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I guess this is the second MAGA Republican from Florida trying to get famous for trafficking people across state lines.
I love the outrage here though: how dare democrats band together for a bunch of immigrants arriving at their doorstep with no advance warning, organize and arrange food, water, clothing and shelter, treat them humanely with open arms, and then allow the government to step in to help properly house and support them a day or so later!
It’s like unless Kamala Harris personally houses every immigrant - democrats are all hypocrites.
It doesn’t matter that vulnerable people people were lied to, and used as a political prop - we’ve already established from families separation, and pretty much every conversation on immigration that illegal immigrants aren’t really people.
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@Avery
Never dropped it lol. I think the double meaning is super obvious and you're a slimetoad for denying it. But I'm not going to harp on it forever because it's a waste of my time.
Stopping responding on a point - is dropping it. Any idiot, no matter how wrong, can protest that they stopped responding on a point because it’s a waste of their time. You lose the right to pretend your argument is valid if you refuse to defend it.
You just don't understand what I am saying. Your standard is still arbitrary lol. Unless you want to show the Republican response as being wrong or invalid, your big number gap has no impact.
I understand exactly what you’re saying - it’s just nonsense.
My “big number Gap” has a quantifiable impact - each republican response shifts the top line numbers by the same amount as 6 liberals. Thats the point I’m making, which has not been contested, is that given the large +/- difference in republicans - the top line numbers are telling you as much - or more - about how strongly Republicans feel as it does about Americans as a whole. That’s not “arbitrary” it’s not “no impact”
My “big number Gap” has a quantifiable impact - each republican response shifts the top line numbers by the same amount as 6 liberals. Thats the point I’m making, which has not been contested, is that given the large +/- difference in republicans - the top line numbers are telling you as much - or more - about how strongly Republicans feel as it does about Americans as a whole. That’s not “arbitrary” it’s not “no impact”
Yeah they would be absurd, but that's not the poll we're dealing with LOL. You needed to show that THIS poll was absurd.
I’m going to have to go with an analogy. As it seems you’ve deliberately ignored the point 3 times in a row.
Imagine, you were trying to show how safe cars were - by using hospital admissions for car accidents. I point out that if you don’t draw a distinction between death, and minor scrapes - such a measure would be meaningless - measuring it in this way would lead to absurd results; like treating 1000 deaths as more safe than 1001 minor scrapes.
For some bizarre reason you oddly fixate on the numbers I used to explain why the measurement is meaningless - rather than the fact that it’s inability to quantify a difference renders the measurement meaningless.
Imagine, you were trying to show how safe cars were - by using hospital admissions for car accidents. I point out that if you don’t draw a distinction between death, and minor scrapes - such a measure would be meaningless - measuring it in this way would lead to absurd results; like treating 1000 deaths as more safe than 1001 minor scrapes.
For some bizarre reason you oddly fixate on the numbers I used to explain why the measurement is meaningless - rather than the fact that it’s inability to quantify a difference renders the measurement meaningless.
Your standard of proof is ridiculous. You're basically arguing that human perception is so flawed that we can't conclude anything.
Huh? No I’m not. Wut?
I’m arguing that it’s completely invalid to arbitrarily assume that peoples collective opinions about the racism in others is based solely on some universal “experience” standard you can’t specify and which - some how magically - all balances out between no matter what segment or selection of races are chosen; as opposed to those opinions being subject to the influence of any one of a number of factors that we know can alter peoples opinions and which all massively differ between each of those groups - which could easily cause different groups to under or over estimate levels of racism in other groups.
I’m arguing that it’s completely invalid to arbitrarily assume that peoples collective opinions about the racism in others is based solely on some universal “experience” standard you can’t specify and which - some how magically - all balances out between no matter what segment or selection of races are chosen; as opposed to those opinions being subject to the influence of any one of a number of factors that we know can alter peoples opinions and which all massively differ between each of those groups - which could easily cause different groups to under or over estimate levels of racism in other groups.
We could have a poll on 'do you like cats?
You could take any poll that removes many of the potential examples of potential opinion bias in the results which doesn’t make it comparable a but that’s would be a bad analogy
You could, or course, have a poll on whether most cats or most dogs were assholes; and if it were a major political and social issue that draws strong opinions on all sides, with Republican media dismissing the idea of cats being assholes as woke propoganda, the left saying that there are a lot of asshole cats - not necessarily a majority, but the country is cat centric; cat owners overwhelmingly suggesting cats were not assholes, and dog owners who have a totally different perspective than predominantly cat owners; who could easily be suggesting that while only 25% of cats straight up try and murder anything that moves - most dogs bark at cats; but would that poll really be telling you anything meaningful about reality of whether dogs and cats were actually more assholeish? Not so much.
You could, or course, have a poll on whether most cats or most dogs were assholes; and if it were a major political and social issue that draws strong opinions on all sides, with Republican media dismissing the idea of cats being assholes as woke propoganda, the left saying that there are a lot of asshole cats - not necessarily a majority, but the country is cat centric; cat owners overwhelmingly suggesting cats were not assholes, and dog owners who have a totally different perspective than predominantly cat owners; who could easily be suggesting that while only 25% of cats straight up try and murder anything that moves - most dogs bark at cats; but would that poll really be telling you anything meaningful about reality of whether dogs and cats were actually more assholeish? Not so much.
If we used your standard for everything else, all studies, research, polls, surveys etc. would be invalid.
I very much hate to break it to you; but the idea that one cannot simply assume the reasons people hold a given opinion is because of direct experience - and that the conclusions on cause or validity of such opinion should not be drawn where systemic statistical biases could easily and practically exist to explain various responses and their differences - and in the case of highly politically charged opinions, what people believe should not be confused with what is true - is very much the standard used by studies, research, polls, surveys, etc.
Yeah shaky like Japan during an earthquake.
You haven't said anything new and you keep making the same mistakes. You made some good points in previous responses, mitigating the results of the poll somewhat, but everything you've posted here is tired and been addressed numerous times.
So this sounds like you’re setting up for your own capitulation.
You ignored the bulk of my points in my last post; you’ve dropped half the arguments - and you’re responding to those ones I’ve reiterated by using the same straw man to mischaracterize the objections - and the same vapid oversimplification to hide all the ridiculous assumptions baked into your conclusion.
In this respect you are right: calling you out for not addressing the arguments, repeating the same fallacious reasoning, and pointing out that you’re unable to actually defend the vapid assumptions you make when your position is scrutinized is not new - but this isn’t an issue with the points I’m making; but a testament to the inability to defend yours.
You ignored the bulk of my points in my last post; you’ve dropped half the arguments - and you’re responding to those ones I’ve reiterated by using the same straw man to mischaracterize the objections - and the same vapid oversimplification to hide all the ridiculous assumptions baked into your conclusion.
In this respect you are right: calling you out for not addressing the arguments, repeating the same fallacious reasoning, and pointing out that you’re unable to actually defend the vapid assumptions you make when your position is scrutinized is not new - but this isn’t an issue with the points I’m making; but a testament to the inability to defend yours.
However I suspect your only saying this so you can drop everything and stop responding whilst pretending you addressed everything (which you clearly haven’t)
If people still agree with you that only the White Republican response needs to be discarded because big number gap, or that we need to control for a billion variables because human perception is "so complex", or that we should reject this poll because it would have had issues if different people took it, then oh well. In my mind, the poll results stand.
You appear to confuse “peoples opinions on politically charged subjects that could potentially be influenced by an innumerable number of external factors, cannot be assumed to be broadly representative of reality, or that any biases in over or under estimation in those opinions all magically cancel each other out for no appreciable reason” with “Republican responses need to be discard”.
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@Avery
I just didn't want to waste my time with arguing that "most of the time" =/= "always",
So you don’t want to defend an argument you made. Great. I will assume you concede.
logical fallacy accusations for every 2nd word I wrote, and things of that petty nature.
Perhaps use fewer fallacies in reasoning would probably be a better start.
This is just you not understanding that perception has some value, even if it's not perfect. It doesn't have zero value because people don't suddenly think most people of x race are racist.
Unless you can show one polling group is wildly delusional, I don't need to show biases are minimal because all races and political alignments have a chance to be biased in the manner you've described.
All groups have the capacity to fall for these issues. It's not reasonable to assume only White Republicans had these issues, and thus invalidates their response.
So here’s what you’re doing: your conclusion requires massive unsupported assumptions about the data, and what the data says. These assumptions are mostly pulled out of your a**.
You’re not defending the methodology behind the conclusion, how it works, how it applies: because if you tried, it would be obvious that the entire thing falls apart. You haven’t bothered to defend your reasoning, walk through the different groups, explain why and how all these factors cancel out… etc.
Instead you do what you do here; and just repeat over and over again how reasonable it is, and talk about it in wishy-washy vague terms so you don’t say anything specific enough to need to defend. Likewise, instead of addressing any of the specific reasons your conclusion can’t be drawn from the data, you wildly mischaracterize them. For example:
At the minimum: 37% of total responses and up to 49% of Republican responses are demonstrably inaccurate. Media, ideology, racial and personal bias are all different between different groups, and could easily and reasonably expected to generate wildly different errors in all different groups. Without knowing what errors there are, and what the underlying sources of bias in those responses really are - which you can’t - you cant make wild assumptions about the accuracy of peoples opinions.
You opine that to show this, I must show that peoples responses are “wildly delusional”. Or that this would mean people believe a group is racist “for no reason”.
Wtf? No, lol. Not only is that shifting the burden of proof - it also bears no resemblance to anything being suggested: that one group is over estimating or underestimating racism more than another doesn’t require anyone to be wildly delusional. Likewise, if more whites underestimate black racism than blacks because of the influence of media on their opinions - this isn’t them “suddenly think[ing] most members of x are racist”.
This is just peoples opinions being wrong for any one of the many reasons people have opinions that are wrong. You’re just trying to mischaracterize the reasonable objections as absurd so you can dismiss them without any analysis - a straw man.
You keep repeating this mischaracterization. I can’t force you to characterize these objections accurately - but I will keep calling you out on it.
So - let’s reiterate the issues with your point. Because you seem unable to actually respond to these points directly:
Individuals in the poll have opinions which under or over estimate the true number of racists in each group. At least 37% of the respondents over or under estimate; and at least 49% of republicans under or over estimate black racism.
You make wishy washy assertions that it’s all about personal experience: that if conservatives rate black racism higher than white liberals - it’s not because they are just overestimating a bit more than liberals because of some systemic bias- but that they experience more racism. (You don’t appear to apply this the other way around - that republicans report less white racism than liberals due to experience: and that liberal responses on white racism is closer to accurate - that would put the black and white levels of racism in the margin of error of the poll.)
On a practical level what does this “experience” even mean. Is it the number of whites you know vs how many times you’ve seen them be racist to blacks? Is it the number of cases you’ve seen someone be racist to you personally, or a friend, vs how many of that race you know? Or is it based on estimation you have of how representative the same is of all of that race? Is it identical for all groups in all ways? Or different from one group to another?
Is that “experience” based solely on outright racism, like someone calling you a slur, or is it based on you being treated differently, or some prejudice, or personal sensitivity you have? I that the same for each group, unmodified by media, social, ideological and cultural biases of those groups?
I don’t know - all you’ve provided is a wishy washy assertion that you don’t seem to want to explain with any detail or anything more than dismissive assertions and hand waving that this will all magically balance out. Somehow. For some reason.
This entire argument is held together solely by this wild assumption of experience - it makes no sense, and seems primarily to be assuming your own preferred conclusion. You defend it solely by reiterating that you think the assumption is valid; and avoiding going into any detail about it - ask no follow up questions.
If, on the other hand, things aren’t based exclusively on experience - or if there different groups and different races don’t view and react differently to racism. If one group is more likely to think a black is racist for doing something that is not really racist, or is more likely to think a white is not racist for doing something that is actually racist - or even something as simple as different groups having approaching the question differently due to levels of education, or ideological or cultural identity - then you’re assumption implodes; because different groups estimations for identical experiences could easily be wildly different and the whole thing doesn’t magically balance out like you repeatedly assert it will.
On the other hand; we know there are things that would absolutely bias different groups opinions in this poll that are not based on experience, and are absolutely not proportional. I helpfully listed them in the post you ignored:
Can the media change peoples opinions? Absolutely Could the right wing media - which is typically dismissive and critical of concepts of widespread white and systemic racism, and often highlight on cases of prominent black activists and groups being unreasonable - be influencing peoples opinions on white and black racism? Of course. How much? We have absolutely no idea - it could be a lot - it could be a little.
What about recognition of racism? Does everyone recognize racism in every race equally? Almost certainly not. Are white liberals and white republicans as just good as each other at recognizing racism in the white population? Unlikely. Which are better at it? Which overestimates or underestimates white racism by more? We have no idea. Is the group which often dismisses accusations of white racism as “woke” more potentially ideologically prone to underestimate white racism? Absolutely. Could one be underestimating more than the other overestimates? Absolutely. By how much and how does this impact the result: we have no idea.
How about black racism - are whites living in a diverse, populous city context going to have different answers to those questions than those living in rural or suburban settings? Quite possibly. Could the difference in personal experiences in these contexts lead one group to overestimate and another to underestimate the levels of racism? Quite possibly.
How about what they even mean by racism? Is what a liberal calls racism the same as what a Republican calls racism? Of course not. So liberals and republicans both apply this to all races equally? Probably not - given the above. If liberals overestimate white racism and underestimate black racism and republicans are the reverse - do they do so in equal or opposite ways? Or is there an imbalance? We have no idea.
What if most whites were a little bit racist, and whites racists leaned right wing; would whites racists be expected to massively underreport white racism - and overreport black racism? Quite possibly. Or in other words, if whites were way more racist than blacks - would it lead to whites reporting blacks more racist than whites? Quite possibly. How much of an effect does this have on the numbers? We have no idea.
Because of all of this, you’re entire supporting “argument” is destroyed from both ends - the reason you claim the conclusion is accurate is based on wild assumptions you cannot possibly know are true; and what we know about people and the data demonstrate that there are trivial reasons for which the various groups may give the answers that they do; while we can definitely presume this is a somewhat accurate representation of peoples opinions - we cannot make any assumptions about whether any of these opinions are actually valid - because of all the trivial reasons all of these opinions could be completely wrong.
This is your issue - you’re hide behind wishy washy explanations that are reliant on wild assumptions you can’t justify; and then simply pretend that it’s completely valid to presume that all of the potential sources of error that would obliterate the conclusion simply don’t exist.
You’re not defending the methodology behind the conclusion, how it works, how it applies: because if you tried, it would be obvious that the entire thing falls apart. You haven’t bothered to defend your reasoning, walk through the different groups, explain why and how all these factors cancel out… etc.
Instead you do what you do here; and just repeat over and over again how reasonable it is, and talk about it in wishy-washy vague terms so you don’t say anything specific enough to need to defend. Likewise, instead of addressing any of the specific reasons your conclusion can’t be drawn from the data, you wildly mischaracterize them. For example:
At the minimum: 37% of total responses and up to 49% of Republican responses are demonstrably inaccurate. Media, ideology, racial and personal bias are all different between different groups, and could easily and reasonably expected to generate wildly different errors in all different groups. Without knowing what errors there are, and what the underlying sources of bias in those responses really are - which you can’t - you cant make wild assumptions about the accuracy of peoples opinions.
You opine that to show this, I must show that peoples responses are “wildly delusional”. Or that this would mean people believe a group is racist “for no reason”.
Wtf? No, lol. Not only is that shifting the burden of proof - it also bears no resemblance to anything being suggested: that one group is over estimating or underestimating racism more than another doesn’t require anyone to be wildly delusional. Likewise, if more whites underestimate black racism than blacks because of the influence of media on their opinions - this isn’t them “suddenly think[ing] most members of x are racist”.
This is just peoples opinions being wrong for any one of the many reasons people have opinions that are wrong. You’re just trying to mischaracterize the reasonable objections as absurd so you can dismiss them without any analysis - a straw man.
You keep repeating this mischaracterization. I can’t force you to characterize these objections accurately - but I will keep calling you out on it.
So - let’s reiterate the issues with your point. Because you seem unable to actually respond to these points directly:
Individuals in the poll have opinions which under or over estimate the true number of racists in each group. At least 37% of the respondents over or under estimate; and at least 49% of republicans under or over estimate black racism.
You make wishy washy assertions that it’s all about personal experience: that if conservatives rate black racism higher than white liberals - it’s not because they are just overestimating a bit more than liberals because of some systemic bias- but that they experience more racism. (You don’t appear to apply this the other way around - that republicans report less white racism than liberals due to experience: and that liberal responses on white racism is closer to accurate - that would put the black and white levels of racism in the margin of error of the poll.)
On a practical level what does this “experience” even mean. Is it the number of whites you know vs how many times you’ve seen them be racist to blacks? Is it the number of cases you’ve seen someone be racist to you personally, or a friend, vs how many of that race you know? Or is it based on estimation you have of how representative the same is of all of that race? Is it identical for all groups in all ways? Or different from one group to another?
Is that “experience” based solely on outright racism, like someone calling you a slur, or is it based on you being treated differently, or some prejudice, or personal sensitivity you have? I that the same for each group, unmodified by media, social, ideological and cultural biases of those groups?
I don’t know - all you’ve provided is a wishy washy assertion that you don’t seem to want to explain with any detail or anything more than dismissive assertions and hand waving that this will all magically balance out. Somehow. For some reason.
This entire argument is held together solely by this wild assumption of experience - it makes no sense, and seems primarily to be assuming your own preferred conclusion. You defend it solely by reiterating that you think the assumption is valid; and avoiding going into any detail about it - ask no follow up questions.
If, on the other hand, things aren’t based exclusively on experience - or if there different groups and different races don’t view and react differently to racism. If one group is more likely to think a black is racist for doing something that is not really racist, or is more likely to think a white is not racist for doing something that is actually racist - or even something as simple as different groups having approaching the question differently due to levels of education, or ideological or cultural identity - then you’re assumption implodes; because different groups estimations for identical experiences could easily be wildly different and the whole thing doesn’t magically balance out like you repeatedly assert it will.
On the other hand; we know there are things that would absolutely bias different groups opinions in this poll that are not based on experience, and are absolutely not proportional. I helpfully listed them in the post you ignored:
Can the media change peoples opinions? Absolutely Could the right wing media - which is typically dismissive and critical of concepts of widespread white and systemic racism, and often highlight on cases of prominent black activists and groups being unreasonable - be influencing peoples opinions on white and black racism? Of course. How much? We have absolutely no idea - it could be a lot - it could be a little.
What about recognition of racism? Does everyone recognize racism in every race equally? Almost certainly not. Are white liberals and white republicans as just good as each other at recognizing racism in the white population? Unlikely. Which are better at it? Which overestimates or underestimates white racism by more? We have no idea. Is the group which often dismisses accusations of white racism as “woke” more potentially ideologically prone to underestimate white racism? Absolutely. Could one be underestimating more than the other overestimates? Absolutely. By how much and how does this impact the result: we have no idea.
How about black racism - are whites living in a diverse, populous city context going to have different answers to those questions than those living in rural or suburban settings? Quite possibly. Could the difference in personal experiences in these contexts lead one group to overestimate and another to underestimate the levels of racism? Quite possibly.
How about what they even mean by racism? Is what a liberal calls racism the same as what a Republican calls racism? Of course not. So liberals and republicans both apply this to all races equally? Probably not - given the above. If liberals overestimate white racism and underestimate black racism and republicans are the reverse - do they do so in equal or opposite ways? Or is there an imbalance? We have no idea.
What if most whites were a little bit racist, and whites racists leaned right wing; would whites racists be expected to massively underreport white racism - and overreport black racism? Quite possibly. Or in other words, if whites were way more racist than blacks - would it lead to whites reporting blacks more racist than whites? Quite possibly. How much of an effect does this have on the numbers? We have no idea.
Because of all of this, you’re entire supporting “argument” is destroyed from both ends - the reason you claim the conclusion is accurate is based on wild assumptions you cannot possibly know are true; and what we know about people and the data demonstrate that there are trivial reasons for which the various groups may give the answers that they do; while we can definitely presume this is a somewhat accurate representation of peoples opinions - we cannot make any assumptions about whether any of these opinions are actually valid - because of all the trivial reasons all of these opinions could be completely wrong.
This is your issue - you’re hide behind wishy washy explanations that are reliant on wild assumptions you can’t justify; and then simply pretend that it’s completely valid to presume that all of the potential sources of error that would obliterate the conclusion simply don’t exist.
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@Barney
- The two sets of debates in question do not yield an apples to apples comparison.
If I recall, it was like 9 spam debates from a type 1 alt; that we all know would get instantly banned; meaning the debate was guarantee win. Not really the same as mall - who is more like cross than anything else.
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@Vader
So your telling me kidnappers, robbers, people who commit second degree murder, and arsonists, should be allowed to roam free without bail?
No, if they’re a risk to society, or flight - they shouldn’t be offered bail at all. People who pose a credible flight risk or risk to society should be - and are - held on pre-trial detention; which still exists, and hasn’t changed despite what your social media memes told you.
With and without cash bail - to be granted bail, a judge is ruling you don’t pose a danger to the public. If cash bail was the thing that was preventing murders being let out, it means judges are ruling things like: “you’re a mass murderer, and could easily kill - so I’m only going to let you out if you and your friends can cobble together $20k”, which is pretty absurd.
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@Avery
I'm not going to spend an hour deconstructing your deconstructions involving petty grievances, nitpicks and random logical fallacy accusations:
How convenient, given the last post (and most of my posts) list the exact reasons all of the following points - which you have been making throughout - are wrong.
Ignoring everything that shows that you’re wrong - only to restate the same conclusions that have already been disproven, is not a particularly reasonable strategy (and also covered by F5 above)
Ignoring everything that shows that you’re wrong - only to restate the same conclusions that have already been disproven, is not a particularly reasonable strategy (and also covered by F5 above)
(1) It's just a poll. It's not a perfect capturing of "racism". It's just evidence as to who is most racist
No - this is simply untrue. If you refer to my last post (which you ignored) - this poll is merely perception, that perception can only be used as an indicator of reality if that perception is not altered by any number of possible biases, or skews that can alter peoples perceptions.
Without being able to show those biases are minimal or don’t exist - which you can’t possibly do - it’s not evidence of anything more than peoples perception
Without being able to show those biases are minimal or don’t exist - which you can’t possibly do - it’s not evidence of anything more than peoples perception
(2) The limitations of the poll are built-in. All races and political parties have the same limitation issues you described, not just "White Republicans", so the poll is constructed on a level playing field.
Again - utter horsesh*t; in the post above (which you ignored) I listed many potential areas of skew that could absolutely change responses of different groups in very different ways. For example - how willing one group is to report their own race is racist - how good different groups are at recognizing different instances of racism.
What you’re doing here, is simply asserting that this poll is a level playing field, and simply assuming all the ways it clearly could not be don’t apply: this is assuming your own conclusion.
What you’re doing here, is simply asserting that this poll is a level playing field, and simply assuming all the ways it clearly could not be don’t apply: this is assuming your own conclusion.
(3) Your statistical point doesn't have any impact and remains arbitrary. Watch me do it: the Democrat response was "extreme" because it was negative. The Asian response was "extreme" because it didn't fit cleanly into either the Democrat or Republican response. I can make arbitrary, numerical conclusions, too, and they generate as much impact as yours: zero
I am glad that you have now dropped the nonsense word haggling, and are now agreeing that I’m making a statistical point. Despite your repeated objections:
Neither the liberal nor Asian response can be considered extreme, as the difference between +/- weighting of racism was not significant compared to other groups. Their size and influence on the resulting polls is not significant compared to other groups.
The Republican responses had a +\- skew of +37, liberals had a skew of -6. This mean each republicans in the polls response had an impact on the top line numbers equivalent to 6 liberals.
I used an example (which you ignored), or colour preference that show why such an extreme response biases the overall results, because (as you also ignored)
Neither the liberal nor Asian response can be considered extreme, as the difference between +/- weighting of racism was not significant compared to other groups. Their size and influence on the resulting polls is not significant compared to other groups.
The Republican responses had a +\- skew of +37, liberals had a skew of -6. This mean each republicans in the polls response had an impact on the top line numbers equivalent to 6 liberals.
I used an example (which you ignored), or colour preference that show why such an extreme response biases the overall results, because (as you also ignored)
(4) The poll didn't involve 25% of Whites being from the KKK and 51% Blacks being slightly annoyed with Whites, so this is not an issue (even if it hypothetically could be, that doesn't affect this poll).
You completely and utterly miss the point again - I literally spelled it twice for you in the previous two posts - I even pointed out and bolded.
If the poll was applied to a known population, using the same question, and your criteria - and gives an answer that doesn’t make sense (which it doesn’t) - it calls into question whether the inference is valid.
My point being is that how many racists is not a good measure without some inclusion of how severe the racism is - as the example you dismissed show
If your logic was applied to the population I describe to generate a poll result - the results would be utterly absurd - showing the measure is meaningless.
(5) Most importantly: we don't need the precise levels of racism for any individual or group. People are judging based on their experiences, as flawed as they are (not completely as you've conceded), on an equally flawed playing field, and Blacks are voted as mostly racist most frequently, hence they are the most racist.No, we don't know whether Blacks are mostly racist (despite people thinking they know), but we do know they are the most racist
I have bolded your continued unsupported assertion - I have pointed this out multiple times, you just keep asserting it as if truth.
As listed in the last post; people are using their perception, the number of social and psychological factors plating into that perception are so complex, that it is impossible for you to make any claims about their overall accuracy; and there is every reason to believe that perception is skewed in various groups and not an accurate reflection of reality.
Like I said - if this unsupported assertion is false, you’re conclusions falls apart; and I have presented multiple reasons (all of which you keep ignoring), to presume this assertion is false.
Like I said - if this unsupported assertion is false, you’re conclusions falls apart; and I have presented multiple reasons (all of which you keep ignoring), to presume this assertion is false.
The OP's poll remains valid.
As a measure of perception - yes. Of anything more than that - no.
And frankly; given that you are unable to defend it; and have to resort to literally ignore everything I said in order to present this case, I think even you realize how shaky this point is.
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There's a lot more recent stuff you know. Don't have to dig into the archives.
If Biden wants claims Of corruption regarding Hunter to go away; he should hire him to work as a senior adviser in the administration - maybe put him charge of peace in the Middle East.
That way, if he secures massive amounts of money in loans, or tasty trademark deals with China during Chinese negotiations -it will be no big deal.
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@Public-Choice
You - and many others are using VP Biden’s actions to support the premise of corruption.
IE: Biden did this, while Hunter was there; ergo corruption.
This only works if the actions are something that wouldn’t be expected if there was no corruption.
If Hunter had nothing to do with Ukraine at all - It would not be at all unreasonable for The VP to pressure the president to fire the prosecutor; thus it’s not a good indication of corruption at all.
As a corollary, if you saw Biden hadn’t applied any pressure at all - while everyone else did - you could also suggest that was also evidence of corruption in the same way.
If someone else in the government applies the pressure - or didn’t apply pressure - or Obama himself applies the pressure - or didn’t apply the pressure. Again - you could probably also make this same argument.
The premise is unfalsifiable in this respect - and if it doesn’t matter what Biden actually did or didn’t do in Ukraine, you could still argue that action is evidence of corruption - you have to question the logic of the rationale
This only works if the actions are something that wouldn’t be expected if there was no corruption.
If Hunter had nothing to do with Ukraine at all - It would not be at all unreasonable for The VP to pressure the president to fire the prosecutor; thus it’s not a good indication of corruption at all.
As a corollary, if you saw Biden hadn’t applied any pressure at all - while everyone else did - you could also suggest that was also evidence of corruption in the same way.
If someone else in the government applies the pressure - or didn’t apply pressure - or Obama himself applies the pressure - or didn’t apply the pressure. Again - you could probably also make this same argument.
The premise is unfalsifiable in this respect - and if it doesn’t matter what Biden actually did or didn’t do in Ukraine, you could still argue that action is evidence of corruption - you have to question the logic of the rationale
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@thett3
If this account isn’t a troll he’s just a complete psycho seething with near genocidal hatred of the folks across the aisle lol
Merely the ying to GP’s yang. Perhaps they will annihilate each other in burst of pure trollery
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@Ehyeh
You’re first mistake is comparing Dart to league of legends…
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@Ehyeh
YouTube ads aren’t going to so sh*t.
You just need to have a bunch of people on Twitter and TikTok reviewing the debates and key threads.
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@Vader
Holy hell, I don't think there is a cognitive braincell by any democrat. I don't think democrats allow the ability to critical think. A law that removes cash bail for almost every crime? This is a purge law
I’m not entirely sure what the problem is, are you suggesting that you were fine with dangerous criminals being let out onto the streets provided that they managed to cobble together enough cash? Is this a conservative bootstrap thing - that you only want criminals with moxie and means to be let out.
I thought you guys were all anti-tyranny and government oppression? Isn’t “you’re innocent until proven guilty - but also you’re poor, so off to jail with you” an obvious case of the government clearly being dicks?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
It makes perfect sense. It's masterful really….
Nah, it’s dumb AF. See above
In reality Biden was the corruption in Ukraine, thus it was against true US interests….
- Nothing Biden did was inconsistent with what everyone was stating was the western policy or goals (C1)
- Biden deciding to do it would have been utterly absurd, and makes no sense.
- The whole approach taken - with blue star is wholly inconsistent, and makes absolutely no sense: the payment structure, need for a third party, the emails themselves make no sense.
- There are clearly simpler and better ways of meeting expected goals than this weird convoluted conspiracy.
- The conspiracy is inconstant with the wider collection of known facts.
What you’re doing is assuming widespread corruption; providing a speculative explanations of how those facts could be due corruption; as opposed to looking at the big fixture and trying to find the simplest and best explanation of all the facts.
This is the thinking strategy that allows people to argue the earth is flat.
The corruption narrative doesn’t make sense on its face. You have to either ignore things that don’t fit that narrative, ignore the silliness of motivations, or inject rank speculation that you have no basis to believe and cannot justify as accurate - when people or events are opposite to as suggested in your original explanation.
But by all means, what facts are inconsistent with the following explanation:
Hunter Biden is a f*ck up who trades on his fathers name, his actual policy influence is minimal, but is hired because of his name, and what that could entail; the credibility it lends, and the potential contacts the son of a VP maybe able to bring. (IE: the reason any ex politician is appointed to various boards)
Burisma wants Zlochevsky charges dropped, they offer bribes, and pressure officials; but don’t appear to impact any US policy in a way preferential to Burisma specifically. When a US/EU/IMF push to prosecute more corruption, they decide to engage a lobbyist to sell their interests in the US and Ukraine, and negotiate this via Hunter Biden - who probably knows the people involved - to preempt, or sell the position that Zlochevsky isn’t a problem and no one should investigate him as a result of this big new push. The Ukrainian prosecutor isn’t really investigate anything, is standing in the way of fighting corruption - so IMF, EU and US put pressure on them, because they don’t want to prop up an administration where top prosecutors are found with bags of diamonds, and it’s being covered up by the head prosecutor - and they want to remove the influence of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs in the internal politics of Ukraine. Everyone agrees this clearly corrupt prosecutor must go to achieve that and all pile on financial pressure, and he gets replaced - after people reassign citing corruption and he fires corruption investigators; no one objects or things this is against policy, or is against stated goals.
Joe Biden is aware Hunter is working for a Ukrainian company, but isn’t stupid enough to change or manipulate US policy to assist him for a measly few million at the end of his term; so merely executes US foreign policy.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
This is fascinating, comparing your statements to Double_R, you both concocted … You claim that burisma was doomed from the start and Shokin wasn't fired because of Biden
Wtf are you talking about lol! Double R and I are not really a million miles away; unless you make stuff up about what I said:
The west wanted Ukraine to fight corruption - PGOs prosectors were found with bags of diamonds, another prosecutor resigned citing corruption, and another key prosecutor involved in the prosecution of corruption was fired. The EU, IMF, and world bank also wanted the guy gone:
C1: Pressuring for his ouster was behaviour consistent with foreign policy, behaviour consistent with push from allies, and behaviour consistent with the known facts. No one appears to really contest that, not the EU, not Ukraine, not the IMF, not even the republicans who investigated Biden.
C2: There doesn’t appear to have been any active investigation into Burisma at the time; though I’m sure the push against corruption that Biden himself was spearheading made them think one could be coming in the future.
Everyone = US deepstate, a few EU people, and Shokin's local pro-EU opposition. = Not enough without threat courtesy of the big guy.
This is a deflection. I am using this to support the premise that Biden’s actions were consistent with foreign policy.
His name means nothing if it doesn't influence US foreign policy. Your theory requires "us" to believe that Hunter is selling something he doesn't have
But he didn’t influence foreign policy - see above; so this point seems self defeating.
Hunter traded off his name; and Burisma could easily have hired him thinking it would lend them credibility with external actors, or make US authorities think twice about raising questions; with the possibility of connections and influencing policy a way distant second.
What you’re doing, is ignoring all other possibilities, dressing up your rank speculation as the only answer, then ridiculing any reasonable explanations.
Spin, the act was the same; the only difference is your opinion on Trump's motives, motives which a fair person would consider justified since the corruption was real.
The acts were very different given that a) one was completely in line with US foreign policy the other wasn’t and b.) one was in line with how the government Justice system functions, and the other wasn’t c.) one must assume the motives of Biden that the pressure was specifically his sons company; where as Trump was explicit at the target.
These would be equal only if there was no push against the prosecutors from anyone else, yet he was fired by pressure from Biden - who was caught on tape saying that the prosecutor needs to go because he is unfairly investigating Burisma.
I doubt there was any kind of concerted campaign from the first three, it is more likely..
This is how conspiratorial thinking works. Present a narrative as if true, if the narrative fails, speculate a reason why it still works...
Perhaps [the protestors] should have done something like vote... oh wait
Deflection - I am supporting C1 - by suggesting support within Ukraine for claims of corruption who were also applying pressure. Speculating about how sizeable that support was, and that they didn’t do enough, or weren’t a large enough block - is irrelevant.
If Trump stated an interest in uncovering US corruption in Ukraine then his (purported but unproven) quid pro quo would be aligned with stated US interests.
Trumps Quid pro quo was clear and explicit in the call and policy: announce an investigation into Biden, you get military funding. Secondly, Trumps interest was not “US corruption in Ukraine”generally, but Biden specifically - thirdly, even if Trump declared that Biden was a priority of the US that doesn’t make it in the US interests at the time: you’d have, say, the NSA calling it a drug deal, you’d have push back from foreign policy teams, ambassadors, and political opponents (which all happened - btw)
Cover for the payments. ..
And more speculation - the Burisma board Job was already cover for payments to do shady stuff. Right
You again beg the question.
No - I am pointing out clear cases where the facts don’t support your position. You then construct a bunch of speculative reasons - why this could still be corruption: IE: assuming your own conclusion of corruption when viewing the facts, this is beginning the question.
Why would burisma hire a separate lobbying firm when they had Hunter? They didn't, Bluestar is a shell company
Wrf lol. Blue star is not a shell company - it’s a large international lobbying firm.
It's not different from Hunter it's part of the same solution.…
Rank speculation. Hunter was being paid directly by Burisma - allegedly paid for stuff he can get his dad to do; to get him to make Biden Sr do stuff is a phone call, right. All of this horseshit with blue star, lobbying firms, statement of work - is irrelevant and unnecessary.
You have to invoke this weird convoluted speculation to make your narrative make any sense at all.
There wasn't a worldwide clamor.
Yes there was. IMF, EU, world bank, etc. this supports C1.
The replacement was not going to be worse for burisma because the US executive branch (i.e. Biden) was greenlighting possibilities.
So it’s gone from Biden - to everyone. Biden specially picked a new guy, either over the objections of everyone and no one said anything - or everyone else is in on it. Of course no evidence, or paper trail for any of this - it’s just you speculating your way out of a critical problem
If Shokin wasn't a threat there was no reason to specifically mention him as a target as they did.
Except that tiny matter of the US, worldbank, imf and EU pressuring Shokin to do more against corruption…
Recall what we know.
- Zlochevsky was tagged as a fugitive wanted for fraud
- Zlochevsky gets a bunch of his money back.
- Nothing was apparently happening against Burisma, no actions, or court movements.
- A prosecutor is found with a bag of diamonds
- US, IMF, world bank, EU puts pressure on Shokin to do more to investigate and prosecute corruption.
- Burisma engage a lobbying firm to talk up their guy so as to prevent cases against him.
- Kyiv court releases a court order against two properties and a car - stating “prosecutors failed to appear in court to defend the state’s interests” (https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/reform-watch/yanukovychs-ex-ecology-minister-regains-luxurious-properties-rolls-royce-after-court-ruling-407050.html)
- Court re-seizes property.
- A prosecutor resigns alleging massive corruption
- Other prosecutor within the office investing corruption is fired.
Nothing in this chain of events suggest any walls were closing in, that Shokin was a big threat - or that his removal is in the best interests of Zlochevsky - nor that engaging a lobbying firm at the time was related to any specific action being taken - nor any reason to suspect that Shokin was unsympathetic, and every reason to suggest he could be “bought”, or he would ignore prosecutors working for him could be bought and he would look the other way (because thats what happened).
There are multiple potential explanations as to why a Lobbying firm was engaged at the specific time: to avoid being swept up in a new corruption push, to try and leverage the known corruption to have existing cases dropped. They all are simpler and more reasonable than the convoluted mess of a narrative that ignores the big picture and actions of everyone involved.
As for the claim that Shokin never got back to the UK investigation it could have been….
More rank speculation…
It's amazing that Hunter knew in 2014 that his dad would coincidentally deliver what would otherwise have been a scam job
What makes you think it wasn’t? Assuming it was a massive attempt at some convoluted corrupt scam against Ukrainian and the US, rather than Burisma hiring Biden due to more US involvement, and thinking it could help sway things (when it didn’t) is assuming your own conclusion.
it's even more amazing that burisma paid millions of dollars for over a year with no indication of actual deliverables.
And yet - there were so few actual deliverables that they needed a bribe, and needed to pay him more to engage blue star shell company to get his dad to do anything. I mean you’re claiming they’re paying him for affecting policy - but then also have to pay him again for actually affecting policy in a completely method via blue star for…. Reasons. But like I said, there are multiple reasons Biden could have been put on the board, maybe he said he could affect things but couldn’t, maybe he leant a sense of credibility. Simply assuming one of those that is preferably to the huge conspiracy you want to peddle at the beginning is very much begging the question.
I mean in your theory Hunter has no way to actually make is father do anything, and Joe is such an upstanding guy he would never do anything anyway; so how does Hunter know who to scam? Does he look at his father's actions and go to wherever he might be exerting influence next?
I covered this at the start; many potential reasons.
But look at it this way. Everything here is predicated on the suggestion that you feel Joe Biden thought this was a hill worth dying on.
You are the Vice President, who stands to earn multiple millions of dollars just by turning up and giving a few speeches per year. You can get any board post you want; you can write a book - you can be a multi-millionaire easily.
However…. Your son suggests that you go against current world and national policy, expose yourself to charges of corruption, potential criminal prosecution, and political scandal - by pushing out a prosecutor of a country that is investigating your sons company - and praying no one in the prosecutors office, foreign affairs or the rest of the government and/or world points it out and kicks off a major investigation and scandal - all for perhaps a million or so dollars.
This is what you’re suggesting happened. It makes utterly no sense.
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@Tejretics
There are some “big bills” that Democrats should find opportune times to pass. This was not one of them -- it wasn’t a bill on the Democratic agenda for a while, it was explicitly aimed at combating the COVID-induced recession. The issue wasn’t the timing of the bill; the issue was the bill itself. When should the government have spent $1.9 trillion on stimulus? I’d say never, because there wasn’t a $1.9 trillion output gap.
So I’m not broadly disagreeing with the idea that the stimulus package was a bit too big - but only $400bn was direct stimulus checks. Much of the remainder was unemployment, business and local government support.
While I won’t necessarily say all of that ended up being used for support and not stimulus or was all well spent - I think there is definitely a case to be made that the conversation about inflation is being had because the stimulus prevented a wider recession that would be being talked about otherwise.
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@Bones
Isn't the whole gender movement to broaden it's definition such that it includes labels such as
But those are almost all boiling down to variations of the same inherent thing; mostly just with different ascribed names. Clown, and tree - not so much
There is no doubt that there exists a plethora of individual preferences when it comes to selecting a sexual partner, but I think that, for one to ascribe each preference a seperate "gender" (a term already heavily implications of the traditional biological definition [would be akin to describing the Big Bang as "God"]) is both misleading and unnecessary.
Gender has almost invariably been used in relation to social aspects of sex since the 1960s - gender roles, gender stereotypes, etc.
But saying that, the argument you’re making seems to be not necessarily objecting that there are not 72 “genders” in the way that word is presented - but that you object to the word “gender” being used specifically.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
The seizures occurred after the quid pro quo. You claim to have read the emails but you're not sure whether there is the investigation or threat of investigation? That's not honest.
I said it’s unclear as to whether at the time of the emails there was an actual specific. investigation - which we don’t. As opposed to simply rumblings about corruption and a push to open them.
The point being - is that a multitude of groups were pressuring more to be done about corruption - and explicitly viewed shokin as a barrier; before and after Bluestar were engaged. He was not gone until april - multiple months after Biden’s pressure.
Hunter & friends were being engaged to bring US federal power to bear, private companies that aren't fronts for political corruption don't offer things like "high-ranking US officials in Ukraine (US Ambassador)".How in the world could a private company deliver US foreign policy as a service? Oh wait, Hunter is the son of the "policy leader" for Ukraine. Whether or not there was a paper trail for an investigation is utterly irrelevant. The threat existed, Hunter was offering to remove it through US foreign policy, Hunter was not in direct control of US foreign policy, therefore Hunter was an agent for his father who was selling US foreign policy.Quintessential public corruption.Now you can have a conspiracy that was never carried out, and if all that happened was some sweet nothings were whispered this probably wouldn't have been discovered; but the fact is Shokin was quid pro quoed out of office seals the deal (if you are sane).Conspiracy to "neutralize John Doe" + related persons admitting that they shot John Doe = conspiracy to commit murder. You're acting like a desperate defense lawyer hoping that because the notes on the criminal fucking conspiracy didn't use the word "kill" or "murder" that the jury will ignore it.
As I said - all we know is that a.) Hunter was on the board. b.) Burisma engaged a lobbying firm, c.) everyone was putting pressure on shokin.
Everything else is inferred by you. There are multiple potential explanations, the simplest, with fewest issues, that explains the most is the one I put forward.
I am not one to rashly declare a person hopeless, but if someone can't connect the dots here it really is hopeless.
There are like 4 dots - and you’re trying to convince me it’s a picture of the Mona Lisa.
"managed to convince" are you daft? You think Hunter spun the globe threw a dart and decided to head off to that country because they might have so desperately wanted his company's charms?He was SENT there because the US military industrial complex had tentacles all over the country and there was money to be made through a protection racket.He was SENT there because Joe Biden was or was becoming the de facto "Big Guy" in the US executive branch when it comes to Ukraine.
Or - get this - Hunter is a f*ckup trying to trade on his name.
"probably would have done anyway", BULL SHIT! A president was impeached for doing what he did, they called it illegal I believe. Ukraine is not like other countries, there is plenty of public corruption in central Africa but no visits from US vice presidents there to quid pro quo appointed officials out. Why? They would tell him to get lost.
Trump was impeached for leveraging an ally for his own personal political gain.
You keep implying that this was some weird move by Biden.
The world bank, IMF, EU, and the countries own citizens were applying pressure to have Shokin removed - or no longe standing in the way of corruption. The evidence clearly indicates that Shokin was indeed standing in the way of prosecutions and corrupt. Every one of them were happy that he was removed; and there hasn’t really been any suggestion by anyone - including the Republican investigation - that this pressure was applied in a way that was against US stated interests at the time.
It is only the leverage of the money, the planted officials, the CIA interest that makes Ukraine vulnerable and that is where the Joe's mighty sense of "justice" manifested.
huh?
They're called shell companies and it's how one tries to avoid being flagged (even more than usual).
Blue star isn’t a shell company, and isn’t he already being paid for a “legitimate job” being on the Burisma board?
Of course - what you did here is flat out ignored most of the issues in your argument, that I pointed out.
Let’s reiterate.
If Burisma wanted Hunter to leverage his father to get a prosecutor fired, he’s already on the board, he can do that directly as part of the board. There are a literally a billion ways they can make legitimate payments.
There’s literally 0 reason Burisma would use Hunter to then hire a separate lobbying firm to engage in actual lobbying of other US government officials, if he could just pick up the phone and call his dad - given that wtf were they even paying him for on the board of Burisma?
Why would they go to the risk of having a prosecutor fired when there is a huge worldwide clamour to investigate corruption and the replacement could well be way worse; and the current prosecutor has been helpful by not investigating past bribes or what happened yet in the SFO investigation.
What makes much more sense is Hunter Biden is a f*ck up who tries to trade on the people he knows and that his dads the Vice President; despite being paid vast sums by Burisma, he had so little ability to actually effect policy that they needed bribes, and then to engage a lobbying firm and being in multiple new people into this Machiavellian plot; talk about it in email, and then despite it being all super illegal, various relationships with individuals known publicly, and that actions are being scrutinized by multiple countries, one’s own opposition and state department - you then do something that so obviously against the national interests that helps your son in front of everyone and brag about it - it makes no sense.
The only way this narrative makes sense, is if you assume a bunch of stuff is true, and ignore all the ways it doesn’t work…
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@Sidewalker
I don’t think I’ve ever seen you playing the BOP game, but I’m pretty new here, in any event, in context, I’m challenging the validity of the BOP game that is being played here. I think you are saying you believe in the existence of an external reality but you cannot meet the so-called burden of proof.
There is a subtlety here. Firstly, I assume that “an external reality” exists (by which I am assuming you mean the world around me external to my brain) - there are no other assumptions that I have any basis to make.
If I use this in an argument, it would typically be as a base assumption - “assuming that…” which doesn’t need burden of proof; because you’re saying it’s an assumption. If, on the other hand I make claims about that reality, what it is or how it works. That I would require a burden or proof for.
Any time, I put forward an idea as truth, or probably/likely truth; I would typically require the burden of proof.
If I use this in an argument, it would typically be as a base assumption - “assuming that…” which doesn’t need burden of proof; because you’re saying it’s an assumption. If, on the other hand I make claims about that reality, what it is or how it works. That I would require a burden or proof for.
Any time, I put forward an idea as truth, or probably/likely truth; I would typically require the burden of proof.
So according to the rules of the BOP game, you can’t meet the burden of proof, so you are irrational and logically incoherent, and I’m more logical, more intelligent, and blah blah blah.
Not really. Saying that I appear to be conscious - is arguably meeting the burden of proof for whether I am conscious based on its definition. If I were to make claims about what consciousness is, or that something non human was conscious; then I would need to meet my burden of proof for those claims.
I made the point earlier that our state of conscious awareness is a feature that trumps all others in the matter of epistemic authority. The only thing we know in an unmediated manner is that we are conscious, Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” comes to mind. Regarding external reality, all we can know are phenomena: things as they present themselves to us; things as they appear to us, not things as they are. The world in its own right, the noumenal world, can only be inferred. You answered both questions with reference to experiential evidence such as “I appear to observe” and “I know what that feels like”, at the same time acknowledging that you can’t meet the so-called burden of proof, which validates my point about the BOP game. You can’t meet the BOP for belief in the existence of external reality or internal reality, what exactly is the point of the BOP game, what does it have to day about the existence of anything?
The issue with burden of proof is that it relates to disagreements. For consciousness and the existence of external reality - is more of a shared assumption by everyone. If someone contested whether shared reality existed - and you wanted to claim external reality definitely existed, then the burden of proof would be on you - and you couldn’t meet it - likewise for someone who said it doesn’t exist.
You meet your burden of the claim that something exists by virtue of having the conversation at all - with most other things being irrelevant to the conversation as they are unknowable.
You meet your burden of the claim that something exists by virtue of having the conversation at all - with most other things being irrelevant to the conversation as they are unknowable.
Nope, not at all, you are the first BOPer to answer, and you have pretty much acknowledged that you can’t hit the BOP pitch either, nobody can, so the question becomes, what is the point of pitching the BOP when there is no ball to hit, why do you guys think it somehow makes a relevant point about Theism.
I think you may misunderstand - nothing I’ve said would be subject to BoP - as I’m not making any claims. I’m not really expressing the truth of an idea - that’s when you subject yourself to BoP; if you don’t make claims, you can make assumptions from which you can argue the conclusions follow if the assumption is correct - but if the assumption is challenged, that’s where BoP comes into play.
OK, my question is, why do you play the BOP game, what exactly do you think it establishes about Theism?
You’ve asked this a few times - but I left it till last; it’s fairly easy.
Humans have the ability to express ideas that can be false. We do it a lot, and we have an exceptional imagination for coming up with objects, things, explanations, ideas, etc - that are not true. We do it a lot. When you or I think up an explanation or an idea - it could be reality, or not.
In the context of an argument - we’re trying to establish or come to some agreement about what is or is not true.
Normally - especially when talking about religion, most arguments boil down to a mere handful of underlying ideas or premises; if these premises are true, most of the rest follows. It’s is those premises that are contested.
For example, using morality to show the existence of God, is a good one: the contested premise is that morality is an objective thing.
When a premise is contested ; both sides have to figure out what’s true or false. This is where BoP comes in: How do we establish who should, or shouldn’t, prove or disprove any particular claim? Who has “the burden” in any individual case? It can’t be arbitrary.
Some ideas can be disproven, some can be proven, but many are unfalsifiable: can’t really be proven wrong, in any practical sense. If the burden of proof is on the disproved - then you can win arguments by coming up with ideas that are not true - but hard or impossible to disprove - that would prevent any intellect discussion this way around, thus the burden of proof must therefore be on the positive claim.
I see it invoked - and invoke it - primarily in two scenarios:
1.) Where someone is being lazy, or specifically in cases where I’ve spent time and effort crafting large responses to points, and the other person is just throwing out claims without proof. It’s not fair in me to carry both the proof and disproof; so I’ll often challenge people to support their assertions in this context
2.) Where an assumption is challenged that is hard or impossible to be disproven even if it’s false: but is being presented as if truthful. IE - we have no reason to believe that this is actually true, but you’re arguing as if it is. The point here is mostly to highlight that the point relies on an unsupported assertion, despite any vehemence that results.
Humans have the ability to express ideas that can be false. We do it a lot, and we have an exceptional imagination for coming up with objects, things, explanations, ideas, etc - that are not true. We do it a lot. When you or I think up an explanation or an idea - it could be reality, or not.
In the context of an argument - we’re trying to establish or come to some agreement about what is or is not true.
Normally - especially when talking about religion, most arguments boil down to a mere handful of underlying ideas or premises; if these premises are true, most of the rest follows. It’s is those premises that are contested.
For example, using morality to show the existence of God, is a good one: the contested premise is that morality is an objective thing.
When a premise is contested ; both sides have to figure out what’s true or false. This is where BoP comes in: How do we establish who should, or shouldn’t, prove or disprove any particular claim? Who has “the burden” in any individual case? It can’t be arbitrary.
Some ideas can be disproven, some can be proven, but many are unfalsifiable: can’t really be proven wrong, in any practical sense. If the burden of proof is on the disproved - then you can win arguments by coming up with ideas that are not true - but hard or impossible to disprove - that would prevent any intellect discussion this way around, thus the burden of proof must therefore be on the positive claim.
I see it invoked - and invoke it - primarily in two scenarios:
1.) Where someone is being lazy, or specifically in cases where I’ve spent time and effort crafting large responses to points, and the other person is just throwing out claims without proof. It’s not fair in me to carry both the proof and disproof; so I’ll often challenge people to support their assertions in this context
2.) Where an assumption is challenged that is hard or impossible to be disproven even if it’s false: but is being presented as if truthful. IE - we have no reason to believe that this is actually true, but you’re arguing as if it is. The point here is mostly to highlight that the point relies on an unsupported assertion, despite any vehemence that results.
If you’re arguing that you don’t know whether your particular belief is true or false; only that you feel it’s true, or have faith that its true, and don’t argue that faith as a basis for arguing it is true in the context of the argument - you don’t need a burden, as you’re not claiming anything.
If, however, and it’s quite common in many theists, that you want to express that unqualified faith, and unsupported position of feeling, but also want to use it; or your conclusions as a basis for expressing that others are wrong about something (I’m not suggesting you specifically - I haven’t read enough here), that’s when burden of proof applies.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Oh it is to @Double_R who claimed there was not investigation at this point in time (November 2015) and indeed that Shokin's seizure of the oligarch's assets was revenge against Joe Biden for getting him fired.
We’re not sure whether there was an investigation at the time: and it’s hard to claim shokin arranged a seizures as revenge for something that hadn’t happened yet.
We’ve known about this email for well over a year - it’s not new.
This confirms that not only was there a threat of investigation but that Hunter Biden knew there was and was being tasked with shielding the oligarch. This is of course the reason for the bribe, oligarchs aren't compulsive gift-givers after all.
Given that there was a major push by western powers for Ukraine to investigate - and this oligarch had been mentioned; the threat wasn’t an unknown - and is likely why blue star was being engaged in the first place; rather than any actual investigation.
Only someone in the throws of partisan delusion would suggest that since they knew better than to say "fire Shokin" in an email that they were not willing to see Shokin fired if he refused to drop the investigation. Even if you had that kind of faith before the quid pro quo, you would need to be beyond reason to continue to believe it after the quid pro quo.The emails don't establish the quid pro quo, Joe Biden bragged about it.
Ooof. The last time I saw projection this strong - it ended up killing luke skywalker.
What the emails say; is that Burisma was hiring blue star, with the assistance of Hunter Biden, to help them with PR and lobbying in the Ukrainian government to end any investigations that may be going on into an oligarch - corresponding to a time where there is a major push by western powers to investigate corruption.
The way this was read; is that Hunter himself was doing the lobbying, rather than blue star, and instead of lobbying officials to make a positive case about the oligarch, they managed to convince the Vice President to do what anyone can see he probably would have done anyway, and what all other western powers were also doing (threatening support for doing more to combat corruption), and cheered when, 5 months later the prosecutor resigned -
After impounding a bunch of the oligarchs stuff; it didn’t eradicate the push for anti-corruption prosecutions, just changed the guy in charge of investigating them.
This elaborate scheme was shared in email, involving another trusted company, as some master plan - despite Hunter Biden still being on the Burisma board at the time - rendering the whole thing this some weird pointless roundabout way of talking to your board member to exercise his dads connections.
To be honest - it somewhat seems the existence of this email in the first place, engaging an outside lobbying firm at all in the first place to exercise the connections a member of your own board - seems to demonstrate the opposite of what’s suggested.
To make any of that make sense requires a lot of squinting, and ignoring all the ostensible problems.
On the other hand; imagine for a moment, you’re a f*ck up, and the only real skill you have is that your dad is big in politics. You decide that the best way of you making a lot of money, is by trading off your dads name; and some of the people you know in the circles you’ve been in.
You can’t actually get your dad to do anything at all - hence why the people you work for having to end up paying bribes; or hire lobbying firms. All of a sudden, all of that stuff makes complete sense.
Now given that Just Facts is omitting all these key facts - and presenting this email (which was known for a while) as new - it’s self evident that this is a biased article intended to oversell this narrative. Much like every time this is mentioned by anyone on the right.
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@Vici
Wouldn’t that be building up the modern definition of gender to include and ascribe such ridiculous extremes and the mocking the result - wouldn’t that qualify as a strawman?
they exist just as how tall people exist and people with black eyes exist and blonde hair - but that doesn't mean they aren't either men or women.
Well it depends what you mean; physiologically probably not - in terms of how we describe and identify the outgoing characteristics, mannerisms and presentation of individuals, with respect to a variety of understood social clues surrounding sexual - absolutely.
Like I said - your objection is that you can’t appear to get to past that the word is not being used the way you want it to be used.
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@Tejretics
So you’ve been around for a while - what are your perceptions about how debate and discussion have changed in a general sense since you started debating - what common topics and themes of the past have dwindled and (aside from Trump) which themes that get a lot of air time today do you feel are brand new?
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@IwantRooseveltagain
I did see the link. That’s likely less reliable than Just Facts.com.Do you expect me to read all those emails looking for some smoking gun? Why don’t you pull the incriminating emails out and make your case assuming you can prove these emails are verified by a competent authority.
If you want a tl;dr. The smoking gun was not actually a smoking gun at all.
The emails were Hunter Biden talking about something, that JF interpreted and argued actually meant something different, and obviously was referring to Joe Biden putting pressure on the president to fire the prosecutor, even though:
- The emails only talked about getting people to say nice things about said oligarch to encourage the prosecutor to drop the investigation.
- No mention of firing the prosecutor
- No mention of Hunter doing any of the work (was other people)
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I keep asking two questions:1) Do you believe in the existence of an external reality?
Insofar as I appear to observe one - yes. But I can’t know for sure, and wouldn’t qualify it as a “belief” as much as an observation I have no basis to question.
2) Do you believe you are conscious?
Insofar as what I appear share what we all collectively define as consciousness. I neither know what it is, or whether it’s real though.
None of the BOP crowd will anwer either question, they won't admit to having any belief in anything whatsoever. That's because you know the BOP game applies to anything and everything, you like to pitch it but you know you can't catch it, playing your BOP game might feel good, but it's meaningless and all of you BOPers know it.I will ask again, are you conscious? If you want to be taken seriously, if you want anyone to believe you are thinking, if you want anyone to believe anything you say, then you have to be contending that you are conscious, and then according to the BOP game you guys like to play, meet the burden of proof?Prove to me that you are conscious?
So here’s a point of view from a ‘BoPer’ we all collectively have a description of consciousness; self awareness, being able to understand and self regulate our own thoughts - etc. I know what that feels like, but I don’t know what it actually is.
Is it real? Or is it just what being a largely autonomous brain operating by physics feels like: I don’t know, I can’t measure or derive any test to tell the difference. No one can.
Being able to tell doesn’t functionally change the conversation, because whatever consciousness really is, it still appears the same to, say, people engaging in conversation. For example - if a complex AI was able to completely mimic every aspect of a human response to all questions some day - on what basis could we really conclude it wasn’t conscious other than our say-so?
Fundamentally though, a big part of your issue about other peoples beliefs is not that Atheists aren’t willing to answer questions, as much as you not liking the answer.
I’m normally more than happy to answer anything, but a lot of the answers you will get are like the above - I don’t know, because I don’t know. I don’t have beliefs about what happened before the Big Bang because I don’t know. The process of abiogenesis, I have a some idea based on experimental evidence, but I don’t know exactly.
This is obviously dissatisfying for many theists who have been fed a diet of stories about atheists, that it’s a religion, of that we believe all sorts of silly things; and that when confronted - we just say we don’t know when we don’t know, and it sort-of preempts the thread of the argument you had prepared.
But I’ll issue you (or anyone for that matter) an open AMA - feel free to ask me literally anything about my atheism, worldview, opioid, epistemology - you name it; I’ll offer my opinion in it.
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@Vici
what im is not saying is not whether it worked or not, im saying why don't they continue? they said they "cared" about death rates when they closed the country for 2 cases, but now they have so many more deaths? If it is the case that they care, why aren't they locked down now? It's because they don't care about people.
I think it’s more because vaccines exist now.
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@Vici
are adjectives describing a man or a women. Notice here by the bold that you are acknowledging that these a men or women, merely that they have difference sexual preferences.
If you pay attention, I go on to clarify the examples of biological sex and identity not matching; and the variations that exist between them.
People with these identities and variations objectively exist - so you’re objection isn’t really with what or who we’re talking about ; merely an objecting to the way the word “gender” is used.
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@Shila
Gender and sex are determined by a pair of chromosomes XX = Female. XY = Male.The rest are labels for sexual preferences eg gay. LGBT.
Well no - because gender as a concept is used to refer to your perceptions of your own sex; and has been used for the last 60 + years to refer to the social aspects relating to physical sex.
That’s the way the word is being used here, regardless of whether you’re comfortable with it.
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@Shila
I think you’re talking about biological “sex”. The meaning of gender and gender identity is often used in a way that incorporates preferences preferences too.
Let me correct that a little actually; because it’s a little off.
Preference figures into it a bit insofar as gender roles, and I’ve seen people incorporate gay and lesbian in those identities - but I’m primarily thinking about things like “butch” as a specific identity; and how the genderized aspect of Hertero or homosexuality also plays into it to.
So you’re kind of right - in that gender and sexual preference are not the same thing; and I kinda implied that wasn’t the case - but gender and sex are not the same the either.
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@Shila
There are only male and female genders. The rest are just sexual preferences and not determined by sex determining chromosomes.
I think you’re talking about biological “sex”. The meaning of gender and gender identity is often used in a way that incorporates preferences preferences too.
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@Public-Choice
One more thing, Shokin dropped a press conference where he released everything he found on Biden:
That isn’t Shokin.
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@Public-Choice
That could be a fair take on the speech, tbh.But then Shokin's appointee cleans house and accuses 300 people of corruption and then files 107 court cases in 2017.Does this mean that Shokin was standing in the way of reform, or could we argue his appointee brought significant reform to Ukraine?
One of the big argument just facts made, is that the shokins replacement did nothing ; are you saying they’re wrong?
Tbh I don't think any of the stuff going on at the Government level in Ukraine really will matter. The CIA and FSB have been fighting for Ukraine for at least 50 years. The government always swings wildly one way or another. And the new guy is just as much a puppet as the last guy most of the time.Shokin, though, was never formally charged with a crime and Biden is currently being investigated by the Ukraine government for trying to force Shokin out.
He’s not any more.
To say that Just Facts mischaracterizes Biden's actions and Shokin's is to also accuse Ukraine's government of mischaracterizing Biden's actions as well. Just saying.
My understanding of Ukrainian law is that anyone can sue to make a judge open an investigation - that’s what happened here.
But the issue of characterization is that:
a.) Biden’s action we’re not out of step with the world.
b.) there are many reasons to believe those broader claims are reasonable.
c.) just facts makes no attempt to take those facts and present everything in an unbiased sense. It simply provides one side of that data, with no counter narrative, ignoring all facts that appear to contradict it. It would be one thing if they mentioned all this, and argued why it was not believable - but another to do what they did - and omit those facts completely.
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@Public-Choice
There is no such thing as a "credible accusation." Yhe sources you cited did not bring a material fact to the charges he is being charged of.
So you’re going with Denial? You don’t like the claims brought forward - so you’re just going to summarily dismiss them as invalid. Gotcha.
Moreover, two people who are friends of someone is not proof that the person is Dirty. Frank Sinatra, for instance, had mob connections, but he didn't murder people or steal millions of dollars in merchandise. Connections do not equate with evidence.
This is a straw man - my issue was not that he was friends with them - but stands accused of actively helping them, and putting pressure to have them acquitted.
Shokin, according to the EMAILS CITED AS FOUND ON HUNTER BIDEN'S LAPTOP, was fired because of political pressure from Joe Biden and others.
None of the emails show that. This is just made up.
He wasn't investigated and found guilty. He wasn't brought forward with actual evidence of a crime. In fact, there was no actual evidence he obstructed anything. It would all count in court of law as hearsay.
There’s no evidence that wouldn’t be dismissed as circumstantial for Joe Biden either - yet we are here.
But, somehow, just SOMEHOW, Biden can't possibly be doing the very thing the emails cited by Just Facts show he did. We HAVE to grasp at anything else imaginable.
But the emails didn't say anything of the sort; you have to completely twist what they say to make them fit - as I said - and you have largely ignored.
Can you produce a report bringing crimes against Shokin? No. Why? Because there was no investigation. There was no smoking gun on Shokin. He wasn't even charged with anything.
Good lord, the scraping sound of moving the goal posts.
The above are clear examples that call into question whether he was a.) doing enough and b.) whether he was really a champion for anti-corruption claims.
That he didn’t end up being indicted for it doesn’t really rebut those claims.
The point here being - whether it was a reasonable action for a Vice President to put pressure to fire this prosuector. All the evidence above points to yes.
All you’re doing, is basically saying it doesn’t matter how circumstantial or tenuous your data is, but mine must only be prosecutions or proven in a court of law.
Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire someone who was looking into him. That is the only so-called "credible accusation" from the facts:
But they weren’t looking into him… it’s all weak circumstantial at best
Biden, not shokin, is being investigated by Ukraine. Biden, not Shokin is being investigated for corruption in Ukraine.But, yeah, Just Facts, certainly not the western media, mischaracterized the whole thing, lol.
I’m citing a fair amount of eastern media, if you would note.
Secondly - how’re those investigations going. They appear closed:
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@Public-Choice
PRYATT'S speech was for the person before Shokin, though. It cites a January 2015 corruption probe. Shokin was appointed in February of 2015
No it wasnt. I covered this in my original post. This is a blatant miss-characterization by Just Facts.
Read the speech.
It was from about 7 months after Shokin was on the job. It starts out covering much of the importance of fighting corruption, and then states:
However, there is one glaring problem that threatens all of the good work that regional leaders here in Odesa, in Kharkiv, in Lviv, and elsewhere are doing to improve the business climate and build a new model of government that serves the people.That problem threatens everything that the Rada, the Cabinet, the National Reform Council, and others are doing to push political and economic reforms forward and make life better for Ukrainians, and it flies in the face of what the Revolution of Dignity is trying to achieve.That obstacle is the failure of the institution of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine to successfully fight internal corruption. Rather than supporting Ukraine’s reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the Prosecutor General’s office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform.
This is talking about the current PGO.
In defiance of Ukraine’s leaders, these bad actors regularly hinder efforts to investigate and prosecute corrupt officials within the prosecutor general’s office. They intimidate and obstruct the efforts of those working honestly on reform initiatives within that same office.The United States stands behind those who challenge these bad actors.We applaud the work of the newly-established Inspector General’s office in the PGO led by David Sakvarelidze and Vitaliy Kasko. Their investigations into corruption within the PGO, have delivered important arrests and have sent the signal that those who abuse their official positions as prosecutors will be investigated and prosecuted.
The former of the two prosecutors here resigned - citing Shokin and the PGO as corrupt. The latter was fired by Shokin.
The ambassador then mentions, very briefly, the actions under the previous PG, then goes onto say:
The misconduct by the PGO officials who wrote those letters should be investigated, and those responsible for subverting the case by authorizing those letters should – at a minimum – be summarily terminated.
Calling out current PG for not investigating clear misconduct.
“Even as we support the work of the new Anti-Corruption Commission, and the recruitment of new prosecutors, we have urged Prosecutor General Shokin to empower Deputy Prosecutors Sakvarelidze and Kasko to implement reforms and bring to justice those who have violated the law, regardless of rank or status. We are prepared to partner with reformers within the PGO in the fight for anticorruption.
Explicitly calling Shokin to do more to empower the people fighting corruption.
“That’s why, on August 10, the United States signed a Joint Action Plan with Deputy Prosecutor General Sakvarelidze to provide 2 million dollars in U.S. assistance to support reform, anticorruption, and capacity building at the PGO.“It is critical that these reforms be undertaken in an open and transparent manner – consistent with the Procuracy Reform Law, international standards, and in coordination with national and international stakeholders – so that the Ukrainian people can have full faith and confidence in their laws and in those who have sworn to enforce them.
Saying it’s critical these reforms are done because they were being dragged out - literally everyone was pointing out shokin was a barrier.
“There are other cases as well, like those involving Former Deputy Chief Prosecutor Volodymyr Shapakin and Former Prosecutor Kornyets that clearly demonstrate that it is critical to cease intimidation and investigations of investigators, prosecutors and witnesses.
These are the diamond guys that Shokin was accused of helping out..
Pyatt mentioned a former case - but the rest of his speech is explicitly about what Shokin needs to do (and isn’t doing).
To say this is solely about the previous PG - is a massive mischaracterization.
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Those are extremely credible sources. To blow off sworn affidavits and more such evidence because a few news agencies in the U.S. say some things is a very serious accusation.
The sworn statement of a person accused for corruption is not a credible source for whether they committed corruption or not.
PyattS speech agrees with me. I explained how in the post above. He called out the PGO for standing in the way of corruption; and pointed out the failings in PGOs office in the aftermath of the SFO investigation. This was completely mischaracterized by Just Facts.
Pyatt specifically mentioned two prosecutors who were doing a good job - as I mentioned; one of these resigned citing corruption by Shokin, and who stated the investigation into Burisma had been parked, the other - who arrested another a Shokin ally caught red handed with f**king diamonds, but let off after accusations that Shokin interferes with the case - was fired.
The other two sources were basically saying it’s a good thing that the previous prosecutor was fired; and we’re on the appointment of shokin - not reflecting on his legacy of prosecution or corruption.
Pyatt specifically mentioned two prosecutors who were doing a good job - as I mentioned; one of these resigned citing corruption by Shokin, and who stated the investigation into Burisma had been parked, the other - who arrested another a Shokin ally caught red handed with f**king diamonds, but let off after accusations that Shokin interferes with the case - was fired.
The other two sources were basically saying it’s a good thing that the previous prosecutor was fired; and we’re on the appointment of shokin - not reflecting on his legacy of prosecution or corruption.
None of these stand in any meaningful contention to what I stated above; the only one that even contests the above - is what Shokin said himself
But your main argument is that Shokin was not doing enough to combat corruption in Ukraine. This is patently false.
No it’s not - he was credibly accused of standing in the way of multiple investigations, credibly accused of pressuring dropping charges on corrupt prosecutor friend, firing the prosecutor who arrested them, credibly accused of running a lawless and corrupt office by one of his key prosecutors - and having blocked multiple corruption reforms in the office - as I outlined above and you appear to ignore. I linked it all above.
If you ignore all those things - on balance, compare this to having obtained a court order to seize a rolls Royce and some property; but no prosecution - and appointing someone that manages to prosecute some crimes in the years after he resigned - it’s not exactly a compelling case for Shokins dedication to anti corruption, is it?
Like I said - literally everyone wanted him gone, Pyatt himself called out his office from standing in the way of corruption; there are credible accusations of major corruption, including standing in the way of several probes; he fired one of his better corruption prosecutors - and the other resigned accusing the office of massive corruption.
In summary:
a.) You offer no defence of Just Facts apparent mischaracterization of the emails a “smoking guns”, when in reality they don’t appear to be mentioning anything close to what happened; and are obviously reading much into them.
b.) you offer no defence of the characterization that, somehow, Biden’s request to fire the prosecutor was obviously invalid - despite almost everyone involved at the time; IMF, EU, Pyatt (which you and Just Facts mischaracterize), republicans, Ukrainian prosecutors, the people - all citing that he’s not making the necessary progress against corruption and, in many cases, suggested he was part of the problem.
c.) you completely ignore all cited contemporary examples and accusations against Shokin, being involved with, or facilitator of corruption.
d.) Your response is primarily to simply reiterate previous claims that are debunked by elements above.
If you ignore all those things - on balance, compare this to having obtained a court order to seize a rolls Royce and some property; but no prosecution - and appointing someone that manages to prosecute some crimes in the years after he resigned - it’s not exactly a compelling case for Shokins dedication to anti corruption, is it?
Like I said - literally everyone wanted him gone, Pyatt himself called out his office from standing in the way of corruption; there are credible accusations of major corruption, including standing in the way of several probes; he fired one of his better corruption prosecutors - and the other resigned accusing the office of massive corruption.
In summary:
a.) You offer no defence of Just Facts apparent mischaracterization of the emails a “smoking guns”, when in reality they don’t appear to be mentioning anything close to what happened; and are obviously reading much into them.
b.) you offer no defence of the characterization that, somehow, Biden’s request to fire the prosecutor was obviously invalid - despite almost everyone involved at the time; IMF, EU, Pyatt (which you and Just Facts mischaracterize), republicans, Ukrainian prosecutors, the people - all citing that he’s not making the necessary progress against corruption and, in many cases, suggested he was part of the problem.
c.) you completely ignore all cited contemporary examples and accusations against Shokin, being involved with, or facilitator of corruption.
d.) Your response is primarily to simply reiterate previous claims that are debunked by elements above.
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@Vici
If you consider gender as a description of sexual orientation, physical sex, and identify, there are a ton.
So there’s
1.) men who like men;
2.) men who like women;
3.) women who like men
4.) women who like women.
5.) men who like both
6.) women who like both
7.) men who like neither
8.) women who like neither
For each of the above there are versions for the case where the person feels the same gender as their physical sex, a different gender, feel completely asexual, or are transgender that have transitioned, or are waiting to transition but have transitioned or
That’s like 30+
The issue is not that these categories don’t exist or are invalid, but that people apparently take issue at people describing themselves this way.
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@Vici
Australia has a death rate of 555 per 1m population (130th in the world) compared to the US which has 3214/1m.
If the US had Australia’s death rate it would have saved around 800,000 lives.
So yes - it very much appears to have worked.
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@Public-Choice
So this is from Just Facts - I am particularly skeptical about the honesty of this side given my last post about their brazenly dishonest “poll” about misinformed voters.
Let’s review this one.
So from my understanding of this article; the argument is that there are some emails in which Burisma engages Hunters company to apparently lobby for them in order to get the investigation dropped. This is not new information.
These emails appear relate to lobbying, they describe lobbying of various us and Ukraine officials to get them to drop the investigations. The emails suggest that it’s not Hunter doing the work : “if you [hunter] and Devon feel comfortable that they will deliver what in real terms we are talking about”.
The description of what the activities in the email suggest doesn’t seem to match what actually happened - what was requested was to get various officials to publicly and privately talk positively about their client - so unless you squint hard, they’re not talking about what happened. Which was concerted pressure to implement more anti-corruption policies in the PGO - from multiple world organizations and officials, culminating in the prosecutors removal.
There is no indication in the set of emails or links provided to support the claim that they “affirmed that only Hunter could credibly promise to get those officials to shield the oligarch from criminal charges.”
From this,a post-hoc-ergo-Propter -hoc rationale is given for Biden firing on the prosecutor. Oddly, this “just facts” website seems not to include some key facts relating to judging Biden’s actions here. Namely:
The IMF wanted Shokin removed for not doing enough on corruption:
https://www.ft.com/content/44c1641e-cff7-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377
As did the EU.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sacking-of-ukraine-s-prosecutor-viktor-shokin-1.2591190
As did people in his office.
https://khpg.org/en/1455544883
As did many in the population.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/why-poroshenko-s-support-for-shokin-is-dangerous/
Some members of the senate questioned if enough was being done on corruption:
https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/portman-durbin-shaheen-and-senate-ukraine-caucus-reaffirm-commitment-help
As did the US ambassador George Pyatt in the speech linked in Just Facts.
“That obstacle is the failure of the institution of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine to successfully fight internal corruption. Rather than supporting Ukraine’s reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the Prosecutor General’s office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform.”
“The misconduct by the PGO officials who wrote those letters [attesting Zlochevsky committed no crime] be investigated, and those responsible for subverting the case by authorizing those letters should – at a minimum – be summarily terminated”
Despite “Just facts” claims - this speech was given in September 2015 - and was explicitly calling out current state of the PGO.
Pyatt did specifically reference events before Shokin took over - and then called for it to be investigated ; but to characterize this as meaning the entire speech was referring to the prior PG is clearly false; and omitting the parts of the speech that clearly call out the PGO for corruption is dishonesty - ESPECIALLY when they are accusing others of incorrectly contextualizing these comments.
In addition, this “just facts” also omitted key issues with Shokin:
That he wasn’t carrying out anti/corruption commitments:
https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/kyiv-post-plus/shokin-resists-change-jeopardizes-visa-free-travel-to-eu-and-12-billion-of-aid-400948.html
Was accused of sabotaging the reform process:
https://khpg.org/en/1452117960
That prosecutors involved suggest that the investigation into Burisma were dormant:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/timeline-in-ukraine-probe-casts-doubt-on-giuliani-s-biden-claim
That he pressured prosecuters to halt the case against one of the prosecutors in his office arrested for corruption in a diamond bust:
https://www.kyivpost.com/kyiv-post-plus/release-of-diamond-prosecutor-shows-fatal-flaws-of-law-enforcement-394791.html
https://www.kyivpost.com/kyiv-post-plus/top-prosecutor-accused-of-covering-up-corruption-resigns-video-394474.html
And also fired the prosecutor responsible for the bust
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-sakvarelidze-idUSKCN0WV0GU
Presenting Shokin as someone who was fighting corruption, and not intricately involved in it - is clearly false.
Additionally - it omits the complete lack of any suggestion that Biden acted outside of US interests in the Republican investigation it shared.
So in addition to my post relating to JustFacts dishonest poll, this would appear to be clearly trying to sell a particular narrative rather than accurately show the facts - as frankly while this could be considered many things - a smoking gun it is not.
Let’s review this one.
So from my understanding of this article; the argument is that there are some emails in which Burisma engages Hunters company to apparently lobby for them in order to get the investigation dropped. This is not new information.
These emails appear relate to lobbying, they describe lobbying of various us and Ukraine officials to get them to drop the investigations. The emails suggest that it’s not Hunter doing the work : “if you [hunter] and Devon feel comfortable that they will deliver what in real terms we are talking about”.
The description of what the activities in the email suggest doesn’t seem to match what actually happened - what was requested was to get various officials to publicly and privately talk positively about their client - so unless you squint hard, they’re not talking about what happened. Which was concerted pressure to implement more anti-corruption policies in the PGO - from multiple world organizations and officials, culminating in the prosecutors removal.
There is no indication in the set of emails or links provided to support the claim that they “affirmed that only Hunter could credibly promise to get those officials to shield the oligarch from criminal charges.”
From this,a post-hoc-ergo-Propter -hoc rationale is given for Biden firing on the prosecutor. Oddly, this “just facts” website seems not to include some key facts relating to judging Biden’s actions here. Namely:
The IMF wanted Shokin removed for not doing enough on corruption:
https://www.ft.com/content/44c1641e-cff7-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377
As did the EU.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sacking-of-ukraine-s-prosecutor-viktor-shokin-1.2591190
As did people in his office.
https://khpg.org/en/1455544883
As did many in the population.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/why-poroshenko-s-support-for-shokin-is-dangerous/
Some members of the senate questioned if enough was being done on corruption:
https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/portman-durbin-shaheen-and-senate-ukraine-caucus-reaffirm-commitment-help
As did the US ambassador George Pyatt in the speech linked in Just Facts.
“That obstacle is the failure of the institution of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine to successfully fight internal corruption. Rather than supporting Ukraine’s reforms and working to root out corruption, corrupt actors within the Prosecutor General’s office are making things worse by openly and aggressively undermining reform.”
“The misconduct by the PGO officials who wrote those letters [attesting Zlochevsky committed no crime] be investigated, and those responsible for subverting the case by authorizing those letters should – at a minimum – be summarily terminated”
Despite “Just facts” claims - this speech was given in September 2015 - and was explicitly calling out current state of the PGO.
Pyatt did specifically reference events before Shokin took over - and then called for it to be investigated ; but to characterize this as meaning the entire speech was referring to the prior PG is clearly false; and omitting the parts of the speech that clearly call out the PGO for corruption is dishonesty - ESPECIALLY when they are accusing others of incorrectly contextualizing these comments.
In addition, this “just facts” also omitted key issues with Shokin:
That he wasn’t carrying out anti/corruption commitments:
https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/kyiv-post-plus/shokin-resists-change-jeopardizes-visa-free-travel-to-eu-and-12-billion-of-aid-400948.html
Was accused of sabotaging the reform process:
https://khpg.org/en/1452117960
That prosecutors involved suggest that the investigation into Burisma were dormant:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/timeline-in-ukraine-probe-casts-doubt-on-giuliani-s-biden-claim
That he pressured prosecuters to halt the case against one of the prosecutors in his office arrested for corruption in a diamond bust:
https://www.kyivpost.com/kyiv-post-plus/release-of-diamond-prosecutor-shows-fatal-flaws-of-law-enforcement-394791.html
https://www.kyivpost.com/kyiv-post-plus/top-prosecutor-accused-of-covering-up-corruption-resigns-video-394474.html
And also fired the prosecutor responsible for the bust
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-sakvarelidze-idUSKCN0WV0GU
Presenting Shokin as someone who was fighting corruption, and not intricately involved in it - is clearly false.
Additionally - it omits the complete lack of any suggestion that Biden acted outside of US interests in the Republican investigation it shared.
So in addition to my post relating to JustFacts dishonest poll, this would appear to be clearly trying to sell a particular narrative rather than accurately show the facts - as frankly while this could be considered many things - a smoking gun it is not.
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@Vici
evidence. everything I said makes sense.
Consider:
are not dependent on space, time, physical properties, or human nature. They are not the product of the physical universe (space, time, matter), because if the physical universe were to disappear, logical absolutes would still be true.
There is no reason to believe any of that is true, and I don’t believe you have any evidence to support any of this.
For example, please explain your evidence to explain why a universe in which 1+1 != 2 - or in which our standard rules of logic don’t apply - can’t exist.
Simply asserting that logical rules have some magical quality - is not a good argument.
Logical Absolutes are conceptual by nature.
Okay - this is just meaningless word salad. Let me explain what logic is.
The universe is the universe, it works the way it works. True and false is not a concept that exists in reality at some universal level - we only have what is.
Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to communicate and use words; we can describe concepts, things and systems that only exist in our heads, and we can put together words and ideas that are inconsistent with itself.
I can describe a square, I can describe a circle, I can describe a square circle - a shape that is perfectly square, and also perfectly circular.
Logic is just the rules we have come up with to tell whether an idea we create is inconsistent with all our other ideas or not.
Take a basic example. Two balls in a box - one red, one blue. You remove a ball and it’s red, this means the other ball is what? - The answer is based on logic - but that logic is merely a set of rules to make an answer consistent with what we know.
If that were a real scenario - there is merely a red ball and blue ball. Logic doesn’t make the remaining ball red or blue - that’s just what the ball is. If I pull out a blue ball - it is not some universal process that comes together to enforce that redness of the other ball - that’s just what the remaining ball is. No transcendental logic governing reality - just reality.
There are even cases where our conceptual notion of logic breaks down: quantum superposition, wave particle duality - particles are circles and also squares. And pretty much any science smaller than the radius of an atom. We don’t apply the same logic there as we do in the real world, we simply adjust what our ideas are - our understanding of the world, and then explore what other ideas are consistent with it. It’s all in our head.
Take for example a square triangle.
A square is a description of a thing: a triangle is a description of a thing. A side is a description of a thing. And we can’t have a square triangle because our description of shape has a set number of sides.
The logical absolutes here tell us that a square triangle doesn’t exist.
But in terms of the universe - honey badger don’t care.
There’s no reason in the universe we can’t have a 2 dimensional object that has four sides when view above, and three when viewed below; or any number of things in between.
If that occurred our logic and ideas would adjust to allow our ideas to remain consistent with how the world is.
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@Vici
Logical absolutes exist. Logical absolutes are conceptual by nature, are not dependent on space, time, physical properties, or human nature. They are not the product of the physical universe (space, time, matter), because if the physical universe were to disappear, logical absolutes would still be true. Logical Absolutes are not the product of human minds, because human minds are different, not absolute.
How can you possibly know this?
But, since logical absolutes are always true everywhere, and not dependent upon human minds, it must be an absolute transcendent mind that is authoring them. This mind is called God.
Why is the only possibly source of logical absolutes a mind that has authored them?
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@ILikePie5
I can’t believe you think RCV and Runoffs are the same thing. I’m not against RCV. I’m against ballot exhaustion. Because your vote does not count at all. In fact it disenfranchises those who would come and vote in the runoff.
I think you may need to check the definition of disenfranchisement as it doesn’t mean what I think you think it means.
If someone is able to vote in an election - they are franchised; if they are not allowed to vote, or prevented from voting - they are disenfranchised.
If everyone can vote in a single election - and a second election is not held - then no one is being disenfranchised. Their vote may not impact the result but that is a separate issue.
On that second basis: If someone votes for only candidates C and D in their RCV ballot, and Candidate A and B advances to the final run off round - then yes, their vote does not influence the outcome and is considered exhausted.
However, it should be noted that if such voters really wish to express a preference between candidate A and B should they reach the final 2, then these voters could simply fill in a ranking for those candidate and avoid all the unnecessary unpleasantness of a second ballot altogether.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest individuals who were not motivated enough to fill in a ranking for either candidate while standing in a small cubicle filling in rankings - would somehow find motivation to vote in a subsequent election for the those same candidates.
Compare this to say, people voting libertarian or green - who would be happy to show up to vote if their candidate is on the ballot but not motivated enough to show up if not: this means that their actual preference is rarely recorded; given that the impact of voting a second time is much higher than simply competing two boxes on a ballot - RCV allows this - much larger group - to express their limited support.
RCV does two things : it allows people to vote for who they want to vote for, without concern or worry about their vote allowing a candidate they don’t like to get in, and makes it simpler and easier for any individual who is able to vote to vote in the full run off process.
In this respect - RCV is not literally the same as run off elections - but it’s close enough. The main differences are that RCV has more rounds, the voters express their preference at the same time, rather than at different times.
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@TWS1405
And yet you've done the same you claim here with Avery, hypocrite.
I am sorry that you have no answer for anything I said, but don’t make things up. This is just a bald faced lie. We both know it.
By all means, link and post the quote where I did anything of the sort. We both know you won’t, because no such post actually exists.
Except in my response to you I did explain and requoted the quote proving same. You ignored it. Your problem, not mine.
Again, my argument must have absolutely nailed you to the wall if you need to make up such a ridiculous bald faces lie. I’m sorry it’s so hard for you to find reasons to object to what I said - but this sort of absurd denial of reality is not a solution.
You didn’t do either of those things; this is a lie.
By all means link and quote a response to me where you explained why what I said misrepresented your position.
You won’t, because no such post actually exists.
The only replies you’ve made, is your wild unsupported accusations in posts #62, and repeating those same wild accusations in post #64, throwing in a bunch of insults.
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@Public-Choice
So let’s start off with some basics:
1.) Biased question set.
Questions 2,4,5,6,8,10,12,14,16,7,18,19,20 and 21 (2/3) have a correct option with only “liberal misinformed” options.
Only 5 questions (1/4) have only “conservative misinformed options” 2 have both.
What this means is that the survey chooses 3 times as many questions that appear targeted for liberals to get wrong as conservatives.
2.) Questions that don’t measure levels of misinformation, are “Gotcha” questions - or arguably even false.
Q5: is either a gotcha - or flat out wrong. Do other developed countries have higher standard of living for the middle class. Possibly - US regularly pegs lower on almost measures of quality of life than many developed countries - it kinda hovers around mid teens. Perhaps there is special data on specifically “middle class” and “standard of living” measurements - but I’ve not found anything obvious.
Q08 is outright wrong - do men and woman get paid the same for equal work. Gender pay gap shrinks a fair amount - but does not disappear when controlling for work. The work based gender pay gap is between 94-98%. But it’s still there.
https://fortune.com/2016/04/12/myth-gender-wage-gap/
https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/gender-pay-gap/
Q10. In your view, are police more likely to use lethal force when arresting black people than white people?
Higher black kill rates , but lower per stop kill rates. Sort of a sneaky question!
Q12 - funding gap in schools - is wrong depending on how you measure it; so either a gotcha or wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/study-finds-black-and-latino-students-face-significant-funding-gap/2020/07/21/712f376a-caca-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/report-finds-23-billion-racial-funding-gap-for-schools/2019/02/25/d562b704-3915-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html
Q14 - has the land area of the earth increased or decreased? Lol wut? That’s a super esoteric science factoid; and not something I would consider knowledge indicating you are “informed”. Sea levels have gone up - so it’s not unreasonable conclude land has decreased. Seems like a trick question intended to catch people out that think sea levels have risen.
Q16 - number of strong to violent tornadoes. Again super esoteric. Tornados are up, hurricanes are up, extreme weather events are up - strong tornadoes are down. Again not a measure of how informed people are.
Q19. Do you think average life expectancy in the U.S. rose or fell in the five years following the implementation of Obamacare?
Depends how you measure it - 5 years after all of it - yes. After first elements no. Odd that they selected 5 years, rather than “now”
Q21: is so unmittigatedly subjective it’s hilarious.
The “correct” answer - is economic downturns and revenue decreases. Which isn’t even in the list. If you’re talking new spending and legislation - that would be tax cuts - then stimulus - then social programs.
Decrease in expected revenue - I’m not even sure is even considered, because I’m relatively sure that was bigger than increases in social security payouts + additional social programs up until 2020. But hey!
3.) Completely unbalanced conservative questions for conservatives.
Q02. In your estimate, what portion of people who catch Covid-19 and are aged 70 and above survive from it?
Why not have a 99% option?
Q03: is covid more contagious than the flu.
Why not deadly?
Q10. In your view, are police more likely to use lethal force when arresting black people than white people?
Why not “which race is killed not often”
Q15: Do you think that the average level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has risen since the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700's?
Why not add “because of humans”
This poll is ridiculous.
1.) Biased question set.
Questions 2,4,5,6,8,10,12,14,16,7,18,19,20 and 21 (2/3) have a correct option with only “liberal misinformed” options.
Only 5 questions (1/4) have only “conservative misinformed options” 2 have both.
What this means is that the survey chooses 3 times as many questions that appear targeted for liberals to get wrong as conservatives.
2.) Questions that don’t measure levels of misinformation, are “Gotcha” questions - or arguably even false.
Q5: is either a gotcha - or flat out wrong. Do other developed countries have higher standard of living for the middle class. Possibly - US regularly pegs lower on almost measures of quality of life than many developed countries - it kinda hovers around mid teens. Perhaps there is special data on specifically “middle class” and “standard of living” measurements - but I’ve not found anything obvious.
Q08 is outright wrong - do men and woman get paid the same for equal work. Gender pay gap shrinks a fair amount - but does not disappear when controlling for work. The work based gender pay gap is between 94-98%. But it’s still there.
https://fortune.com/2016/04/12/myth-gender-wage-gap/
https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/gender-pay-gap/
Q10. In your view, are police more likely to use lethal force when arresting black people than white people?
Higher black kill rates , but lower per stop kill rates. Sort of a sneaky question!
Q12 - funding gap in schools - is wrong depending on how you measure it; so either a gotcha or wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/study-finds-black-and-latino-students-face-significant-funding-gap/2020/07/21/712f376a-caca-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/report-finds-23-billion-racial-funding-gap-for-schools/2019/02/25/d562b704-3915-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html
Q14 - has the land area of the earth increased or decreased? Lol wut? That’s a super esoteric science factoid; and not something I would consider knowledge indicating you are “informed”. Sea levels have gone up - so it’s not unreasonable conclude land has decreased. Seems like a trick question intended to catch people out that think sea levels have risen.
Q16 - number of strong to violent tornadoes. Again super esoteric. Tornados are up, hurricanes are up, extreme weather events are up - strong tornadoes are down. Again not a measure of how informed people are.
Q19. Do you think average life expectancy in the U.S. rose or fell in the five years following the implementation of Obamacare?
Depends how you measure it - 5 years after all of it - yes. After first elements no. Odd that they selected 5 years, rather than “now”
Q21: is so unmittigatedly subjective it’s hilarious.
The “correct” answer - is economic downturns and revenue decreases. Which isn’t even in the list. If you’re talking new spending and legislation - that would be tax cuts - then stimulus - then social programs.
Decrease in expected revenue - I’m not even sure is even considered, because I’m relatively sure that was bigger than increases in social security payouts + additional social programs up until 2020. But hey!
3.) Completely unbalanced conservative questions for conservatives.
Q02. In your estimate, what portion of people who catch Covid-19 and are aged 70 and above survive from it?
Why not have a 99% option?
Q03: is covid more contagious than the flu.
Why not deadly?
Q10. In your view, are police more likely to use lethal force when arresting black people than white people?
Why not “which race is killed not often”
Q15: Do you think that the average level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has risen since the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700's?
Why not add “because of humans”
This poll is ridiculous.
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@TWS1405
I have to assume: given that you’ve been accusing people of being “intellectual cowards” that you missed this posts
Really?
Yes - you literally said “straw man”; didn’t explain why, nor justified why or how my argument misrepresented your position - indeed, you didn’t even clarify what your position actually was. That makes it an assertion.
So what you're saying...." = classic strawman fallacy.
Only if I misrepresent what you’re saying, which I didn’t - you have yet to say how I actually did that
Yes, you are. And it is in black and white for all to see.
How exactly? Why did what I said misrepresent your position; I explained why it’s the only way of interpreting what you said.
Your word salad, jumbled arguments, and circular reasoning is quite apparent.
Now this is an Ad Hominem!
You got caught. Own it. Stop being a liar. Stop being an intellectual coward. Have a little integrity. If that is even possible.
And another Ad Hom!
Stop being an intellectual coward? You assert I’m making a straw man twice, refuse to explain why, or clarify what your position actually - then call me a bunch of names. Hardly the pinnacle intellectual bravery.
I - on the other hand - explained, logically, why that particular position is white supremacy - you have no answer to that : and I explained how and why my characterization of your position is entirely accurate - you have no answer. I’ve responded to every point.
It’s hardly intellectual cowardice to not agree with some nonsense you just made up from nothing.
I presume, however, that you’re going to round off this exchange by calling me names and refusing to actually respond to any of the arguments, throwing out a number of excuses as to why you wont respond; and then capitulate like you have in every other thread.
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Yes, it's so ambiguous that you were responding to him. That's why you grey-quoted his words and responded to them.Truly ambiguous.
In post 3, I replied to him, addressed his point - and then had to put up with you telling me that I didn’t multiple times. I don’t even know what argument you’re trying to make here.
You were giving reasons why someone might be called that word.
And? I was making an analogy - you understand what that is?
An analogy that, as yet - you have not bothered to address.
What you wrote here doesn't address it. Your post talks about why it's okay to call TWS a racist, but you never touch on the main argument from this source.
But I did, he specifically asked:
“There are several members of this forum who keep "labeling" me (and others) racists for telling the truth. Two words: psychological projection.”
My answer to that question - directed at him specifically, covers both specific and general behaviour. I answered both points at once.
But I do personally like the irony that you’re trying to police tone instead of making any attempt to respond to the argument I made; in a post that is, essentially, complaining about people policing time instead of responding to the arguments people make.
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@TWS1405
Gender Identity Disorder (aka Gender Dysphoria) was on the exclusionary list. Same as schizophrenia. Social anxiety disorder. Manic Depressive Disorder. Suicidal Ideation. So on and so forth.
That it was previously on the list doesn’t mean it still needs to be on the list
Transgenders are diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria with often to always accompanied by depression, anxiety, and oft suicidal ideation.
For which transition is a cure. Right? I mean it’s not like we’re asking the army to take people with “oft suicidal ideation”, no?
They require constant medication of various sorts to be functional at a somewhat normal level.
That’s not actually the case; for example, transgender women, without treatment would end up performing physically better. Transgender men would take a long time to be impacted if they stop taking testosterone.
Surgeries will require significant downtime.
But that’s temporary, though right?
All these things preclude transgenders from serving under the medical standards for recruits and retention.
At least they did, until liberals forced PC tolerance upon the Armed Forces, using that security force as a social experiment to destroy the very structure of that security force.
“Destroy the very structure of that security force” appears to be hysterical hyperbolae, no? We’re talking a fraction of a a fraction of a percent, right!
They are combat ineffective.
Is this based on any actual evidence, or just your feelings? I mean - I would expect them to pass some sort of assessment before being sent to combat, no? If they pass that test - they’d be combat effective, right?
They are not deployable when under surgical treatment and recovery.
Temporarily though - it’s not like their invalids forever?
They require constant medication and hormones to even keep them functional.
Again - not really.
Why must 95% of the normal population be forced to bend over backwards for 0.5-8% of the population!?! What ever happened to majority rules!?!
Firstly define “bending over backwards” - because it seems that “bending over backwards” really means “suffering absolutely no harm or penalty whatsoever”.
For example in this case, no one that I can see is materially harmed, hurt, impacted, held back, or affected in any way.
Secondly, isn’t that the reasoning behind Jim Crow?
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@Avery
Using that premise, we are very safe to assume that people formed these feelings towards other racial groups through experience.
I’m going to deal with this one first, to simplify the rest: this is repeating the same assertion you keep making throughout:
For your conclusions to be true the number of people who perceive most members of group to be racist has to be proportional to the number of actual racists in that group. If not - then the numbers of the former can’t be used to determine the latter, and you cannot know the comparative values of racism. For this to be the case there cannot be systemic bias in the responses, EG:
- How much racism respondents have to experience in order perceive a group as mostly racist must be broadly constant amongst all groups for all races. If a Republican wont rate whites as mostly racist if they see multiple examples, but rates blacks as most racist after seeing 1 - the conclusion fails.
- How willing or able members of a given group are to recognize their own racial group as racist, must be similar in all groups - if white republicans disproportionately don’t or won’t recognize racism in their own group - the conclusion fails.
- How racist a group is perceived by another must only be influenced solely by how many racists there are - if this perception is altered by peers, or by media underselling one side of racism or overselling another - the conclusion fails
- Every group must understand and define racism in the same way for all races. If one group defines or views racism differently for whites or blacks (IE - that blacks having animosity whites is racism, but a white business owner racial profiling a customer is ok)- the conclusion fails.
- Every group must have equal exposure to examples of racism for each race. If a group is more likely to see only one type of racism - because they’re mostly white - the conclusion fails.
- Racism must be homogenous in all groups. If black people that live near or around republicans are much more racist than those who live near or around liberals - individual group experience is not representative of the group as a whole - thus the conclusion fails
If ANY of these aren’t true - they will skew the results: they will add some amount of deviation between the results and the actual number of racists. You have no basis to believe ANY of the above are true - and we have EVERY reason to believe they are not. Indeed we KNOW some of them are untrue.
You actually don’t address any of these issues at all, by justifying why they can be assumed true: you resort to dismissing the arguments in predominantly 3 ways, which I will refer from now on as:
F1: You mischaracterize all these reasonable potential sources of bias in the results of the poll as somehow requiring people to believe a group is racist no reason - then ridicule the result. This is Strawman.
F2: You massively oversimplify your conclusion as answering based on belief, that obfuscates all the potential sources of error above, and then asserting this conclusion is obviously valid. This is both argument by assertion, and a form of straw-man.
F3: You simply reassert your conclusion that, despite all the valid reasons why your assertion is untrue - that the result can only be based on the number of racists.
F4: you don’t actually address the issue or the point; but you complaining about wording or phrasing, or complain of some meaning is incorrect. This is a red herring.
F5: you simply ignore what was said and restate the claim.
You're still not dealing with the fact that your maths number DON'T generate an impact for you, hence your standard is arbitrary.…. You can do it.
This is F5.
In post 106 - I explained why one group has an extreme response (my numbers were off it’s +37 vs -6 - so a factor of 6 different), I gave a helpful analogy of how they objectively skew the results - which was my point. The impact of each Republicans on the result was equivalent to 6 liberals.
Your argument is F4. You complain about meaning. But at no point have you disputed the actual statistical point.
So, just sit there and whine "strawman!" all you want, but we can see the double meaning to your words. No wordplay my butt...
This is F5: you ignored that the clear context of my original point, and when I talked about an extreme result were clearly in the context of statistics. You’re not arguing the point; just trying to find clearly silly objections on meaning.
"All the time" implies always.Often =/= always.
I eat take-out all the time. I visit the politics forums all the time. These imply regularly, or often - not always.
This is F4: You’re haggling over wording, as opposed to objecting to the point - that our perceptions are very often wrong.
Again, for like the 5th time, people don't just randomly hate most people of a race for no reason -- this makes absolutely no sense.
I’ve suggested multiple reasons why an individual answered yes nor no to these poll questions not based solely on how many racists there are in the group. None in this list qualify as “hat[ing] most people of a race for no reason”. You are repeating your F1 strawman.
Not going to touch your Nazi example because it's too controversial for public discourse, but I understand your point.When people get called slurs, it's racism and "propaganda" or whatever isn't going to impede perception. When a Black man gets on t.v. and say, "we need less White people and more Black people", same thing applies. But we’ve been through this already above..”
Odd that you find discussion of historical racism “too controversial” - given the conversations you’re in.
You’re just re- asserting your super simply explanation applies - after having been provided a clear reasons they do not. This is F2 And F3 you’re not arguing
We’re the Nazis perception of the Jews as a group impacted by propoganda and media?
You didn't, you implied it [that perception of racism in other races is based on no reason]. You've implied people lack any reason in developing opinions based on perception.
No I didn’t. The examples I have are valid reasons why perceptions could be systemically impacted by other factors. You are dismissing them by mischaracterizing these as “based in no reason” - then ridiculing the result. This is repeating your F1 strawman
Yeah I'm beginning the question: why doesn't this guy get what I'm saying..
You ignored the point: this is F4
Yes, I've made inferences from the poll.Yes, it doesn't measure how severe the racism is.No, 25% of White poll takers were not KKK. No, 51% of Black people didn't mildly dislike White people. If those things were the case, then what you're saying becomes a problem, but they're not, so it doesn't matter.
You ignored the point again - let me bold the critical part that you seem to ignore. This is F5
You’re using answers to the poll questions to draw inferences about the population the poll is asking about. If the poll was applied to a known population, using the same question, and your criteria - and gives an answer that doesn’t make sense (which it doesn’t) - it calls into question whether the inference is valid.My point being is that how many racists is not a good measure without some inclusion of how severe the racism is - as the example you dismissed shows.
Measuring numbers of racists is meaningless without knowing or measuring the severity of the racism - because it leads to absurd answers - as explained by the example
As you don’t know, and have no measure of what the severity in the population actually is without asserting that you know - the answers, even if accurate are utterly meaningless.
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@Avery
You're not addressing **his** arguments; I didn't accuse you of not addressing "an argument".
You said “the argument”; kinda ambiguous!
I didn't accuse you of calling anyone a c*nt. I said stop looking for an excuse to call someone one.
I was wasn’t doing that either!
So, again but worded differently to help you: why are you not addressing his statistically driven arguments and their conclusions, instead of tone-policing him? Here is one:"Today, 99 times out of 100 in politics, the word “racist” is used purely for political reasons without any regard to whether something bigoted was actually said"
I addressed it already:
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@3RU7AL
how do you measure "intellectual honesty" ?
By looking at the intellectually dishonest things people do.
your quote contradicts your assertion and matches neatly with my description
Only if you miss parts out:
any negative comment on the person and or their motives is technically and ad hominem attack
And
“Typically, this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself”
I have helpfully bolded the part that is required for an Ad Hominem attack that you omit.
i clearly stated that BOTH SIDES can obviously engage in ad hominem attacks
But are singling out only one for criticism
Me: Someone can claim all day and all night that an argument is a straw man, and insult them for being an intellectual coward.But if you tell them that they haven’t offered an explanation why the argument is a straw man; explain why your argument is the obvious reading of what they said, explain that the insult doesn’t apply, but actually applies to them - then their rush to victory is hollow.Given that, I’m not entirely sure what your objection is.you: if i attempt to paraphrase your position on a topic and you tell me it's a STRAWMAN then, i obviously failed to accurately paraphrase YOUR position and should probably make another attempt, or, alternatively, simply ask
C1; Or alternatively - I could be accusing you of making a straw man because I’m lazy, and do not want to argue your point. You have no way of telling - which is why the Burden is on me - as the person making the claim - to present reasons why it’s true.
C2: I could be Mischaracterizing him, I can’t tell: he won’t say how, or why I am; he isn’t clarifying his position at all; and as far as I can tell, I’m characterizing the only words he’s presented accurately. I can’t really do any more than that.
Also - you have changed the subject - the original quote here was you - for want or a better description - suggesting that I follow a particular course of behaviour. As I presented what I actually did in a way that was identical to how you suggested we should act - I am not sure what you’re issue is.
Instead of explaining what the issue actually is, you seem to have flown off on a different tangent.
i'm willing to admit i may have misinterpreted your goal please explain how unfrustrated you are
This is changing the subject of this point:
You originally said:
“and detailing your frustration and your personal perception of "hypocrisy” is a textbook ad hominem attack
I said this was an ad hominem.
You said it
does not qualify as "negative characterizations of personal motives and or personal character"it's a simple statement of factnot an "attack"
This is clearly false. Because you are absolutely making negative characterizations of my personal motives, right?
Instead of defending the claim - you changed the subject onto something else.
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do as you wish, of coursebut it appears to be an attempt to coerce, or shame your conversation partner into responding
There’s two parts: pointing out the hypocrisy of the response is an attempt to undermine the validity of the “conversation partners” litany of insults.
Pointing out past behaviour; is in part to illustrate the hypocrisy of the insult - but also serves as a prediction based on past behaviour to draw attention to how he is trying to evade an argument.
The purpose here is not to make him respond, I don’t actually care - but to highlight the inherent dishonesty of ignoring what someone says, and then blames them for their own inabilities.
Whilst tone may be what you take issue with, I am very much one for intellectually honesty. This is a debate site, after all .
After all - like you said - he’s not forced to reply.
when you could simply ask them
I kinda did in my first reply; paraphrase the meaning of his argument - with the courtesy of also offering how it ties back to the point I was making.
I always lay out my interpretation so I can be corrected if I’m wrong.
and perhaps restate or reframe what you believe are your "key points"
I did. Have you not read my posts. 95% of my content is restating what I believe to be key points!
any negative comment on the person and or their motives is technically and ad hominem attack
No it’s not.
“Typically, this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself”
Given that (a) his argument was that I was a liar and an intellectual coward (which is definitely an Ad hominem), (b) I addressed the substance of those claims and (c) reviewed his own behaviour using that accusation - this is not an adhomimem by any stretch.
You could probably call it a personal attack - but like I said; it’s kinda weird that you feel that demonstrating an insult does not apply to you, but actually applies to the person making the insult is an Ad hominem worthy of challenge - but the original insult was not.
and try and hold your conversation partner to THOSE SPECIFIC WORDS
No I’m not. Re read my replies.
- I point out that he’s saying my argument is wrong; but does not explain why.
- in the absence of a given reason, I offered a review of my argument so as to preclude some prima-facia interpretation issue. Which I couldn’t find.
People often hurl out accusations without attempts to support it - that argument is simply me doing due diligence on the claim in case I missed something so obvious it does not warrant an explanation.
i can claim all day and all night that "i've disemboweled your key points" and "refuted every argument you've presented"but if YOU tell me, "you've repeatedly ignored my key points" then, my "rush-to-declare-victory" is quite hollow
Someone can claim all day and all night that an argument is a straw man, and insult them for being an intellectual coward.
But if you tell them that they haven’t offered an explanation why the argument is a straw man; explain why your argument is the obvious reading of what they said, explain that the insult doesn’t apply, but actually applies to them - then their rush to victory is hollow.
Given that, I’m not entirely sure what your objection is.
and does not qualify as "negative characterizations of personal motives and or personal character"it's a simple statement of factnot an "attack"
Also you:
“and detailing your frustration and your personal perception of "hypocrisy” is a textbook ad hominem attack”
I may be a simple man, but to me - suggesting I am attacking someone personally because I’m frustrated, or I have a perception they are a hypocrite: sort of seems to qualify exactly per your specifications, no?
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@3RU7AL
are you generally more interested withmincing wordsor, are you generally more interested inexchanging ideas
Ideas - specifically the critiquing of positions.
My issue with your largely empty platitudes, and apparent criticism of tone; is that it mostly constitutes what I would consider as mincing words - is largely meaningless and bears little relation nor has any appreciably value to any content of anything said.
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@3RU7AL
instead of complainingyou might consider simply abandoning the conversation
Why? On what possible grounds do you have to judge or estimate the value, worth or benefit I place on pressing someone on a point they ignore?
Especially given that you are not following your own advice.
you don't owe anyone an explanationand detailing your frustration and your personal perception of "hypocrisy" is a textbook ad hominem attack
It would be an Ad Hom if my charge of hypocrisy was instead of place of attacking his point. I clearly attack the point (that I am an intellectual coward), and point out that his accusations are reflective of his own behaviours than mine. That’s clearly both relevant, and salient to what he was stating.
Attacking me for my using an Ad Hominem, rather than making any attempt to attack my point - that is, ironically, very much an ad hominem
and will likely lead to "the backfire effect"
“Stop being a liar. Stop being an intellectual coward. Have a little integrity”
Wally me through your logic here: Person A offers a litany of insults against Person B, to which Person B responds by explaining (a) the accusations are invalid, (b) they actually express the Person A own behaviour.
Please explain why Person B should be cognizant of the possibility of the push-back effect in someone who has already bandied a number of insults - and is already not engaging in a debate?
Likewise, could you explain why you feel that responding to an insult with an argument is deserving of criticism - but the person levying the original insult is not called out for the same reasons?
I am all for high minded moral arbiters obsessing about the right or best way to argue and injecting themselves into other conversations: but when this criticism is levied so unevenly, one cannot help but suspect that the reasons for objection is more about the who than the what.
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