gain some utility, it is only rational for the 'victims' to themselves defect from the civil conversation and start to abuse flags. In threads that are, unfortunately, adversarial, abusing the flag button is a stable Nash equilibrium. I think it's a shi…

I don't assess it that way. In any case, I am certain that turning off flags on controversial topics would have a devastating effect. To me that's like saying "let's turn off the immune system for the most fatal viruses".

Perhaps it's worth considering an algorithmic review of flagging abuse. You can feed a table of flagged comments with the user, the comment the user flagged, and the context, as well as HN's rules, into GPT or a similar AI to get a first approximation of which users are abusing flagging, and on which topics flagging is most abused. I bet you'd find some interesting data!

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#434

Post by sudosysgen »

breppp wrote: post #308
Cyph0n wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hezbollah has a political/civilian arm. This is my last reply in this thread.

I am aware of that, and hopefully they will become a Lebanese political party without an armed wing, similar to all other political parties, which are most essentially led by former warlords involved in mass killings

Hezbollah operates hospitals and medical services. It's not just a political party.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#435

Post by tptacek »

oa335 wrote: post #429
tptacek wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel had in fact very clear intelligence that the specific pagers they were detonating were overwhelmingly going to be in the custody of combatants. This was very probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years. That's not a value judgement; it's a descriptive claim.

Do you have any sources at all for your assertion “This was very probably the most precisely targeted large-scale military strike of the last 100 years”? It is hard to engage with your statement in any reasonable fashion without knowing where you are getting your information.

Just start from the premise that Israel targeted exclusively handheld military comms devices that would in ordinary practice only be in the custody of Hezbollah combatants, and from the additional premise that the explosions in the strikes were relatively small, so small that the overwhelming majority of the Hezbollah casualties were wounded and not KIA. Then try to make another story make sense.

We have significant evidence for both these premises!

This is not an argument that the strike incurred no civilian casualty, that no child of a Hezbollah combatant was in close proximity when one of the bombs went off, anything like that. It's rather a sanity check on arguments based on statistical claims about the casualties. There might have been quite a lot of civilian casualties! But for there to have been significantly more of them than combatant casualties, I would argue that you have to break one of my two premises.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#436

Post by jameshilliard »

judah wrote: post #165
jameshilliard wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The Lebanese Ministry of Health stated that the attack had killed a confirmed 12 civilians, while killing 30 Hezbollah members. 1 civilian death for every 2.5 combatant deaths. For comparison, in World War II, there were an estimated 2 million civilian deaths and 5.3 million combatant deaths. 1 civilian death for every 2.6 combatant deaths. Those are remarkably similar ratios. Take that as you will.

> The Lebanese Ministry of Health stated that the attack had killed a confirmed 12 civilians, while killing 30 Hezbollah members.

Source? AFAIU The Lebanese Ministry of Health stated 12 total were killed in operation grim beeper, this number did not appear to exclude Hezbollah members.[0] They listed 2 children which AFAIU were friends/family members of Hezbollah members. They list four of those killed as healthcare workers but don't appear to identify if those healthcare workers were also Hezbollah members. Keep in mind the attack was more designed to injure rather than kill, with nearly 3000 injured.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kn10xxldo

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#437

Post by tptacek »

jackling wrote: post #426
tptacek wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if in fact 1500 Hezbollah fighters were injured, any claim that over 1500 noncombatants were injured is suspicious. We have video footage of the explosions (along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike). It is not plausible that more noncombatants were injured than combatants, given the pagers were strictly military comms devices.

Both the 1500 and 4000 number were confirmed by Lebanon, and no reputable watch organization has credibly disputed them, you're not citing evidence just conjecture on how you believe everything went down due to a relative small bits of information. > along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike I am not sure what this means. To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against yo…

No, it isn't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227021

(If you want to reply to that argument, can I ask that you do it on that leg of the thread, just to keep the thread simpler? Thanks!)

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#438

Post by jameshilliard »

QuercusMax wrote: post #158
jameshilliard wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Were the children terrorists too?

> Were the children terrorists too?

They were family members of terrorists, that's how they got a hold of the pagers.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#439

Post by juliusdavies »

jackling wrote: post #426
tptacek wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if in fact 1500 Hezbollah fighters were injured, any claim that over 1500 noncombatants were injured is suspicious. We have video footage of the explosions (along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike). It is not plausible that more noncombatants were injured than combatants, given the pagers were strictly military comms devices.

Both the 1500 and 4000 number were confirmed by Lebanon, and no reputable watch organization has credibly disputed them, you're not citing evidence just conjecture on how you believe everything went down due to a relative small bits of information. > along with a directional sense of the wounded vs. KIA count of the strike I am not sure what this means. To add, you're making it impossible to argue anything against yo…

Do you want some deeply studied anthropological journal article on “The use of pagers in Lebanese society “?

Do you know of any civilians anywhere in the world that currently use pagers?

Who had the pagers and why they had the pagers is almost derivable from first principles at this point, never mind the international journalism on the subject.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#440

Post by tptacek »

oa335 wrote: post #432
tptacek wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The figure of merit in a military strike is casualties, not KIA; it's the "wounded" part you actually care about (in fact, in some tactical situations, wounding is preferable to killing, as it ties up adversary logistical resources). Since the pagers that were targeted were exclusively used by Hezbollah (which fought an actual civil war with the Lebanese security forces specifically in order to establish its own tele…

> it is rational to draw the conclusion that your reasoning (and sourcing) is motivated. Have you provided any sources at all for you numerous claims throughout this thread? Would it also me rational to draw a the conclusion that someone who has provided no sources at all is also engaging in “motivated reasoning”? At least be consistent.

(We're conversing in multiple different parts of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227021)
Post reply on HN