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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34967 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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Probably for the same reason the media gets any other developing story wrong, like when they first reported the San Bernardino shooters as "three white men". It's a game of telephone and a rush to be the first with a scoop, and I don't understand why you'd find this bit so salient. If you're being consistent, would you then also have reason to suspect Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were not the real shooters?

This is what I mean by gaslighting -- nobody other than election officials had any idea what was going on in the building; in what universe is it reasonable to believe that the media reported anything other than what they were told by the election officials? Can we at least move on to the hairsplitting?

in what universe is it reasonable to believe that the media reported anything other than what they were told by the election officials?

Because there were other people at State Farm arena, including members of the press. Anyone one of them could have seen the overflowed urinal and assumed it was a water leak, or heard it from the janitor, or whatever. I don't get what this episode teaches us except that we should be skeptical of breaking news, I gather you disagree? If we somehow had a Zapruder film of the men's bathroom from that night, what would it tell us?

Y'know what, I'm done -- every time you suck me in by seeming like a nice guy, I go down the rabbit hole again and realize that you are not in fact a good faith actor. Have fun with whatever it is you're doing here.

I concede that I have a very difficult time understanding your posts, and it's possible it's a 'me' problem (English is my third language after all) and I'm sorry it comes off as if I'm acting in bad faith. If you ever change your mind, I think a very useful thing you could do is structure your arguments in a more transparent manner, something I try to do as well. For example:

Premise A > Premise B > Conclusion

So for the above you could say something like (I don't know if this is your actual point, it's just an example):

  1. Premise A The leaky urinal was first reported by the media as a water main break

  2. Premise B The water main break prompted poll watchers to go home

  3. Premise D Only election officials could have reasonably been the source of this original information to the media

  4. Conclusion Therefore, the changing story is evidence of election officials fabricating a plumbing emergency to get election scrutinizers to go home

...and so forth

I don't know if I have a critical thinking fetish or something, but I find the structure above significantly more elegant and transparent, and I wouldn't need to ask so many annoying questions in my attempt to understand your point.

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