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They built shitty murderGPT and they think based on vetting a sample it can be 90% effective at picking out Hamas associates. In turn they are targeting homes and residential buildings with the stated goal of killing up to 20 people to get the lowest level flunky.

Their goal would allow them to kill 200 people to get 9 Hamas. 21 v 1

In fact

- Hamas is the local government many people who fulfill only civilian roles arent lawful targets.

- A dearth of smart bombs led to using dumb bombs which are less accurate and more likely to create collateral damage.

- There arent infinite lawful targets as the supply of lawful targets is smaller in relation to the pool of victims it is expected to get less accurate.

murderGPT is probably worse than specified.

1. The article is hearsay at best.

2. The article states that 10% is the absurd acceptable casualty rate. So I don't see how you got to 21 v 1. These are stark differences.

But anyway, let's assume Israel wants to kill ALL EXCEPT ONE enemy civilian.

That is still objectively better than wanting to kill ALL enemy civilians.

You made the comparison. I'm just pointing out how absurd it is.

The 10% is supposed to be merely those targeted incorrectly. You can't leave out collateral damage from your calculation.

> In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.

For every 10 Hamas targeted for deliberate murder in their own homes while they slept to be splashed with the blood of their children and wives it is acceptable in their books if 1 was never in fact even a villain. It is further acceptable if the high tonnage dumb bomb dropped on your building kills up to 20 other people.

This means it is acceptable to deliberately murder a total of 200 people to kill 9 authentic Hamas. That is 191 innocents to kill 9 villains or 21 for every one.

> That is still objectively better than wanting to kill ALL enemy civilians.

They have objectively killed more innocents than Hamas and stand to kill more but that isn't entirely what makes it more loathsome. When monsters strike at the innocent in a functional nation they have no end of defenders and comforters. The cops come in the shoot the bad guy, medics come to heal what can be healed, the press are shocked, their families come together.

When the innocents are made over into villains or villains by association who will stand for them. Who will even stop the slaughter let alone heal the wounded. As the people went about their daily lives while the jews were marched to gas chambers so the jews will go about their lives whilst the gazans are hunted by drones and bombs and starved.

Look at yourself. You would never have defended the gas chamber but you are defending wholesale slaughter and starvation. THAT is what makes it worse.

I'm not defending it. I'm putting blame where it belongs, on the perpetrator. No one in Israel asked for war. Lots in Gaza did.

When a woman defends herself from rape by stabbing the rapist I don't say, "She caused him more damage!" I blame the rapist.

Not everyone wants war and that's sad that people are caught in it. But Israel isn't at fault, any more than that woman. Hamas is firing from behind innocents. They have to kill innocent people to survive, typically. You can help them by eliminating their need to do it, or you can blame the victim.

Those are your options whether you like it or not. Just like they are Israel's options whether they like them or not.

> I'm not defending it.

Proceeds to defend it

> I'm putting blame where it belongs, on the perpetrator. No one in Israel asked for war. Lots in Gaza did.

Gaza is a population of 2M people run by an armed gang of a mere 50,0000. The IDF a fully fledged modern army has thus far proved unable to root out Hamas despite leveling most of Gaza. It seems hard therefore to blame the 1,950,000 not in said gang for its actions especially when half of them are kids.

> When a woman defends herself from rape by stabbing the rapist I don't say, "She caused him more damage!" I blame the rapist.

This is manipulative garbage. The rapist is singular unified in guilt and purpose. We are talking about a society. If you have anything else in this vein please keep it to yourself.

> Not everyone wants war and that's sad that people are caught in it. But Israel isn't at fault, any more than that woman. Hamas is firing from behind innocents. They have to kill innocent people to survive, typically. You can help them by eliminating their need to do it, or you can blame the victim.

We can demand lawful just behavior even in war. Letting murderGPT generate targets and blowing up women and children in there home isn't it. What happened in October was simply awful but Israel in modern times is not under existential threat from Hamas. They absolutely had the ability to prosecute the war in a different fashion. Acting like they had to either lay down and die or petpetrate horrors is again manipulative and dishonest. A few fuckin pointers.

- Drop bombs only on human vetted intelligence

- Fire on armed resistance not children

- Drop bombs on people participating in conflict instead of homes even if its harder and less effective

- Drop bombs only when the probable collateral damage is either zero or the tactical gain is high eg killing 0-5 to get a top tier leader is probably acceptable killing up to 20 to get each and every flunky is insane.

If the war can't realistically be prosecuted successfully on those terms then set up an actual acceptable no mans land between gaza and Israeli settlements instead of letting a bunch of idiots build settlements adjacent to the people who want to murder them. Fire back when shot at and continue assassinating leaders and those directly responsible for the October horror. There is every reason to believe that October need never come again.

If this is unsatisfying nobody gives a fuck. Morality is hard. Decency in an indecent world is hard. Man the fuck up and develop a sense of honor.

The current trajectory is unsustainable. The only way to pacify gaza is to kill everyone and that endpoint is probably unachievable without the world turning against Israel and stopping it and if leave a genocide partly done you'll be worse off than if you had never started.

This is the train we are on. The conductors are mental midgets and the people laying the track are oblivious.

You're defending people rather than nations which means you've changed the subject because you can't defend Gaza's actions and you're being forced to sustain that Israel is a better actor.

Stay on topic. You want to defund Israel.

Gaza intends to kill 100% of civilians (according to charter). Israel intends to kill less than 100%.

Defund Gaza?

If Israel had a kill all policy that would win your moral favor?

Disgusting. For real dude. Not even a little criticism for Gaza? Only Israel? Why?

I have realized you are uninterested in reasoned dialogue and prefer sentence fragments and manipulation. I don't think you have anything more to contribute so I'm ejecting. Good day.

Of course because you have no option but to admit your bias and racism at this point. You'd rather not.

> 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.

Yeah, that's a very specific error for a specific function. HN has a thing where they can manually mark accounts as throttled - my understanding its when you have a habit of replying emotionally and repeatedly to the same thread. So this, helpfully, gives you a pseudo-timeout to reflect before jumping back in, which in theory increases constructive responses, and at least prevents littering.

I don't know where you're getting that from. dang has very clearly explained how it works in that post.

"Your account is rate limited. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars."

What part of this differs from how I described it, except I was more polite and didn't say you were posting low-quality comments, or doing a flame war?

Your argumentative confusing responses used to frustrate me but you're putting a smile on my face now. Idk what's going on over there, but I have a feeling you know you're doing it, you're enjoying it, and I'm genuinely happy to hear that. יברכך יהוה וישמרך

How would you automate a system that throttles low quality posts? It relies on downvotes. When people downvote your comments, you are "rate limited" for a short duration.

That, of course, leaves open the problem of people downvoting stuff they disagree with, regardless of quality.

Essentially, the system works, but in many cases, a downvote means you're right and the downvoter doesn't like being wrong. That causes an unjustified throttling. Oh well...

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

> not in their charter.

18 August 1988.

2017: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full.

> They are accepting 10% casualties according to the article (probably bullshit).

I genuinely can't parse this. What does it mean to "accept 10% casualties". Casualties means injured/dead. Do you mean 10% of the total population injured? 10% of those injured in a strike are non-combatants? Steel-manning while gently guiding back to the material: lets ignore the 100:1 extreme in the material, and say 10:1. That would mean roughly 90% are non-combatants. Not the inverse.

I'm a Zionist and I'm shaking my head at the majority of what you wrote, there's no need to be this rude to anyone, ever. The condescension harms you more than them, you're trying to win them over, you shouldn't be ranting and pretending they don't know what a % mark means, its detrimental to your argument because it increases perception you're missing their point

More widely, at some point we have an obligation to engage with people and avoid silly side debates like "the charter says kill all the jews, here's the 1988 charter, oh you know they have a new charter? sure they revised it, but the revisions are stupid pandering to ignorant Western sympathizers" and "find me a document allows for saving a Jew authored by Gaza's government. Let me know where this document is."

There's a really unfortunate tendency to conflate any criticism of this war with "Hamas good" or even "Hamas okay" or "Hamas bad but not that bad" etc etc. Not claiming any of that. I'm on the right of Israel opinion polls because I want the war to continue until Hamas is eliminated because I do believe that the 1988 charter describes how they see Israelis to this day.

But I, like everyone else, contain multitudes, and see a straight through line from IDF concerns about targeting rules getting looser and looser and looser over the years since the 90s, what I've seen since October, and now this information we have in the TFA. I'd rather acknowledge that publicly and remain clearly morally superior than start long arguments over if its okay using things like 1988 charter.

What you're saying requires a belief that you are the official speaker of Hamas. And that they don't mean what they say, they mean whatever you say they mean.

It's a stretch. I can't say I believe you. I'll go with the documentation and official statements pending some more compelling evidence to establish your authority.

Dude this post doesn't make any sense, like it's not even attempting to respond to any of it. If you're on tilt, bless, this is overwhelming for me too. But it's bizarre to tell me I'm "trusting Hamas" when I virtue signalled 4 times I don't believe them.

If it's any help to either of you, I'm completely lost in what you're both arguing about, and sometimes on HN you can get caught up in an endless over-explaining trap that sends the thread off into the right margins and really makes whatever important point you were originally trying to make impossible to find.

We all have trouble (me especially) accepting the idea that our interlocutors here sometimes just aren't going to agree with us, no matter how many ways we restate our case. Sometimes the most persuasive thing you can do is just leave off.

No I'm saying that I'm trusting Hamas. I'm not trusting your implied claim that the new charter doesn't say that. It clearly does.

I gave a short response because it seemed like you were claiming that a new charter doesn't call for the killing of Jews. The new one only calls for the killing of the ones in Israel for now, because they are Zionists, even if not by choice.

I am pointing out that the implication is not for you to make. The meaning is expressed by the authors. The same ones who entered a neighboring nation and gave inarguable meaning to their already stated purpose. Furthermore, they NEVER deny the original 1988 meaning either. As a point, they don't.

As for 10% casualty; it means when making 10 calls for 10 kills, if 1 is a bad call that's acceptable. If 2 are bad, that's not acceptable. That was stated pretty clearly in the article. I didn't read it a second time, but I'm sure it's there.

So, Israel, even as demonized in this hearsay article, still sounds 90% better than Hamas.

Stated another way, even if Israel were to state that they intend to only save one Gazan civilian, it's still better than the stated purpose of Gaza. Your earlier comparison then is problematic.

I'm sorry for the percent sign explanation. When you tell me the article doesn't say that, I make a genuine effort to understand what you've missed. The article says 10% casualty, and I said 90% as a cup half full expression. Since you said the article didn't say that, I guessed that you didn't see 90 in the article. I tried to help you look for the 10.

I'm not calling you an idiot despite the seemingly implication. Not everyone understands how percentages work and I can't be expected to make any assumption about what you do or don't know.

Common sense being uncommon as it is.

It says that they are willing to kill up to 20 innocent people for e en the lowliest Hamas stooge in addition to wrongly 1 in 10. That is in order to correctly kill 9 its justified to kill 200 innocents adjacent in addition to 1 yahoo who was poor fellow who was miss-targered.

It obviously says the exact opposite of that unless you conflate multiple separate hearsay accounts. Injecting YOUR racism doesn't add meaning to the article, instead it only serves to discredit it.

Bloviating isn't the same as explaining. You make no sense and are actively damaging Israel. Are you a Hamas plant? Your posts are composed of verbal and mental gymnastics completely unrelated to the post you're replying to. I already told you I'm on Israeli right and agree with you the 1988 charter is what to rely on

You made the comparison: "It's reasonable to view Palestine as a nation and it's reasonable to look at what's going on and see forced starvation of a nation coupled to, as we are discussing here, cruelly relaxed standards for enemy combatants that make a mockery of international law and are de facto indiscriminate by any standard."

Gaza's policy is objectively indiscriminate. Israel's is objectively not indiscriminate.

I don't care what political party you identify with, and I don't care which country I'm damaging. I'm with the "Everyone Must Learn Science and Remain Objective" party. You were objectively wrong.

Does that make sense?

This is a complete non-sequitor? Be well my friend, I'm sorry about the account being marked as throttled, I think it'll help in the long run.

Marked? I don't think that's how it works, but thanks for the sentiment.

Non-sequitor? The last comment is a literal quote from you, and an explanation about how it doesn't fit the charter that you agreed in the preceding comment.

You're offended when I explain the argument, and then when I don't, you say you don't get it.

/shrug

Look it's simple; Gaza is worse than Israel. Objectively. That doesn't mean Israel is a model of human morality. And I don't think anyone is claiming that. But let's not pretend it's the same as Gaza. Israeli troops aren't rolling in beheading children while dancing and posting videos, right? It's nowhere near, even if we take everything in this garbage hearsay article and multiply it by 1000, it's still better than Gaza.

There's nothing you can say other than, "Yeah, I shouldn't have made that comparison." Any other statement at this point just looks like you condone beheading children. How do you not see that that's what you implied unintentionally?

Hopefully that's not what you're condoning.