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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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You seem to be correct here. I was one of those upvotes; I think I was probably just not thinking too critically about it. After all, this thread chain consisted of a reasonable summation of a probably bad-action, in a community that largely understand the decades of history here, and then you, being relentlessly tedious and nit-picky about it while making isolated demands for charity. I mean, can you empirically prove that no one in the CDC was motivated by the effects on the difficulty of passing gun control, and that no one in the CDC has ever said that? And if not, can you empirically prove that the "they" refers to the CDC, and not the activists who swayed the CDC? Have you tried coming up with more charitable explanations?

The fact this community upvotes groundless claims they like to +18 and downvote requests for a single citation to -6 reinforces my lack of trust in this community's "understanding" of issues.

Sorry, but that "they" is an unspecified referent, so your whole chain here is just being uncharitable. Someone definitely did exactly what was alleged.

This is where I suppose we talk about how all this is signaling and no one here actually cares about proving anything - it's all just intellectual masturbation - but I guess I'm autistic enough to want the masturbation to be done properly.

Are you familiar with the CDC's history regarding gun violence research, going back to the 90's? That was the "decades of history", and you don't seem to be aware of it at all.

And, honestly, I think most of the people are doing Motte-and-Bailey shenanigans here. What they claim they are doing is providing evidence the CDC is biased.

The evidence provided is suggestive, and it appears efforts were taken to specifically dodge the FOIA requests that might prove it. Can you provide a cite of anyone here explicitly acknowledging that they're just enjoying a pep rally and booing the outgroup? Have you tried coming up with a more charitable interpretation?

Are you familiar with the CDC's history regarding gun violence research, going back to the 90's? That was the "decades of history", and you don't seem to be aware of it at all.

Are you suggesting that the CDC has a history of political bias on this topic? It is my understanding that, between 1996 and 2018, the CDC was effectively banned from doing any gun violence research at all.

If you had read you own entertainingly biased link, you would note that it answers this objection. The CDC was banned from promoting gun control, not conducting research. If we want to be excessively charitable to the poor, easily bullied researchers, we can note that there was uncertainty about what might cross the line. OTOH, if we want to be reasonably cynical, we can note that this outcome is indistinguishable from one driven by a CDC that cannot even imagine value judgement-free research on this topic, and that was only ever interest in waging culture war against human rights.

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