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The Truth is Always Simple (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)
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Mick Harper
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My next example is the use of the Bogus List. It is a Frenchman being alarmist -- or as he would say applying the precautionary principle

Jacques Dexteri wrote:
Civil War Is Coming To France It’s unfortunately not a joke
https://medium.com/politically-speaking/civil-war-is-coming-to-france-2d2aabf814bf

The French have been more than usually revolting recently but Jacques says it is not just recently

History often repeats itself. French history is known for its uprisings, revolutions, civil wars…
1789 The French Revolution started a civil war that would last 10 years.
1848 French started a revolution called the “Springtime of the Peoples” that would spread throughout Europe.
1870 The Paris Commune was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris.
1968 For 7 weeks, demonstrations, general strikes, and the occupation of universities and factories stopped the whole country.
Barricades were built, and the president fled to West Germany…

The well known AE textbook Revisionist Historiography sets out how to spot the bogus list

the bogus list
Any time a list of two is encountered it is the revisionist’s bounden duty to find out why.
It being so paltry a list, there is the suspicion that the case is so weak even a list of two is useful.
In practice three is suspect: the third, on inspection, often turns out to be a considerable stretch.

So we look at the list and note that Jacques has moved the goalposts a little with that 'uprisings, revolutions, civil wars' but we immediately note that the only civil war actually mentioned is the resistance in the Vendée but to call that a civil war is a considerable stretch (they were always up in arms about something or other, salt taxes mostly). Nobody questions that France is the go-to country for revolutions but Jacques is not talking about Jacqueries, he's talking about yer actual civil war

Some believe it will happen in 2024 during the Olympics in France after seeing the chaos during the UEFA Champions League final in Paris.

Liverpool supporters will be surprised -- and I think rather pleased -- to hear they were precursors to an uprising/ revolution/ civil war

Others are expecting it for 2027 when Macron steps down as president and if the far-left or the far-right wins.

Predicting a fairly unlikely event and then predicting a fairly unlikely reaction to that event is... well, let's see what Frère Jacques concludes will happen

Conclusion
While I can’t predict the future, the clues do lead to an eventual clash in France between communities
.

Let's see if Brother Mick Harper agrees:

I hate to be pedantic ("Oh, no, you don't") but students of civil unrest have strict rules about manifestations, as the French call them. For example, there has not been a civil war in France since the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century -- though some argue that 1870-71 amounted to one. But however you call it, the chances of a civil war happening in the 2020's remain, on this evidence, fairly small.

Jacques greets this English intervention into French history with not one, not two, but three Gallic shrugs

Thank you for sharing your opinion Mick :) We used to say chances of war in Europe are close to 0 thanks to the European Union and all that. Yet there is war again.. So I think we can expect a lot of things that were unrealistic to expect just a few years ago :) Have a great Sunday ! Appreciate you reading and taking the time to comment :)

But Harper produces a stale baguette and soundly boxes the Frenchman's ears

No, I don't think we did. We have always said, "My goodness, what a lot of wars there are. Though not, thank goodness, so far within the European Union." And by the way, I was not offering an opinion, but stating a fact. Unless you think I got that wrong.
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Mick Harper
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But back to my old sparring partner, John Welford, who posted up

Miguel de Cervantes: Author of Don Quixote
His famous work was a “one-hit wonder”, but it was quite a hit!
https://medium.com/@johnwelford15/miguel-de-cervantes-author-of-don-quixote-65fd3decd749

and described it all in sufficiently revealing detail to bring the usual deathwatch beetles out of the skirting board

Mick Harper wrote:
Don Quixote is a fake. Miguel de Cervantes is a fake. Whenever you come across phrases like 'the first novel', 'not known when he was born', 'details of early life sketchy', 'a very poor background', 'did serious prison time', 'pirated editions', 'hit on the idea' and 'all time greats' you can be reasonably sure you are not reading quite what you thought you were reading. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news or, as we professional revisionists call it, 'good news'.

Despite my listing the evidence (by the standards of medium.com quickfire exchanges)...

John Welford wrote:
And your evidence is?
Second question - do you live in a fantasy world where nothing actually exists?

Mick Harper wrote:
People cannot live in the real world without fantasy.

I hope he doesn't think I was referring to myself.
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Mick Harper
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Right on cue
John Welford wrote:
So you admit that all your weird claims are fantasy?
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Mick Harper
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I have now got more claps (a hundred) for my JK Rowling piece than for anything else I have ever posted on medium.com. Or anywhere else in my internet career, as far as I know. This is interesting from such a resolutely right-on crowd. Of course what I wrote was carefully crafted but even so it bodes mildly well.
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Mick Harper
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I find myself in the unusal position of arguing with someone who keeps terrorising me with facts. It all started with this piece from a (clearly) partisan Ukrainian

Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
Russian minority in Ukraine do not live in siloed ghettos
People from outside of Ukraine do not always understand what does it mean to be a Russian minority in Ukraine. Because usually when they hear “minority” they think of Kurds in Iraq, Chechens in Russia or Cherokee in USA. However Russians in Ukraine are more like Irish or German in USA. They are an integral part of Ukrainian society and not a special group, which require some special handling.

But let’s clear one thing first. There are ethnic Russians and there are Russian-speaking Ukrainians. These are not the same. Due to historical reasons there are many ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian. It’s similar to how many Irish speak English. If you hear someone speaking Russian, chances are higher that you listen to an ethnic Ukrainian than to an ethnic Russian. Majority of Ukrainians can speak both languages depending on situation. So if you hear some Ukrainian speaking Russian, this does not even mean that he is a Russian speaker. It’s complicated, that’s why people rarely care. Ethnicity is a matter of self-identification in Ukraine.
Full story: https://medium.com/@navpil/russian-minority-in-ukraine-do-not-live-in-siloed-ghettos-2f52f1a4cee6

I thought I had better be mildly mischievous

Mick Harper wrote:
You have not explained to us Westerners why the Ukrainians of Donbas and Crimea seem so anxious to be part of Russia.

and unleashed a tiger...
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Mick Harper
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Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
Donbas and Crimea are very different. Crimea has a clear Russian majority, while Donbas has not. Ukrainians in Donbas did not want to be part of Russia. I wrote an article about Kherson, but I also mention the statistics on other regions, Donbas including: https://medium.com/@navpil/annexed-kherson-is-pro-ukrainian-in-vast-majority-a1ded74e1c94

Well, yes, but he did not differentiate the two in his piece. However he went on

The Russia-pushed narrative that majority of Ukrainians from Donbas wanted to join Russia is a lie. I admit I did not research the Crimea statistics. But here I would not be surprised if indeed majority would be fine with joining Russia (but I will check because in 1991 majority of Crimean population voted in favour of Ukrainian independence) (EDIT: I checked and I indeed was wrong, a link is in another comment, majority did not want to unite with Russia). However apart from the fact that annexation of Crimea was illegal, there is yet another problem with Crimea and it's about why the majority of Crimea is Russian. And it has something to do with a genocide of indigenous population: https://medium.com/@navpil/crimea-has-russian-majority-dirty-story-421df801ce07

But muddied the waters a bit more with

A follow up to my other comment. Here is a research, which shows that majority of Crimea population did not want Ukraine and Russia to unite into one state. Not exactly the same question as "Crimea joining Russia", but still relevant: https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=236&page=81

I thought I had better commend this honesty even though I knew exactly what he was really trying to do

Mick Harper wrote:
A very fair answer. When statistics are being gathered by interested parties (I mean governments, not you!) it is best to be guided by popular action. When applying realpolitik it is also best to draw a veil over 'how we got here' and that includes both recent 'binding' agreements and less recent... er... 'population movements'. In my judgement there is no more chance that the populations of Crimea and (most of) Donbas will accept Ukrainian rule than the population of the rest of Ukraine will accept Russian rule. Nobody should be dying to prevent that outcome.

I assumed he would extend the same courtesy to me which he did. At first...
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Mick Harper
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Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
The statistics were gathered by a credible resource. I understand that they are Ukrainian, but they have a very good reputation abroad (in Russia including - if we talk about independent sociological research centres as Levada). As for the "popular action" - I think you're talking about referendums in Donbas? The problem with them is that they were not verifiable, even the blanks were simply printed on the usual paper and were easily faked. Also - who counted the votes? Is it possible to prepare referendums in such a short time (about a month)?

For reference check the referendum in Kherson which was also fake, then check how people meeted Russian vs Ukrainian forces (I talk about Kherson referendum in the already linked article). There was a strong support for Ukraine in Donbas. For example check this article about the pro-Ukrainian meeting in Donetsk in spring 2014: https://armyinform.com.ua/2020/04/28/28-kvitnya-2014-roku-%E2%88%92-ostannij-proukrayinskyj-mityng-u-doneczku/ So the problem with the "popular action" is that they were not that "popular". They were faked.

This is a standard ploy in polemical arguments: the fact that x was faked, means x is wrong. I pointed this out (I genuinely thought it would be unarguable) though I made a false step in claiming authority (even though I really do)

Mick Harper wrote:
I was not referring to any of these -- which I agree can be anything from partisan to deliberately faked. What cannot be faked is popular resistance. I accept that militant minorities can provide a misleading impression of overall sentiment but in my judgement -- and in my (very considerable) experience of linguistic minorities -- the majority Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine will never be reconciled to living in a truly independent Ukraine. It is only a question of whether Ukraine can be reconciled to losing territories which should never have been part of Ukraine in the first place. It isn't a question of right or wrong.

Ah, but it was...
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Mick Harper
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I will break up the flow to aid comprehension

Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
Your questioning of what should and what should not have been part of Ukrainian territory is a very dangerous talk. Should we start redrawing borders in Europe? Which year should we take as a reference? 898? 1453? 1848? 1938? 1985? That's kind of the point of a post-WWII order to stop questioning validity of borders to prevent wars.

Mick Harper wrote:
As for redrawing borders, I suppose I would go for pre-1954 Kruschevian re-organisation. ONO.

Now he got really disingenuous

Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
In 1954 Africa was under British and French rule. Should UK and France invade Africa? Do Irish want to be part of England? They speak English, don't they? Not all countries are the same. Actually all of them are different. Kharkiv is a traditionally Russian speaking city. That's why I took it as an example.

I did what you should never do, defend yourself.

Mick Harper wrote:
I thought I took care to refer only to traditionally Russian-speaking areas - i.e. the Donbas and Crimea, not Kharkiv. As you point out in the case of Ireland, it is culture not language that is the ruling passion.

It availed me nothing

Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
You continue talking about the myth "Russian speaking majority does not want to live in independent Ukraine". This is what Russia wants you to believe. There are lots of Ukrainians speaking Russian, but they stand against Russian aggression and want to live in independent Ukraine. Kharkiv is a perfect example of this. It's almost purely Russian speaking city, but they probably hate Russia the most (or almost the most) among all Ukrainians. Because they are bombed a lot. There is no Russian-speaking majority who want to unite with Russia. It seems that you did not read the article. Russian-speaking does not equal ethnical Russian. And ethnical Russian does not mean a Russian supporter. These are myths. And I try hard to dispel them. Your considerable experience of linguisitc minorities fails in Ukraine.

I absolutely did not think so (and in my defence, no non-Ukrainian thinks so). But now things got nasty...
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Mick Harper
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Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
You should not "accept" or "not accept" my words on Russian speaking population. It's not a matter of opinion. There are sociological researches, there are real people. One may ask them, and they are asked, and they answer. And they say they don't want to be a part of Russia. What is your "I do not accept" based on? Just internal feelings? Really - what do you base your claims upon?

Mick Harper wrote:
Kharkiv is a traditional Ukrainian city. Crimea and the Donbas are not traditionally Ukrainian areas. My experience and knowledge (not my internal feelings) lead me to assume their populations prefer Russia. Everything I have observed in recent years confirms this. (Though not Russian-controlled plebiscites.) Until I see clear evidence to the contrary I will maintain this position. The evidence you have provided, while useful, does not reach this standard.

Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
Check the "traditionally Ukrainian areas" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_distribution_of_Ukrainian_speakers. Sorry, your knowledge of Ukraine is very limited, but you still think you have an informed opinion. The way you differentiate Kharkiv from Donbas is very strange. Donbas is traditionally Ukrainian as well. It's not traditionally Russian. You mix Russian-speaking and Russian as you see fit, and call Donbas Russian-speaking even though it's as Russian speaking as Kharkiv. And you say that Kharkiv is traditionally Ukrainian, even though it's as traditionally Ukrainian as Donbas. Statistics support it. And I mention this statistics in the article. You're juggling with terms, which is very usual for Russian propaganda. Sorry, I won't waste time on you anymore.

Mick Harper wrote:
S'funny how I am only ever accused of not knowing enough when I disagree with the accuser. S'funny how I am only ever accused of being a propagandist when I disagree with the accuser. As for juggling terms... we both know, don't we?

He really had -- Kharkiv has been Ukrainian since time immemorial, the Donbas since 1954, and I figured he knew it. But he had the last word

Dmytro Polovynka wrote:
By the way, thank you for providing me with more lies which I may disprove. Here is an article inspired by you. https://medium.com/@navpil/donbas-is-ukraine-2b92b3fc2740

Not a melding of minds but useful all the same.
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Mick Harper
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Today's lesson is in the limits of evidence and the limits of authority. It's quite rat-a-tat-tat.

John Welford wrote:
Wylye, Wiltshire
A village that can trace its origins back many centuries and has some interesting stories to tell.

Wylye is a small village about ten miles northwest of Salisbury, Wiltshire, in southern England. The river that flows through the village is the River Wylye, a Celtic name that is the origin of “Wil” in Wilton, the town a few miles downstream from which the county of Wiltshire took its name.
https://medium.com/@johnwelford15/wylye-wiltshire-7641e55fb8f3

This came as a bit of a surprise to me since I had assumed it was all very Anglo-Saxon round there.

Mick Harper wrote:
Did you discover what makes 'Wil' a Celtic name? I suppose Wiltshire is fairly near Wales but it's a bit of a stretch.

John hadn't but chose not to say so

John Welford wrote:
It's the river name that is Celtic, and "Wil" derives from that. There is plenty of evidence that many names of rivers were Celtic in origin - later settlers did not seem to be interested in renaming them.

I reminded him of his duty but tried to head him off from pastures old

Mick Harper wrote:
Can you name a few? Not Avon, as there are more of them in England and Scotland than in Wales.

John Welford wrote:
An odd thing to say about the "Avons", given that every river in Wales is an Afon! Celtic (or pre-Celtic) river names? How about Frome, Brent, Trent, Sowe, Soar, Exe, Dee, Ouse, Tarrant, Nene, Severn, Sence, Dove, Axe. Is that enough to be getting on with?

Consider what is required to know that a place-name is pre-Celtic. We do not know whether there were any pre-Celtic people in Britain and we certainly don't know what they spoke. You would think even the most foolhardy etymologist would be deterred by that.

Mick Harper wrote:
I hate to be technical, John, but it is not enough just to list some rivers and declare them to be Celtic. Or even 'pre-Celtic' -- a concept to conjure with. Do you have any more rabbits to pull out of the distant past? Are there pre- pre-Celts? I wouldn't advise going back as far the Ice Age (only twelve thousand years ago, remember) since there were no rivers to name at that time.

John Welford wrote:
I can only pull things out of hats that have already been filled by people who are more knowledgeable than I am - and that is surely all that most people can do. Everything on this list can be confirmed by reference to the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names. I'm sorry that this is not enough for you.

This is the point. When does someone feel the need to go beyond the standard sources. If it doesn't happen when someone invites you to do so, when will it ever happen? It is one thing to cite authority, but to come right out and say "Shan't" like Violet Bott in a Just William story is essentially appealing to Holy Writ.

Mick Harper wrote:
Do you ever feel the need to question your masters, John?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
1. Wikipedia
Okay, so here’s the deal. Read Wikipedia. Your friends do, your competitors do, and even your teachers do.

Even I do. Religiously. Compulsively. What should I watch out for?

But remember it’s been written by anybody. Literally anybody could have written it. You can go online right now and change the Queen’s Wikipedia page to whatever you like.

It's amazing people still believe this. It's bad enough that the great unwashed believe it, but when it's somebody in authority laying down the law after he's made a special study of the subject, it is either outrageous or depressing, I can't tell which. Wiki material goes through hoops. Hoops within hoops if my stuff is anything to go by. In years of daily use, I have never once found anything in Wiki that I suspected was 'someone changing it to whatever they liked'. Just ordinary fare of the kind you would find in any conventional encyclopedia. Though one written in the last ten years.

So, you don’t know how good the source is. It could have been written by a high school student or an Ivy League professor. You just don’t know.

Either's fine by me.

People change the details on Wikipedia pages all the time. You could be being pranked, lied to or just getting really average information.

I've been getting really average information. I've no doubt there are pranks and lies but if they got past the Wiki scrutineers they got past me too. Same goes for all sources of information. You know... printed encyclopedias, peer-reviewed journals, textbooks.... things like that.


There is an article here on who watches the wiki editors. I don't think it invalidates the use of wiki compared with other sources, but still interesting to a scriptocskeptic like Wiley

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/march-2023/who-watches-the-wikipedia-editors/
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Mick Harper
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Triffic piece, Wiley, covers all the bases, old and new. I'll just hurl a few things arising.

As it turned out, there are plenty of weirdos — and “weirdo” is an apt description for most regular Wikipedia editors — who were keen to spend long hours editing an online encyclopaedia for no fee and no credit.

The tyranny (and oddballness) of the editors is something I can testify to -- though to state a (dis)interest I have never contributed to Wikipedia in any way and have only appeared in it fleetingly. Once as a citation (still there), once as 'an alternative theory' on the History of English page (long gone) and once in a Wiki discussion (with a tendentious commentary about my personal wickedness last time I could bear to look). All this (I don't know how he missed the citation) is the work of a Wiki editor I've had 'issues' with in real life. I say 'I' but that's not my real name according to Wiki so it may not have been me.

On the other hand, this is of no account to the fairness and authoritativeness of what Wiki has to say about, in this case, the history of English. It may all be wrong but it is an encyclopaedia's task to give what the present 'truth' is, not the truth. And to be fair to my schweinhund opponent, the view expressed in THOBR has not stood the test of time as an 'alternative truth' so may well have fallen by the wayside anyway.

But on to less personal matters...
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Mick Harper
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Well, no, just one more personal note. Whole sections of Revisionist Historiography are devoted to the Ways of Wiki though my general view of it summed up by this

So now you know. To start finding out why this is all happening, and to start finding out how you can find these things out for yourself (and whether it is worth finding out), Lesson One: If you have access to Wiki you are halfway home

It should not need pointing out in this day and age but Wikipedia is the finest, best curated, most comprehensive, most trustworthy, most up-to-date encyclopaedia money need not buy. When it comes to the basics, if Wiki has got it wrong, everyone has got it wrong.
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Mick Harper
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As the default online source of information for much of the world, having a good Wikipedia article is worth its weight in gold; and if you cannot be bothered to embellish your article yourself, there are consultancies who will do so in return for a fee.

I know this sounds dodgy but it really isn't very different from asking an academic to do it, which is how orthodox encyclopaedias update their entries. Even sometimes the academic who wrote the original. Nevertheless, entries of living people in Wiki are inherently dodgy. They get a lot of publicity but they aren't what Wiki is all about, and certainly aren't terribly relevant to our own work.

By 2004, Wikipedia had a million articles in 100 languages; in 2006, English Wikipedia gained its millionth article (on Jordanhill railway station in Scotland). Today, it has 6.6 million.

Says it all. But it wasn't all plain sailing

Wikipedia’s inexorable rise was first welcomed with gentle condescension, then alarm. Commercial encyclopaedia publishers dismissed it as a repository of falsehoods.

We all remember those days. We all remember these days

All of this was no use. A few years after its launch, respectable institutions — courts, newspapers, national governments — began citing Wikipedia. Print encyclopaedias, who could not compete, shut down one after the other. Survivors, such as the legendary Encyclopaedia Britannica, sank into irrelevance.

Not quite. Academics have a reverence for actual printed things and continue to cite traditional encyclopaedias and continue to pooh-pooh Wiki. As the traditional ones get more and more out of date, the happier they will be. But Wiki does have problems for ourselves...
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Mick Harper
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It is not this

On almost any political topic, Wikipedia is guaranteed to skew left. And given every activist’s favourite slogan being “everything is political”, this means a big chunk of the world’s most used source of reference information has become the bastion of left-wing thought. In 2021, co-founder Sanger went so far as to say Wikipedia is now full of progressive propaganda.

Any AE-ist who's had their two weetabix can cope with that. It is this

Another key Wikipedia guideline is the one on reliable sources. As an encyclopaedia, Wikipedia relies almost entirely on secondary sources considered reliable for the sourcing of its articles, only allowing primary sources in limited circumstances and forbidding the use of original research in article-writing. But like everything else, whether a source is considered reliable or not is subject to community consensus.

So it's more of the same. They could have broken the mould but chose not to. Two cheers for Wiki, but not three.
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