Goncharenko centre Lviv, 2025-11-17: Interesting and amusing experiences on my trips in Ukraine + what is reality? What you see in videos, such as about the war or about crime, is that representative? What are you likely to experience?

Post event notes (such as clarifications, additions): These are in blue, mixed with the prepared text.

Translation: auto translation of this page into Ukrainian

Prepared overview for the 4th meeting

- Interesting experiences I had while travelling by bicycle in Ukraine.
- tea break with fresh bread from a big Silpo. You can take slices of bread with honey or jam. I will take some of my favourite tea with me for you to try out.
- What is reality, is what you see on videos reality? How much crime is there? How much of cities has been destroyed in the war? Some russian propagandists claimed that Ukraine has been destroyed, complete nonsense, it is only some small towns where war has been active a long time. I will go into this and more.
- If there is enough time I will go into something related: manipulation of your worldview, in propaganda, manipulation of what you think happens in 'magic tricks' and manipulation of your thoughts in 'psychological tricks' (such as by Derren Brown). Otherwise that could be for the next meeting.

This meeting was not fully prepared in text by me of what I wanted to talk about, but some interesting talk about the reality and impressions that people give, either from incorrect estimations or from lying (russian propagandists), or for entertainment (conjurors/magicians, in Dutch: goochelen / magie, whereas 'magie' in Dutch means something supernatural whereas in English magic is used also for conjuring tricks), psychological conjuring (Derren Brown)

I mentioned that propagandists on youtube claimed that all of Ukraine was destroyed which is not true as I cycled to many places and saw very little damage in all cities. I stated that Russia doesn't have the ability to destroy Ukraine, that requires so much explosives, they can't do that in a 100 years.

A former friend from Kharkov wrote me early 2022 to not come, her city was destroyed. Well, it wasn't. When I got there I saw damage to dome buildings in the centre, more to the edge of the city, but nowhere near destroyed. It shows how people do not see reality but something else...

I showed an example of Derren Brown manipulating people with talking and distracting, into accepting blank paper as if it was money, to buy fish, a wrist band for a wrist watch and that he failed with a hot dog salesman. I explained how it worked and why it failed with the hot dog seller. One attendee made an interesting comment of only buying 2 or 3 things from a seller on markets to prevent the issue of being charged an incorrect amount, he knows the price can only be in a specific range which prevents sellers tricking him. [ I have no idea how much of a problem that is. ]

I gave an example of how someone can see reality very different than it is: I explained what type of stamp I would need for my business for immigration department in Kremenchuk/Poltava (the same type of stamp as used on say official transfer certificates from a bank, not a simple stamp that some businesses use to put on the paper bill that you need to pay after which you go back to the desk at the store to get the item that you want. I told this to someone I know who then said I was mansplaining. I asked: "What mansplaining?" and she responded with a link to what is meant with that word. I replied that I know what it means and that I didn't do that. I usually explain things very precisely, I like precision and sometimes it is also for myself such as to document the process. Further there is the issue of what words exactly mean and using the right word, in English, vs. Dutch vs. Russian and Ukrainian. I think about all such things... I mentioned in the meeting that her response about mansplaining made me think back to a situation with a woman ehom I knew, who said in a talk, after we had been exchanging messages/emails before, that I wasn't the professor that I seemed to be from my (long) messages. I found the comment odd but the conversation flowed on and I didn't get to ask what she meant. Several years later someone made a comment about my style of writing and I thought back to her comment. I realised "Aha, the way I explained things to her looked like a teacher explaining something, but I was just trying to make as clear as possible some ideas that I had or some experiences to tell something interesting".

I barely got round to talking about interesting experiences in Ukraine but what I told, as the previous time didn't seem unusual to the attendees whereas it was unusual for everyone else (e.g. a friend in Kiev, various friends in Kremenchuk) I told these stories.

Next meeting I will tell about what happened in Rivne (at a mini museum in the main park, 2) looking for an Ushanka for evening cycle rides which were getting chilly), Korosten.