Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is people don't put the information they're given up to scrutiny anymore. So much is being force fed to them that they've started to just take it sight unseen. Let me take the three examples the author gives…

* 3 million people protested in Tehran: I was just pointing this out to someone. If you truly had 3 million people and they stood in the road you'd have 5 people across. Take those 5 rows and have everyone line up behind them. In that case 3 million people would go on for roughly 114 miles (assuming about a ft of depth per person). It would be visible from space.

More important, a few thousand Iranian police wouldn't stand a chance against a group 3 million strong. They could overthrow the capital with that many people.

* Mousavi under house arrest: Possible but pretty stupid. This is the most plausible of the ones listed but it would be suicide for the ruling party to do so it stands to logic they wouldn't.

* the president of the election monitoring committee declared the election invalid on Saturday: If you've watched the news for any amount of time you know the election committee can't invalidate an election the Ayatollah has approved of.

So under basic scrutiny all these claims seem unlikely. If people are believing them on face value they clearly aren't putting much thought into what they believe and that's the problem.

Not that I don't agree with your assertion of scrutiny, but...

1) If you watched any of the videos shot by foreigners and Iranians alike, you'd notice that there were at least 50 across if not more. This makes your calculation wrong by an order of magnitude. The videos are there to prove it.

2) Mousavi being under house arrest and then let out due to pressure caused by so many people marching and protesting is a more likely scenario. Don't underestimate the stupidity of snap decisions made when the reaction was unexpected.

3) The president of the election committee can dissent with the Ayatollah, even if it were dangerous for him personally to do so. Also, Ayatollah went back on his proclamation a day later and asked for an inquiry into the elections. This makes that the president's claim that much more valid.

None of these claims are unlikely, but caution must be exercised anyway. I'd rather believe the people in the streets than what someone from the media can tell me. If you don't believe me, watch the Twitter streams. There's a lot of misinformation there, but also a lot of good information. Sifting through this is a journalist's job.

I'll shoot it right back at you because I don't necessarily agree with you either (all your points could be valid) but at that point, for me, it comes down to Twitter.

All the points listed are "state changes". Protestors went from a group of 10s of thousands to allegedly 3 million, Mousavi went from being a free man to being under house arrest and the elections president went from supporting the election to allegedly calling it into question.

Now, if I hear news of a "state change" such as there my first question is "what's the source. If it's an anonymous guy on Twitter I don't jump to believe it. If it's the BBC I probably think it's possibly true.

So it still comes down to cognitive process or the lack there of represented by people who believed this stuff.

Oh, and btw, since it's a pet peeve of mine. Even if some areas are 50 across I have to believe the crowd would have spilt into narrower areas (since no venue is designed to hold 3 million people). But even at a constant 50 across you're still talking about almost 12 miles worth of people.

From the images, the space the protesters were gathered appear to be of the same scale as Times Square. I was there for New Years 1999. So were 2 million other people. The crowd stretched from 43rd Street (where the ball is) to just north of 59th Street (at the south end of Central Park). They lined two avenues (Broadway and 7th Ave). In NYC, it's 20 streets/mile, so that was 0.8 miles along two avenues...

I agree that state changes being reported by one person are not necessarily true. However, a state change being reported similarly by multiple unconnected sources is helluva more believable. Also, remember that BBC/CNN/etc. did not jump on this story. As a matter of fact, they've ignored it for the whole weekend, even when their international stations were reporting it on other TV channels. Who knows what their motivation for that is, besides verification (which might not have been possible, considering that communication sources were progressively jammed by security forces).

As for the number of people goes, if you take a look at the videos, you'll get a clearer picture as to how many people there are. From what I saw, it was 50+ across and it was pretty consistent width as far as the camera could see. I'm not saying that 3 million is accurate, I was just saying that videos show a lot more than 5 across and that's where you were off. ;)

Well, the issue is that now with twitter there's no such thing as "multiple unconnected sources". You don't know who is independently corroborating something, and who is parroting.

True, for Twitter news. However, there's been other sources, such as Huffington Post who have been getting similar reports through e-mail and YouTube.

Those sources are not connected to Twitter, so no parroting there.

1) You appear to be unfamiliar with the game "sardines", or Times Square. People don't take up much space, especially when standing up. There are 27,878,400 Square Feet in a square mile. Each square foot can hold a person, standing up. That means in a square mile, you can fit up to 27 million people. (not pleasantly or comfortably, but it can be done.)

2) Police have guns and fire hoses. Any of these alone is enough to control a crowd several times the size of the police force, especially the fire hoses.

3) Amanjeed (mispelled i know) is not known for employing logic. Indeed, the primary reason given by many of Mousavi's supporters was that Amanijeed was too capricious and arbitrary in his decision-making. And when you control all of the important offices and agencies (i.e., the state police and military), politics is just for show.

4) This is incorrect; the Ayatollah did not approve of the election; that is why they have launched an investigation into irregularities.

You clearly didn't put much thought into your own claims.

4) This is incorrect; the Ayatollah did not approve of the election; that is why they have launched an investigation into irregularities.

Eh, actually...from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090615/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_e... :

"The day after the election, Khamenei urged the nation to unite behind Ahmadinejad and called the result a 'divine assessment.'"

It was only after the protests that Khamenei backtracked.

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