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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   20569 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."

Narrowing the topic to the point of irrelevance seems like a rhetorical trick, and not a nice one.

If I'm making an argument about TTV, it would be nice if the responses are about TTV so I don't see what's irrelevant about that. I can't control what people say but my interest here is wanting to avoid time-wasting Gish gallops and motte-and-bailey diversions, because an unfortunately common rhetorical trick used by some when they encounter arguments inconvenient to their position is to try and change the subject.

You're welcome to suggest an alternative disclaimer wording, and you're also welcome to challenge my premise for why I even included a disclaimer.

you're also welcome to challenge my premise for why I even included a disclaimer.

Thanks -- that's what I'm doing. AFAIK nobody needs your permission to talk about whatever they want on here -- if you only want to respond to points about this particular organization I suppose you are welcome to do so? Still a semi-free country and all that.

Yeah that's true, I agree no one needs my permission! Do you have any opinions about whether TTV is lying or not?

Not really -- like I said it's an irrelevancy. Clearly they are a bit of a weakman though, which is why I'm not super-interested in going through their claims to assess plausibility. Are they the ones who did a bunch of locational data analysis showing (?) suggestive behaviour around ballot drops? They probably aren't lying about that, but of course it doesn't mean their analysis is correct. As I recall the debunkings of it that I saw were pretty misinformed/naive as well though.

Look at it this way -- BLM-associated groups lie all the time about the dangers of being black in America. This doesn't mean that race relations in America are not an interesting thing to discuss, but if I make a post saying "I only want to talk about these assholes who are lying, what a buncha maroons, amirite" I am not making a quality contribution to the discussion.

Clearly they are a bit of a weakman though, which is why I'm not super-interested in going through their claims to assess plausibility. Are they the ones who did a bunch of locational data analysis showing (?) suggestive behaviour around ballot drops? They probably aren't lying about that, but of course it doesn't mean their analysis is correct.

Yes that's them. They were willing to share their data with D'Souza, but not law enforcement. I'm curious though, what exactly establishes them as a 'weakman'? What standards do you rely on to make that determination on any given topic? If a BLM group made a wildly popular documentary full of lies about the dangers of being black in America and it received favorable media coverage, do you believe that discussing the lies would not be relevant?

I'm curious though, what exactly establishes them as a 'weakman'?

They don't seem very transparent nor particularly rigorous -- do you disagree? Your whole thesis here seems to be that they are a weakman.

If a BLM group made a wildly popular documentary full of lies about the dangers of being black in America and it received favorable media coverage, do you believe that discussing the lies would not be relevant?

Not in a vacuum -- if some black poster just got pulled over and arrested by a bunch of racist hicks I want to hear about it, and would consider it a valid (and valuable) contribution to the discussion.

I admit I don't understand your meaning of weakman. I tried to sketch out how to define the term a while ago and Julian Sanchez's description seems the most fitting:

With a “weak man,” you don’t actually fabricate a position, but rather pick the weakest of the arguments actually offered up by people on the other side and treat it as the best or only one they have.

I don't see how weakman would fit for TTV unless I'm using them to somehow make a claim about all stolen election allegations. I'm not doing that and I already said that would be an invalid argument.

As Dean says, you are totally doing that and have done that a lot in the past -- nobody is interested in TTV per se, they are interested in whether the election is fraudulent. What purpose does it serve to restrict discussion to TTV?

Anyways, if you want to talk about TTV I can say that I have substantial experience with exactly the kind of analysis that they claim to have performed with the mobile data -- IMPO what they claim to have done is completely technically feasible, and the various deboonking articles I've seen on the topic seem either ignorant of the realities of that technology or quite dishonest themselves.

This doesn't really say anything one way or the other about the quality of that analysis -- as I said, TTV is not very transparent in their methodology, and it would be easy to get incorrect results out of such datasets via either malice or blunder. I can't say anything about the truth value of what they've done without seeing their work.

That's what I think of TTV -- about the same as what I think of those who are trying to discredit them. Which is not much, and not really a very interesting discussion to have if you ask me.

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It’s not a weak man when it’s a major and representative example of its reference class.

Tearing apart BLM for misrepresenting any given issue is also totally justified in a world where it is influential and representative.

Ibram X. Kendi, for example, is literally a weak man in the sense of being bad at thinking, but he’s the voice of his generation on the issue of race and so engaging his material is both wholly justified and necessary.

Similarly, all there are are weak men when it comes to election fraud issues because none of them can actually demonstrate a case.

When all you have is weak men, well, “you go to war with the army they have”; to slightly modify that quote.

I have personally seen "2000 mules" brought up here by people who believe the election was stolen, as at least potential evidence to back their claim that the election was stolen. If one side uses it as evidence, why should that evidence not be interrogated?

This doesn't mean that race relations in America are not an interesting thing to discuss, but if I make a post saying "I only want to talk about these assholes who are lying, what a buncha maroons, amirite" I am not making a quality contribution to the discussion.

I am currently planning a post specifically about whether the BLM movement is the worst thing to happen to black people since the end of Jim Crow, and a good portion of it is going to be specifically about the lying. If and when I get around to posting it, I think it will in fact be a quality contribution to the discussion, and you had better believe that if people try to avoid the substantive claims by deflecting to nebulous appeals to systemic racism, I'm going to do my damndest to make it clear that's exactly what they're doing.

If one side uses it as evidence, why should that evidence not be interrogated?

It should! But framing the discussion as "I want to talk about this and only this" is literally using the weakman as a superweapon.

I am currently planning a post specifically about whether the BLM movement is the worst thing to happen to black people since the end of Jim Crow

I look forward to it -- but if you make your post only about BLM(inc) or whatever the org is called that went around buying themselves mansions, and get tetchy if anyone wants to bring anything else into the discussion, you would be engaging in unsavoury (I daresay lawyerly) tactics to shape the discussion.

if people try to avoid the substantive claims by deflecting to nebulous appeals to systemic racism, I'm going to do my damndest to make it clear that's exactly what they're doing.

Sure -- please don't do it by saying 'don't say that bro, I told you this post is not about systemic racisim, it's only about BLM(inc)'.

It should! But framing the discussion as "I want to talk about this and only this" is literally using the weakman as a superweapon.

I don't think BLM or its proponents are fairly described as "weakmen". They were enormously, absurdly, disastrously influential on the shape of our society. The damage they did, and the fact that such damage was so easily predictable in advance, is an extremely important issue for any holistic assessment of American culture.

I can easily imagine a similar view from the other side toward Trump and his movement, and sincerely believe that argument is a valid thing to make.

Sure -- please don't do it by saying 'don't say that bro, I told you this post is not about systemic racisim, it's only about BLM(inc)'.

This comes down to a disagreement on norms, I think. I've repeatedly made top-level posts explicitly asking for specific forms of response, and even explicitly listing other forms of response I'm not interested in replying to. I've seen a lot of other posters, including very high quality ones, do the same. I think it's a legitimate thing to do, provided one does it with the understanding that it's not rulebreaking but merely gauche for other commenters to ignore such requests.

I think it's a legitimate thing to do, provided one does it with the understanding that it's not rulebreaking but merely gauche for other commenters to ignore such requests.

I think the request itself is gauche, not only for reasons specific to this case (as Dean amply elucidates upthread) but also because it does not allow for organic discussion to surface unexpected points of value.

(and to be clear, with the BLM example I am talking about the specific charitable org called BLM, not the movement as a whole -- although I guess I'd still object if you made a post about BLM (the movement) and then complained when somebody started talking about gangsta culture or something)

Narrowing it to a particular instance is near “the point of irrelevance”?

It “seems like a rhetorical trick” to get concrete and remained focused?

That seems telling.

Just agree it seems they are lying and then perhaps the OP can move to a case where the evidence is more robust.

He wrote an effort-post about a specific thing. Asking for replies to confine themselves to that specific thing is not a rhetorical trick, and certainly not objectionable. If you think he's intentionally picking specific things to exclude other specific things where the evidence is against him, you are free to write your own effort-post about those specific things instead. I do not think it is unreasonable to defer from addressing "all claims of election interference that have ever been made", and confine yourself to prominent, specific instances.

Suppose I write an effortpost about the specifics of the Michael Brown shooting, focusing on the claims made by the public and press versus the evidence accumulated through the subsequent investigations. would it be unfair for me to say that I'm looking for replies to these specific incidents, not to address all other claims of illegitimate police shootings? Would it be reasonable for people to complain that I'm not addressing a shooting that has just become culture-war fodder yesterday, when my entire point is the disconnect between the initial reports and the actual evidence painstakingly accumulated well after the fact? Especially if other posters had made it a point to specifically cite Michael Brown as an example of an illegitimate police shooting?

If you think he's intentionally picking specific things to exclude other specific things where the evidence is against him, you are free to write your own effort-post about those specific things instead.

And in fact it seems like writing that effort post in the comments is a significantly better contribution than arguing incessantly about thread ownership.

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