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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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I don’t have an opinion on that, because I try not to make generalizations based on n=2

This is so silly. You can't take scientific language and apply it in any way you'd like. If your parents lavish your brother with attention, encourage him, give him 2 free ferraris when he turns 12, and so on, while locking you in the attic, n(umber of brothers)=2 so you shouldn't generalize about their behavior.

No, n != 2. Yes there are 2 movies involved but there are innumerable critics making the same decisions about those two movies. You don't just get to find a hypothesis, pick a certain aspect about that hypothesis which involves a small number of entities, and decide that since that number of entities is small the hypothesis must be discarded without further evidence. Perhaps there are only 2 brothers, but there's a long chain of consistent behavior to observe and use to inform your conclusions about your parents. Perhaps there are 2 sexes, but there are billions of instances of each sex to observe. Perhaps there are 2 movies, but there are hundreds of critics to observe. n(umber of relevant entities) != 2.

As far as Scientology vs. Qanon, you mentioned wanting to control for one being a political organization. Yes, that's exactly the point. People care about one as a political organization and not the other as a religious organization. You're controlling for the very point which @CriticalDuty made. "Oh well obviously one actor has politics they disagree with, so we should definitely control for that before determining whether critics care about actors' political opinions."

Perhaps there are 2 movies, but there are hundreds of critics to observe. n(umber of relevant entities) != 2. Yes, but I don't have that evidence. At best, I have the claim of some guy on the internet re what the evidence shows.

Oh well obviously one actor has politics they disagree with, so we should definitely control for that before determining whether critics care about actors' political opinions."

But, again, the example you raised -- Tom Cruise -- is about religious belief, not political beliefs. So, you seem to be saying that that example is not germane.Which I agree is the case.

  • -15

The point is that the critics' complaints are explicitly political, rather than actual criticisms of people with crazy beliefs. Tom Cruise is a great example of someone with crazier beliefs who has not received the same criticism, proving that the critics' motivations are partisan, not principled.