orlando [they/them]

if english isn’t your first language then i can appreciate your confusion both with the word “justifiable” and the cambridge definition you gave. the word “just” as in “just” society, “just” war, “justice” etc. means morally upright, ethical. in the sentence:

If something is justifiable, there is a good reason for it: Her actions were quite justifiable in the circumstances.

the word “good” does not in itself mean “coherent”, “rational” or anything morally neutral yet internally consistent, it means good as it “this is a good thing”. your interlocutor never came from a stance that stalin was acting incomprehensibly, only that it wasn’t justifiable either way.

that context was missing from your comment chain so i thought it should be added

without its western reproachment, could china have built its place in the world economy to the same extent it has today?

deleted by creator

I disagree. The tech is indistinguishable from the ideological bias of its creators since by its nature it is exclusively a machine that communicates and surveils on their behalf. That and the fact that the AI companies in the lead would destroy the earth faster than global warming chasing a singularity ought to demonstrate by example that ‘tech’ is not value neutral.