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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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So you agree the ProPublica article is garbage? Interesting.

Breaking down bias or bad epistemology is certainly within the scope here. Per the rules you can't simply be dunking on some fringe loon, of course. But effortful, sourced, particularized commentary that refrains from taking broad swipes at general groups is basically welcome, though, yeah. The rules do not forbid criticism of anyone's ideas, in- or outgroup. It's the approach that matters.

You can find writing with poor epistemological standards produced by any group.

But of course--my post was not about a group (except, perhaps, "journalists") per se. It was about a particular kind of argument that is driving huge chunks of American political discourse, of which this article was a particular examplar. In other words--

I'm not sure what is to be gained by dissecting arbitrary examples.

There was nothing arbitrary about this example, and instead of engaging on the substance you decided first to try meta, and failing that you're now retreating to "eh who cares it's not interesting."

On this forum, especially, the most common assumption is that every news article is trash

Sure. But as you observed--90% of everything is trash! So it must be a safe assumption, right? But also, if we're going to talk about anything at all, part of that conversation is going to involve sifting through the presumptive trash, or better yet--trying to transform that trash into treasure, through our own effortful engagement!

so I don't know what insight there is to be gained.

Maybe none? But you would have to actually try to engage on the merits to decide that, and so far you've made two comments declining to even try. Which is of course your prerogative! You are under no obligation to try to understand, or to find things interesting. But your commentary thus far has been even less worthwhile, or so it seems to me--wouldn't it be more interesting to actually engage on substance?