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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   22335 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war.

If it's not unique, please provide the other examples of this happening, but with white/non-white flipped.

I don't believe you're saying these things for remotely principled reasons. Based on the many, many comments of yours I've read, I don't believe for one second that you'd view a race-flipped version of this as: sad, but nothing to see here.

As I said in another comment, I already did! In the original comment I gave a whole category of crimes where it's common.

domestic abuse victims.

It's common enough to make this mistake that some more experienced officers and departments have adopted the practice of arresting both in response and sorting things out after.

When police have trouble determining the identity of the primary aggressor, they may also arrest the true abuser along with the victim, in a dual arrest.

  • -13

Meanwhile, in my actual comment -- not the more convenient one you're invented to respond to -- I was asking about where this has happened with the ethnicities flipped.

In my reply to your comment, I was aware of the examples you gave in your comment; this is how time works. Those are not examples to my actual question, as you know.

A brown man stabbed a white man. The police showed up and arrested the white man. I can't imagine a good-faith version of your comment where you transport this into "Well, sometimes the police arrest both people in domestic abuse cases!"

Fortunately, I know now not to waste time attempting to imagine the hypothetical good-faith version of such a comment.

Meanwhile, in my actual comment -- not the more convenient one you're invented to respond to -- I was asking about where this has happened with the ethnicities flipped.

There's barely any of those, in the same way there's barely any of white victims with colored aggressors being left free. In reality the ordinary large majority of cases of police believing an aggressor over the victim are same race friends/family who knew each other beforehand and the aggressor calmly lies while the victim responds "inappropriately" and stupid cops assume calm = innocent while not obeying orders/being emotional/whatever = guilty.

It is a real documented and known issue, but most violence works that way. It's almost always people you already know. And therefore almost every case of cops making stupid assumptions is in situations of violence between people who knew each other.

  • -15

There's barely any of those

Are there... more than zero?

Because you're the one saying this isn't "unique", it's not representative of a pattern, yawn, it's an everyday occurrence, nothing to see here.

You present a completely unrelated category of domestic abuse as if it proves your position.

When asked for evidence (by two different people!) you pretend that your previously-presented unrelated category is the thing they asked for, and they apparently just failed to read your comment correctly.

When pressed further, you say "there's barely any of [the thing you asked for]". Well, sorry, but I don't even believe you have any of the thing I asked for, or you'd have triumphantly presented it.

I restate that you wouldn't be putting in a fraction of this effort to obfuscate the truth if the ethnicities had been different. I don't pretend to understand why you do this, but I see you doing this.

You present a completely unrelated category of domestic abuse as if it proves your position.

One of the most common categories of violent crime seems pretty relevant to violent crime discussions. Feel free to disagree, but clearly we're talking past each other at that point.

  • -16

We're not "talking past each other"; you are being deliberately obtuse.

As has been explained to you multiple times, by multiple people: "the police sometimes arrest both people in domestic violence" cases has nothing to do with "the police arresting solely the guy who had been stabbed instead of his murderer".

Fortunately, as you continue to pretend not to understand what people are telling you, we can defer to ChatGPT. Normally I wouldn't do this, but you, specifically -- magicalkittycat -- as a poster, have previously claimed that AI output is "impartial" and "neutral", which you then use as evidence for your positions ("the robot agrees with me!"). So let's see what it says:

The comparison is weak for a few reasons:

Where it has merit: The general point — that police sometimes arrest victims due to incomplete information — is legitimate and worth acknowledging.

Where it breaks down:

In domestic disputes, mutual arrest is a known policy response to ambiguity. It's procedural, not ideological.

The claim in this case is specifically that police believed one party's narrative over another's based on racial dynamics — a different kind of error.

The forum argument deflects from the specific allegation (racial bias in credibility assessment) by substituting a structurally different scenario.

The comparison isn't useless, but it doesn't really address what's being alleged.

So, would you prefer to (a) retract your claim that the domestic violence thing is relevant, or (b) retract your claim that AI is neutral and impartial, and never use it again to try and score points on TheMotte?

As has been explained to you multiple times, by multiple people: "the police sometimes arrest both people in domestic violence" cases has nothing to do with "the police arresting solely the guy who had been stabbed instead of his murderer".

It is not "the police sometimes arrest both in domestic violence" it is it is a common issue that police arrest the victim instead of the perpetrator,.so common that some smarter officers take a specific approach to try to fix the problem through dual arrests.

I genuinely do not know how you are failing to understand this, i said this.

It's common enough to make this mistake that some more experienced officers and departments have adopted the practice of arresting both in response and sorting things out after.

You either chose to not read or are incapable of doing so.

Fortunately, as you continue to pretend not to understand what people are telling you, we can defer to ChatGPT. Normally I wouldn't do this, but you, specifically -- magicalkittycat -- as a poster, have previously claimed that AI output is "impartial" and "neutral", which you then use as evidence for your positions ("the robot agrees with me!"). So let's see what it says:

Incredible strawman,.you don't even realize that if you want to prove you're trying to get a neutral opinion you need to show the prompt. I also assume you did not go on a fresh copy either then.

Let's try with a neutral prompt

The recent Nowak case where police believed the lies of the stabber over the victim who was lying on the ground, how relevant of an example would you say that domestic abuse victims being assumed as the perpetrators makes to the case?

Scroll down to the summary

So I would say the domestic-abuse comparison is moderately relevant if the point being made is:

"Police can sometimes incorrectly identify the victim as the offender when they accept an aggressor's account too readily."

That is a recognizable pattern across different contexts.

How about attempt at a neutral prompt (again, on a completely new instance without memory!) regarding the overall question if this is a known problem

Is it or is it not a known issue in policing that victims are sometimes not believed and perpetrators who remain calm and talk to police first are?

Reply is

Yes. It is a well-documented issue in policing, criminal investigations, and psychology that victims are sometimes disbelieved while perpetrators who appear calm, composed, or credible may initially be believed.

So there we go. I tried to be neutral and not let it know which side I wanted and it is a well documented issue.

So, would you prefer to (a) retract your claim that the domestic violence thing is relevant, or (b) retract your claim that AI is neutral and impartial, and never use it again to try and score points on TheMotte?

Stop strawmanning and start giving your prompts you use on fresh chat without any memory. "AI is a useful tool for a neutral perspective when done properly" is not "AI is always neutral! Just give it whatever answer you wanted to hear, wow so cool"

It is not "the police sometimes arrest both in domestic violence" it is it is a common issue that police arrest the victim instead of the perpetrator,.so common that some smarter officers take a specific approach to try to fix the problem through dual arrests.

Ok, then give us an example that (1) involves a white aggressor and a non-white victim, and (2) the police arrested the non-white victim, and (3) there was clearly a racial component. Because that's why people are calling this a culture war topic.

Also, "wrongly arresting the victim" in the context of domestic violence typically means "arresting the male partner", which is such an obvious conflationary factor that I suspect it's exactly why you're trying to muddy the issue by speciously connecting it to domestic violence.

You either chose to not read or are incapable of doing so.

So you're just directly implying people who disagree with you are retarded now? The walls of your glass house aren't really thick enough for that.

You might have more of a leg to stand on if you hadn't repeatedly "misread" multiple comments in this thread -- with multiple commenters. Do you think they're all illiterate as well?

Incredible strawman,.you don't even realize that if you want to prove you're trying to get a neutral opinion you need to show the prompt.

Yeah, because you always share the prompt + context whenever getting ChatGPT to back up your opinion, right? I didn't realise "strawman" meant "stuff that magicalkittycat literally does".

Let's try with a neutral prompt

Your "neutral prompt" deliberately leaves out the racial component, which is the entire point of why people of calling this culture war.

You cannot possibly be unaware of that. You've engaged with dozens of comments on this topic. Sure, if you deliberately withhold the relevant aspects from ChatGPT, it's not going to point out how those relevant aspects make your analogy ridiculous.

So here you go, here's my actually neutral prompt, with the new answer:

Please be very concise.

In the UK, a white man (Henry Nowak) was stabbed by a brown man. When the police showed up, the brown man accused him of racism. The police handcuffed and arrested the white man, causing him to die.

This is being discussed in a forum, where some people believe that the police's behaviour was caused by systemic racism against white people.

One commenter maintains that nothing notable is happening here on a culture war level, as sometimes the police arrest the wrong partner in domestic violence cases.

How correct are they?

The answer:

The commenter's analogy is weak.The commenter's analogy is weak. Domestic violence misidentification typically stems from perpetrator manipulation or situational confusion — it's a well-documented, race-neutral phenomenon with its own established literature.

This case, if the facts are as described, involves the victim of a stabbing being arrested, allegedly because a counter-accusation of racism caused police to override the physical evidence. That's a categorically different dynamic — it would implicate specific institutional pressures around race accusations, not generic confusion about who the aggressor is.

The commenter is doing two things: deflating a potentially significant event by finding a mundane parallel, and implicitly dismissing the "systemic anti-white bias" framing. The first move is logically poor (the analogy doesn't hold). The second move may or may not be correct on its own merits — systemic bias against white people in UK policing is genuinely contested — but the weak analogy doesn't actually settle that question either way.

So there we go. I tried to be neutral and not let it know which side I wanted and it is a well documented issue.

My point, of course, is not that ChatGPT is a neutral source that supports me. My point is that pretending it's an impartial source is ludicrous, particularly because you personally manipulate your prompts to give the output you want.

So again, I invite you to retract at least one of your claims: that (a) ChatGPT is neutral and impartial, or (b) that your domestic violence examples are sufficient. Both are incorrect claims, so you should retract both, but I'd settle for just some internal consistency.

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