TheRiov wrote:
LOL. Ah Diamondeye is here to school us on logical fallacies. You are, after all, the master. In what universe do you feel that False Equivalence is not a thing?
In this one, where it's simply a bare assertion fallacy.
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Though honestly I'm surprised you would make this argument. Its essentially the same as saying "A cop who shoots a criminal who's trying to shoot an innocent is just as guilty as the criminal."
Which is simply an assertion. Just shouting "False equivalence!" at that ridiculous statement would show that one did not, in fact, have a reason beyond one's own say-so as to WHY it was not true. It is trivially easy to show a false equivalence in that case, but in most common uses of it, it is not only non-trivial but difficult beyond imagining because the equivalence in question is itself sourced in hyperbole.
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But this brings me to the crux of what I've been TRYING to avoid. For the longest time I really tried to believe that the Left and the Right had differing opinions about how to go about improving the nation. That in the end, we had some sort of idealized version of the United States that we were working to.
It is evident that you haven't tried very hard, seeing as you resort to calling huge bulks of the population racist, sexist, etc. because it's too painful to admit that their views are as legitimate as yours.
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Its become more and more clear that we have fundamentally different values. I'm not talking about how we get there or what policies need to be enacted or enforced to bring it about, but we want fundamentally different things for the world. The short version, my Utopia looks nothing like yours.
That's because I don't have any utopia at all. In fact, I think the idea of an (earhtly) utopia is abhorrant; striving for it inevitably ends in horror.
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I side with the experts. When experts in climatology tell me something about weather patterns, I tend to believe them. When doctors tell me something about health I believe them. And though it may shock you to hear it, when you tell me something about law enforcement or military readiness, I tend to believe YOU. It works even better when you can provide data to back up your statements. You actually made me a believer on the shooting deaths of african american men in police confrontations. (The shooting rates are pretty constant across ethnicity) I go where the data goes. I change my position as the data and the experts prove.
I find it interesting that you pick the examples you do, because almost everyone believes doctors, and those who don't are not affiliated with any political spectrum. As for climatologists, the problem is not so much the climatologists
themselves as the people who A) think the climatologists therefore should design the solution (they should not) and B) telling what is ACTUALLY coming from climatologists and not from people simply claiming to be scientifically literate because of what they learned on YouTube.
I could find some fault with the state of climate science in general, given its youth and the strong evidence that it is populated by people trying to prove, not disprove, their own ideas as required by the scientific method. In fact, climatology is an aggregate of a lot of different sciences and poses unique challenges due to the sheer number of variables it must account for. This a known problem in anything that relies heavily on modelling - the
Bonini Paradox. This problem of the "state of the science" is not unique to climatology - pscyhology has had similar problems for years. In fact, "experts" have produced some utter garbage, such as the implicit bias test which cannot be credibly scientifically shown to be able to reliably reproduce results. It is very easy for experts to believe what they want to beleive and very easy to believe experts
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The problem is you're not an expert in racism. You're not an expert in sociology. And I'm in regular communication with people who ARE. I read statistics that clearly demonstrate that institutional racism is very real. (for example, incarceration and sentencing rates) The fact of the matter is that more educated people are the more likely they are to vote democratic. The more of a minority someone is, the more they are likely to vote democratic.
Except that you aren't. In fact, the fact that you think incarceration and sentencing rates show such a thing indicates that either you are only thinking about the problem to the point you get the result you want, or else the "experts" you're in contact with are not - regardless of what credentials they may possess. Incarceration and sentencing rates are different by race because rates of crime, rates of recidivism, and the circumstances of those crimes are different across different races.
More educated people are more likely to vote Democrat because the educational institutions have become almost entirely tilted Democrat, and in fact the left has invented entire academic fields that are essentially its own talking points, such as basically anything that ends in "studies". A person with a PhD in ethnic studies or gender studies is not, in fact, an actual expert in anything at all because these are not real fields - they purport to describe the work of the world, as a science would, but they object loudly to being subject to scientific scrutiny. Many other majors are so overtly hostile to anyone of even moderate views that a person who is not a leftist would be insane to subject themselves to the education. Furthermore, the actual value of education these days is questionable, as both the cost of the education and the reward in job prospects outside of STEM are wildly out of proportion to each other. "More educated people vote Democrat" is a comment on the state of the academy; not at all on the merit of Democrat views.
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Now you're right, certainly there are those in the DNC who seek to exploit racial/ethnic/religious/sexual tensions to get votes. We saw that clearly in some of the emails hacked from the DNC. That does NOT invalidate the cause though. The reason these groups favor the Left is that the Left enacts policies that are less harmful. You're projecting. Most of those people on the left vote the way they do because they have an honest bent to equality.
The left does not enact less harmful policies; the left enacts policies that seem less harmful on a surface analysis but inevitably create worse ones through second and further order effects. Moreover, when progress is made on any social problem, regardless of who deserves credit, the left screeches in outrage at the idea that things are better out of the fear that if progress is admitted that somehow that will lead to backsliding.
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What I see is this narrative you're trying to spin that the left is 'whipping up trouble' just to get votes or cause some sort of conflict. And certainly they're trying to energize their base (In exactly the same way the ammosexuals claimed Obama was coming for their guns, or the Religious Right spouted off about how Obama was a Muslim going to impose Sharia). The difference of course, is that Trump has energized the racist parts of the Right.
The
actual difference is that the more intellectual parts of the right, such as National Review, Ben Shapiro, George Will, and others will regularly call out the bad parts of the right for bad behavior - and will call out Trump for bad behavior (in George Will's case he won't even wait for actual bad behavior he's in such a snit). The left engages in nothing comparable. The left has put up with bigots like Keith Ellison and Maxine Waters in their Congressional delegation for years and only suddenly discovers there's a problem when they get truly out of control. Mainstream Democrat politicians fearmonger in essentially every election - Joe Biden is a popular example. Moreover, even when they do not do so themselves, the left avoids more than cursory condemnation of its extremists before turing to "illustrate the larger issue" or some nonsense, whereas writers on the right such as French, Williamson, Lowry, Will, or Shapiro will excoriate bad actors on the right at length.
Its a generalized version of the "all rape is true" crowd that fears questioning any allegations at all somehow calls all allegations into question. Then, when there's an incident like Duke or UVA they look foolish, but switch to announcing that there's a "larger truth" or else saying the falsehood doesn't matter because someone was "taught a valuable lesson" and they're "willing to pay the price" (which they aren't the ones to pay). The left engages in this writ large. Yes, both sides have bad actors, but we call ours out far more reliably, all the way back to the 1960s and William F. Buckley sending the John Birch Society packing.
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(lets be clear, I've not ever claimed, nor would I, that everyone on the Right is racist) But you're sure as hell willing to be complicit in the rise to power of those who are.
No, you just claim that some unspecified, but obviously large group of Americans in general is racist and sexist and so forth. that's hardly better. As to the rise to power of those who are, the Democrat congressional delegation is replete with racists including every single black Democrat in Congress I can think of, some more so than others. Ellison is the king, but not the only one.
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Now you and several others have repeatedly claimed, but been unable to support, that calling someone Nazi/Fascist/Racist is racist. I genuinely want to hear how this argument goes, because it mainly seems like an "I'm rubber, you're glue" or "I know you are, but what am I?" sort of schoolyard argument.
No, calling someone a nazi or a facist, or a racist or a sexist is no different than calling them a slur. It is simply name-calling; you are engaging in an ad hom attack designed to make them personally defensive and divert attention away from their arguments. You are declaring that becuase you have slapped the label of "racist" on them that further analysis is unwarranted, on no evidence whatsoever - evidence, in particular, as to why anyone should accept your idea of what is racist. No, the "Experts" you talk to are not a reason because there is no such thing as an expert on racism - racism cannot be discretely or rigorously defined sufficiently to permit expertise.
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Uh yeah. who's threatening anyone's way of life? That you MIGHT have to see a gay couple kissing? Or that its okay for blacks & whites to marry? You're not a plantation owner. So how is anyone threatening their way of life? You want me to feel sorry for people for not being allowed to oppress anyone anymore?
The fact that you actually think people with these views exist in numbers large enough to matter is strong evidence that you do not, in fact, actually care about facts at all - because they don't. ell me where to find people that actually give a **** about interracial marriage or gays kissing - as in actually care, not just trolling you.
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Yeah, you repeating the same argument again and again (and louder with more insults) does nothing to convince me. Show me the data. Your bald faced assertions that "disliking racism and racists"="racism" is just about the silliest thing you've tried to sell us.
You haven't shown any data, and you can't. You're hanging your hat on manufactured caricatures of people you disagree with. You actually think incarceration rates are evidence of racism - this is a 5th grade level of analysis at best, like the "77 cents on the dollar" pay gap that can be debunked by anyone capable of division.