Wow, I really wish I had a good answer. Instead the current conflict makes for an almost maximally hostile epistemic environment. I think the realistic thing to do is to accept that it is really hard to know what is actually happening with any certainty. This is by design. The whole problem is anti-inductive by nature: As soon as you find such a method that works, there will be an incentive by others to circumvent it. Know that there is propaganda and bias on this side too though less overt.
This gloomy view is of course not the same as saying that there is no information to be extracted. Try non-news sources. Like the UN page condemning Russian aggression. I don’t know if your family and friends would except that as strong evidence. Does the Pope have any credibility in Russia? I would never trust the Papacy myself as I’m atheistic, but some regard him as an authority on moral matters, and he seems to think there is a war going on at least. Perhaps consider Aljazeera as an alternative, clearly-not-US news outlet? They are often used by Swedish media as an alternative to CNN and BBC. Or Indian media, like WION, though WION are prone to hyperbole, and not very thorough in checking their sources. They have been very active on Youtube lately. This clip might be effective at showing that there is a lot of suppression going on, if that was ever in doubt. Of course, asymmetric suppression of information severely reduces the expected truth-value of any information that is allowed to stay, which is obvious to most here, but not necessarily easy to explain or convince people of.
Or, you know, anything that media on both sides agree on. I’ve been looking at English rt.com from time to time to get a glimpse of the narrative in Russia. HerearesomeRTarticlesthatmightshowcracksinPutinspicture. I would be very interested to know if you can access the English version in Russia, and if the translation matches the original.
I would also be very interested to read anything and everything you have to say about what the situation looks like from inside of Russia.
Stay safe. People have been warning that Russia will close it’s borders soon. If you want to get out before then, there is no time to loose. I am not saying that you should, and I don’t know if you could. If you do, you are welcome to stay here, in Sweden, send me a PM. Last I heard the border to Finland is still open, but requires a Visa.
I would be very interested to know if you can access the English version in Russia, and if the translation matches the original.
I can access to these articles from Russia. But it seems some of them have not translated into Russian. As far I can see there are no strict correspondence between articles in English and articles in Russian. For example there are articles in Russian about meeting Zelensky and European delegation but there are no article about “unequivocal support” for Ukraine from this delegation.
Ahh, interesting, so the English version is not just a translation then, but rather a very different version, is that right? Very cynical, for the same new agency to write different articles for different audiences.
In that case I would think a fair bit of information could be extracted from the difference between the different versions, even for someone who is more likely to trust an official Russian news source.
Unfortunately it also means that my window into the Russian media landscape is less clear than i hoped.
Thank you!
I am very open to any recommendation for sources from within Russia, whether for or against the war. I don’t know Russian, unfortunately.
Ahh, interesting, so the English version is not just a translation then, but rather a very different version, is that right?
Yes. As far as I know in RT there are different editorial staffes for different languages. It seems they didn’t translate news from Russian to English. Some people write articles for Russian version and some people write for English version and so on.
I don’t know Russian, unfortunately.
As far as I hear online translators can work well now. Maybe in some cases Yandex.Translate can help more than Google.Translate because it is more optimized for Russian language.
Wow, I really wish I had a good answer. Instead the current conflict makes for an almost maximally hostile epistemic environment. I think the realistic thing to do is to accept that it is really hard to know what is actually happening with any certainty. This is by design. The whole problem is anti-inductive by nature: As soon as you find such a method that works, there will be an incentive by others to circumvent it. Know that there is propaganda and bias on this side too though less overt.
This gloomy view is of course not the same as saying that there is no information to be extracted. Try non-news sources. Like the UN page condemning Russian aggression. I don’t know if your family and friends would except that as strong evidence. Does the Pope have any credibility in Russia? I would never trust the Papacy myself as I’m atheistic, but some regard him as an authority on moral matters, and he seems to think there is a war going on at least.
Perhaps consider Aljazeera as an alternative, clearly-not-US news outlet? They are often used by Swedish media as an alternative to CNN and BBC. Or Indian media, like WION, though WION are prone to hyperbole, and not very thorough in checking their sources. They have been very active on Youtube lately. This clip might be effective at showing that there is a lot of suppression going on, if that was ever in doubt. Of course, asymmetric suppression of information severely reduces the expected truth-value of any information that is allowed to stay, which is obvious to most here, but not necessarily easy to explain or convince people of.
Or, you know, anything that media on both sides agree on. I’ve been looking at English rt.com from time to time to get a glimpse of the narrative in Russia. Here are some RT articles that might show cracks in Putins picture. I would be very interested to know if you can access the English version in Russia, and if the translation matches the original.
I would also be very interested to read anything and everything you have to say about what the situation looks like from inside of Russia.
Stay safe. People have been warning that Russia will close it’s borders soon. If you want to get out before then, there is no time to loose. I am not saying that you should, and I don’t know if you could. If you do, you are welcome to stay here, in Sweden, send me a PM. Last I heard the border to Finland is still open, but requires a Visa.
I can access to these articles from Russia. But it seems some of them have not translated into Russian. As far I can see there are no strict correspondence between articles in English and articles in Russian. For example there are articles in Russian about meeting Zelensky and European delegation but there are no article about “unequivocal support” for Ukraine from this delegation.
Ahh, interesting, so the English version is not just a translation then, but rather a very different version, is that right? Very cynical, for the same new agency to write different articles for different audiences.
In that case I would think a fair bit of information could be extracted from the difference between the different versions, even for someone who is more likely to trust an official Russian news source.
Unfortunately it also means that my window into the Russian media landscape is less clear than i hoped.
Thank you!
I am very open to any recommendation for sources from within Russia, whether for or against the war. I don’t know Russian, unfortunately.
Yes. As far as I know in RT there are different editorial staffes for different languages. It seems they didn’t translate news from Russian to English. Some people write articles for Russian version and some people write for English version and so on.
As far as I hear online translators can work well now. Maybe in some cases Yandex.Translate can help more than Google.Translate because it is more optimized for Russian language.
Deepl.com also supports Russian, and seems slightly better than Google Translate to me.