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Whenever I read something that emotionally moves me, it sets off my bullshit detector. That's especially true when it's something I'm predisposed to believing.
by DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Whenever I read something that emotionally moves me, it sets off my bullshit detector. That's especially true when it's something I'm predisposed to believing.
There is no context here, just a sad story. You can post a thousand of these stories. It all adds to to a bunch of "There's a bunch of sad stories in the world" without any other data.
It's odd, because I always get nervous about making comments like I did. People are much more interested in "who's side is he on" than critically looking at the information put in front of them.
Look, if consuming endless stories about the pain, sadness, and righteous anger that topic X provokes, all without any kind of context, then have fun with it. I gotta point out the logical problems, though, no matter which side of the discussion I'm on.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoYou're assuming that a collective (e.g. cops) can be neatly reduced to the sum of individual action without loss of information. This is not the case. Individual cops need not be bad for the police as an institution to be an intrinsically hazardous one.
- beat 11y agoThat's a really good way of putting it. I live in Minneapolis, so I'm uncomfortably close to the current protests. There are plenty of nice, well-meaning cops out there spraying mace at people in my city for exercising their right to free speech and assembly. The Minneapolis police, as an institution have down a terrible job of handling the protests. (and please, people, don't turn this into a meta-discussion of the protesters or the original shooting. I'm just observing some facts here.)