Derek

Anonymous economist. Tidyverse and ggplots...all day, every day.

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood which is to say, *you* put "got what they deserved" in quotes

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood although i put "got what they deserved" in quotes in the prompt, so the LLM is right that she didnt literally say that

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@Amtrak because your wifi is abysmal. is this a joke?

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood the whole point of inverting the sequence of lethal violence is to cast the moral blame on the protestors, not the PLA and Deng.

That is despicable. That's what I object to.

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood my family was affected by these events. not directly. but very painfully. disappointing to see an S-tier poster defend the historically inaccurate, propagandistic version of events that Beijing peddles.

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood why do you think she inverted the sequence of lethal violence? Do you think she's making an innocent mistake?

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood whatever man, im just a guy on the internet. we dont need to agree. keep dunking on Noah Smith and Brad Setser. I'll go back to lurking.

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood also, dont lecture me about LLMs and reading comprehension lol, I run the automated MD&A inference pipeline for a bank you've heard of

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood how was my prompt "leading" I literally asked "is this historically accurate"?

also, answer my other question, if you wouldn't mind

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood we can very easily reframe this: do you agree with me that she's claiming the non-student protestors deserved what they got? If so, do you agree with her?

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood btw, look at my original response to you- did I use the word students? You introduced that distinction as being relevant. I'm saying that her revisionism vis-a-vis the Tiananmen protestors write large is textbook ChiCom propaganda. Only the students' lives matter?

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

Of course it is! It's incredibly basic, the question is *who started the lethal violence*

She (and Beijing) claim the *protestors* started the lethal violence.

The overwhelming majority of actual historians say the PLA did.

That is the KEY moral distinction upon which the ignominy of that day rests.

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

It makes sense to outsource the historical assessment of cause and effect to Claude. But not our reading comprehension skills.

She claims that the protestors began murdering PLA troops unprovoked. And were met with lethal force in response. Of course unprovoked murder *deserves* to be met with lethal force!

Unless you draw an artificial distinction between the *student* protestors, and the protestors writ large, your interpretation is indefensible.

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

""This is not to say, of course, that there was no bloodshed. They mostly happened in clashes between violent demonstrators and PLA troops off the square. The "peaceful protestors vs brutal regime" picture is inaccurate and incomplete. The crowd ambused, mutilated, lynched, disembowled and burned the corpses of PLA soldiers. This is when the shootings happened: not in the square, not on the students."

Is this a historically accurate causal sequence re the Tiananmen incident on June 4?"

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood she is obviously implying that people who slaughter PLA soldiers unprovoked *deserve* to be met with lethal force....which is NOT what happened!

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

the core issue with this is that it is historically inaccurate in a way that puts the blame for the shootings on the protestors!

I see your Gemini 31. Pro and raise you Claude 5 Fable:

"No — that passage gets some individual facts right but inverts the causal sequence, which is the key historical question.

What's accurate in it:
Most killing did happen outside the square itself, along the western approach routes (especially Muxidi, Xidan, and along Chang'an Avenue), not on Tiananmen Square proper. Students who remained on the square in the early hours of June 4 were largely allowed to leave through the southeast corner.
Some PLA soldiers were indeed killed by crowds, and a few corpses were burned or hung from overpasses — the photos of soldier Liu Guogeng's burned body became central to the Chinese government's narrative.
The "peaceful students mowed down on the square" image common in early Western coverage was indeed simplified.

What's wrong — the sequence:The documented chronology from journalists, diplomats, declassified cables, and scholarship (Timothy Brook's Quelling the People, the Tiananmen Papers, US and UK embassy reporting) runs the other way:
On the night of June 3, the 38th Group Army and other units advanced toward the square with orders to clear it by dawn, and began firing live ammunition into crowds of civilians blocking their path — first and most heavily at Muxidi, around 10:30–11:00 PM, well before the worst anti-soldier violence.

The lethal crowd attacks on soldiers — including the most infamous lynchings — overwhelmingly occurred after and in response to the shootings, as enraged residents attacked stragglers, isolated vehicles, and soldiers separated from their units.
Civilian deaths (estimates range from several hundred to over a thousand) vastly outnumbered military deaths (a few dozen, including accidents).
There had been crowd resistance earlier — blockades, thrown rocks and bottles, burned vehicles, and the failed unarmed advance of June 2–3 — but the escalation to lethal violence on a mass scale began with the army's live fire, not with crowds disemboweling soldiers.

So the passage takes real events and reverses cause and effect. "The shootings happened because the crowd mutilated soldiers" is essentially the official PRC framing; the weight of evidence supports the opposite ordering: the mutilations were a furious reaction to troops shooting their way through residential Beijing. The honest complication of the simple narrative is "the massacre happened on the avenues, not the square, and some civilians fought back viciously" — not "the army only fired in response to atrocities."

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood so, yes, you are the one being obtuse

[Derek @Derek_Econ]

@GlennLuk @AngelicaOung @SilDogood While you're at it, ask her if she thinks Taiwan is a country. In her bio she says "Taiwan is a part of the Sinosphere". I'd love some elaboration on that.