6 ms·

In a world that is increasing polarized it is important to remember: Just because evidence that contradicts your world view doesn't exist within you filter bub

In a world that is increasing polarized it is important to remember: Just because evidence that contradicts your world view doesn't exist within you filter bubble of preferred information sources doesn't necessarily mean that evidence doesn't exist period.

acdha 6y ago
Yes, I'm quite aware of that — note that I was suggesting that OP look for the actual evidence rather than relying on other people's claims. Their echoing of attacks which have been unsupported by evidence but common in conservative circles suggested that they were inside such a filter bubble
- barbacoa 6y ago
  Honest question not trying to attack you. Do you really think think you are any different than OP?
  - acdha 6y ago
    I can't speak for OP but while this is a common cognitive pitfall it's also one which you can intentionally correct for by attempting to anchor your beliefs on original sources and making an effort to find things outside of your immediate community. People are going to be successful at this to varying degrees but as we can see currently there are large segments of the population who never try.
  - californical 6y ago
    I think it’s very different because the original person made a very bold claim, and the other said “I don’t know if I’ll believe that without evidence”. The burden of proof lies on the one who makes the original claim, not the one who doesn’t believe it without evidence.
    - barbacoa 6y ago
      Without making a judgement on the veracity of the claims. There is at least circumstantial evidence in this case. I have noticed that the tactic used to defend biden has become to place insurmountable burden of proof on anyone who claims wrong doing while giving the bidens every benefit of the doubt. Which is gaslighting. That is akin to saying "there is no evidence OJ killed his wife. The bloody glove found at his home has all the hallmarks of being planted by russian intelligence".
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Sure, here's Politico's Quint Forgey quoting the Director of National Intelligence that the laptop (source of the emails) is in the FBI's possession and that it is authentically Hunter's: https://twitter.com/QuintForgey/status/1318166732419235841 https://twitter.com/QuintForgey/status/1318166732419235841 Here's Fox saying the same thing, quoting a Federal Law Enforcement Official: https://twitter.com/SeanLangille?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1318673941624426497%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3%2Ccontainerclick_1&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fnot-russian-hoax-tucker-carlson-has-seen-nonpublic-information-proving-laptop-was-hunter https://twitter.com/SeanLangille?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcam... Here's a signed MacBook Repair quote from 4/2019, signed by Hunter Biden: https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/hunter%20biden%20signatures.jpg?itok=8Jp1o2Mp https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/hunter%20bi... And here's the NYPost article itself, excerpts included: `Biden wrote that Ye had sweetened the terms of an earlier, three-year consulting contract with CEFC that was to pay him $10 million annually “for introductions alone.”` `"Consulting fees is one piece of our income stream but the reason this proposal by the chairman was so much more interesting to me and my family is that we would also be partners inn [sic] the equity and profits of the JV’s [joint venture’s] investments."` `The documents obtained by The Post also include an “Attorney Engagement Letter” executed in September 2017 in which one of Ye’s top lieutenants, former Hong Kong government official Chi Ping Patrick Ho, agreed to pay Biden a $1 million retainer for “Counsel to matters related to US law and advice pertaining to the hiring and legal analysis of any US Law Firm or Lawyer.` https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden-tried-to-cash-in-big-with-chinese-firm/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden... This family is so corrupt it's not even funny. That's not even including the Burisma scandal, which was disgusting in its own right.
  - acdha 6y ago
    This is the problem with getting your information from Twitter. You're taking a public statement from a political appointee whose boss very badly needs an attack angle and generalizing it without cause. We know that the non-partisan staff have been telling Congress and the public that there are Russian attempts to influence the election[1,2] involving some of the people in this story[3]. This matters because you're taking a single very specific claim as proof an entire story. The DNI made a very specific denial that Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of a Russian disinformation campaign — we don't know what level of certainty the analysts have that this was actually Biden's laptop, that the data on it wasn't modified after it left Biden's control, that he wasn't fine parsing this being a disinformation campaign run by anyone other than the Russian government, or that the emails presented in the NY Post story are authentic and complete. Continuing the trend, there's a conservative media figure citing unnamed officials with uncorroborated claims. We don't know how well informed they are, what conflicts of interest they have, etc. but we do know that their chain of command has a number of people who have significant personal investment in a particular election result. This is why anything involving politically sensitive claims really needs to be done as openly as possible since history is full of examples of various ways officials have mislead the public. Similarly, you are presenting as proof a JPEG on a conservative blog showing two signatures which aren't close matches and have none of the provenance you'd need to demonstrate that similarities aren't due to one of them being a forgery based on the public record. Even if the receipt was authentic, that tells you he dropped a Mac off, which could be part of but is not on its own sufficient to say that the data came from that Mac. I mention all of this because it's how the process works: you're convinced that Biden is corrupt because the sources you read presented some nice juicy headlines and just enough plausible details to underpin all of those conclusions. If you remember Guccifer 2.0, one of the best ways to make a forgery seem more realistic is to put it in with legitimate but innocuous documents. The decision to sit on this story until close before an election but not release the data or an independent forensic report is exactly what you'd do in this case. My suggestion that you look for the evidence is to put an upper bound on how confidently you should present that narrative as fact — for example, doesn't it seem interesting that this conversation about laptops is still missing any evidence that a meeting or conversation happened or that it involved anything more than a businessman wangling a handshake with a prominent global figure? It's certainly possible that Hunter Biden did something dodgy but I personally would wait to call his father corrupt without strong or, really, any evidence of that. Similarly, the NY Post story repeated the long-debunked claim about VP Biden having tried to get a prosecutor fired for investigating Burisma — that certainly doesn't mean that the rest of the story is completely wrong but it does call into question how much a wise reader should trust the story without further corroboration. 1. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2139-statement-by-ncsc-director-william-evanina-election-threat-update-for-the-american-public https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2... 2. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/politics/us-intelligence-russia-election-interference-biden/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/politics/us-intelligence-russ... 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/politics/giuliani-russian-disinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/politics/giuliani-russ...
bleepblorp 6y ago
In contemporary American politics, "filter bubbles" that suppress facts--as opposed to providing a slanted interpretation of the meaning of facts--are exclusively a product of conservative politics. If there was concrete evidence of malfeasance involving either Biden, actual media outlets (NYT, WaPo, CNN, ABC, CBS, etc) would report on it. They might downplay it, but they would report it. In contrast, conservative media gleefully provides politically motivated "alternative facts[0]" -- more properly known as 'lies'[1] -- and fails to report on stories that are politically harmful to conservatives. Conservative media is not intended to inform; it is intended to keep people ignorant of actual, objective, facts.[2] Has your filter bubble told you that Trump was impeached specifically for attempting to blackmail the Ukrainian government into framing Biden? Has your filter bubble told you that this kind of conduct is not normal in a democracy? Just because conservative media lies to people to further a political objective does not mean that the entire media ecosystem is equally bad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts [1] https://www.politifact.com/article/2015/jan/29/punditfact-checks-cable-news-channels/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2015/jan/29/punditfact-ch... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/11/21/fox-news-viewers-uninformed-npr-listeners-not-poll-suggests/#78d296dd4fd8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/11/21/fox-news-v...

acdha 6y ago

Yes, I'm quite aware of that — note that I was suggesting that OP look for the actual evidence rather than relying on other people's claims. Their echoing of attacks which have been unsupported by evidence but common in conservative circles suggested that they were inside such a filter bubble

barbacoa 6y ago
Honest question not trying to attack you. Do you really think think you are any different than OP?
- acdha 6y ago
  I can't speak for OP but while this is a common cognitive pitfall it's also one which you can intentionally correct for by attempting to anchor your beliefs on original sources and making an effort to find things outside of your immediate community. People are going to be successful at this to varying degrees but as we can see currently there are large segments of the population who never try.
- californical 6y ago
  I think it’s very different because the original person made a very bold claim, and the other said “I don’t know if I’ll believe that without evidence”. The burden of proof lies on the one who makes the original claim, not the one who doesn’t believe it without evidence.
  - barbacoa 6y ago
    Without making a judgement on the veracity of the claims. There is at least circumstantial evidence in this case. I have noticed that the tactic used to defend biden has become to place insurmountable burden of proof on anyone who claims wrong doing while giving the bidens every benefit of the doubt. Which is gaslighting. That is akin to saying "there is no evidence OJ killed his wife. The bloody glove found at his home has all the hallmarks of being planted by russian intelligence".
chrisco255 6y ago
Sure, here's Politico's Quint Forgey quoting the Director of National Intelligence that the laptop (source of the emails) is in the FBI's possession and that it is authentically Hunter's: https://twitter.com/QuintForgey/status/1318166732419235841 https://twitter.com/QuintForgey/status/1318166732419235841 Here's Fox saying the same thing, quoting a Federal Law Enforcement Official: https://twitter.com/SeanLangille?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1318673941624426497%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3%2Ccontainerclick_1&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fnot-russian-hoax-tucker-carlson-has-seen-nonpublic-information-proving-laptop-was-hunter https://twitter.com/SeanLangille?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcam... Here's a signed MacBook Repair quote from 4/2019, signed by Hunter Biden: https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/hunter%20biden%20signatures.jpg?itok=8Jp1o2Mp https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/hunter%20bi... And here's the NYPost article itself, excerpts included: `Biden wrote that Ye had sweetened the terms of an earlier, three-year consulting contract with CEFC that was to pay him $10 million annually “for introductions alone.”` `"Consulting fees is one piece of our income stream but the reason this proposal by the chairman was so much more interesting to me and my family is that we would also be partners inn [sic] the equity and profits of the JV’s [joint venture’s] investments."` `The documents obtained by The Post also include an “Attorney Engagement Letter” executed in September 2017 in which one of Ye’s top lieutenants, former Hong Kong government official Chi Ping Patrick Ho, agreed to pay Biden a $1 million retainer for “Counsel to matters related to US law and advice pertaining to the hiring and legal analysis of any US Law Firm or Lawyer.` https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden-tried-to-cash-in-big-with-chinese-firm/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden... This family is so corrupt it's not even funny. That's not even including the Burisma scandal, which was disgusting in its own right.
- acdha 6y ago
  This is the problem with getting your information from Twitter. You're taking a public statement from a political appointee whose boss very badly needs an attack angle and generalizing it without cause. We know that the non-partisan staff have been telling Congress and the public that there are Russian attempts to influence the election[1,2] involving some of the people in this story[3]. This matters because you're taking a single very specific claim as proof an entire story. The DNI made a very specific denial that Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of a Russian disinformation campaign — we don't know what level of certainty the analysts have that this was actually Biden's laptop, that the data on it wasn't modified after it left Biden's control, that he wasn't fine parsing this being a disinformation campaign run by anyone other than the Russian government, or that the emails presented in the NY Post story are authentic and complete. Continuing the trend, there's a conservative media figure citing unnamed officials with uncorroborated claims. We don't know how well informed they are, what conflicts of interest they have, etc. but we do know that their chain of command has a number of people who have significant personal investment in a particular election result. This is why anything involving politically sensitive claims really needs to be done as openly as possible since history is full of examples of various ways officials have mislead the public. Similarly, you are presenting as proof a JPEG on a conservative blog showing two signatures which aren't close matches and have none of the provenance you'd need to demonstrate that similarities aren't due to one of them being a forgery based on the public record. Even if the receipt was authentic, that tells you he dropped a Mac off, which could be part of but is not on its own sufficient to say that the data came from that Mac. I mention all of this because it's how the process works: you're convinced that Biden is corrupt because the sources you read presented some nice juicy headlines and just enough plausible details to underpin all of those conclusions. If you remember Guccifer 2.0, one of the best ways to make a forgery seem more realistic is to put it in with legitimate but innocuous documents. The decision to sit on this story until close before an election but not release the data or an independent forensic report is exactly what you'd do in this case. My suggestion that you look for the evidence is to put an upper bound on how confidently you should present that narrative as fact — for example, doesn't it seem interesting that this conversation about laptops is still missing any evidence that a meeting or conversation happened or that it involved anything more than a businessman wangling a handshake with a prominent global figure? It's certainly possible that Hunter Biden did something dodgy but I personally would wait to call his father corrupt without strong or, really, any evidence of that. Similarly, the NY Post story repeated the long-debunked claim about VP Biden having tried to get a prosecutor fired for investigating Burisma — that certainly doesn't mean that the rest of the story is completely wrong but it does call into question how much a wise reader should trust the story without further corroboration. 1. https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2139-statement-by-ncsc-director-william-evanina-election-threat-update-for-the-american-public https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2... 2. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/politics/us-intelligence-russia-election-interference-biden/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/politics/us-intelligence-russ... 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/politics/giuliani-russian-disinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/politics/giuliani-russ...

bleepblorp 6y ago

In contemporary American politics, "filter bubbles" that suppress facts--as opposed to providing a slanted interpretation of the meaning of facts--are exclusively a product of conservative politics. If there was concrete evidence of malfeasance involving either Biden, actual media outlets (NYT, WaPo, CNN, ABC, CBS, etc) would report on it. They might downplay it, but they would report it. In contrast, conservative media gleefully provides politically motivated "alternative facts[0]" -- more properly known as 'lies'[1] -- and fails to report on stories that are politically harmful to conservatives. Conservative media is not intended to inform; it is intended to keep people ignorant of actual, objective, facts.[2] Has your filter bubble told you that Trump was impeached specifically for attempting to blackmail the Ukrainian government into framing Biden? Has your filter bubble told you that this kind of conduct is not normal in a democracy? Just because conservative media lies to people to further a political objective does not mean that the entire media ecosystem is equally bad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts [1] https://www.politifact.com/article/2015/jan/29/punditfact-checks-cable-news-channels/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2015/jan/29/punditfact-ch... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/11/21/fox-news-viewers-uninformed-npr-listeners-not-poll-suggests/#78d296dd4fd8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/11/21/fox-news-v...