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I never made a claim they had more or less evidence, you ignore the South America example entirely which is that it’s ok to have circumspect evidence but extrap

I never made a claim they had more or less evidence, you ignore the South America example entirely which is that it’s ok to have circumspect evidence but extrapolate based on priors. There’s no place for silencing opinions, and those are opinions that all have different levels of evidence. That you tend to weigh certain evidence differently is your own stance, not objective fact. To try again, let’s say someone is a “body language expert”. I don’t really believe that to a large degree, but fine. They post a YouTube clip showing the Chinese gov denying the lab leak and say “oh man I can tell based on X, Y, and Z their body language is a total giveaway that this was intentional!” Again, I don’t believe it. But it doesn’t matter. Whether they think it’s aliens because they saw some cloud trails or tea leaves or whatever, it’s all a matter of degree. The lab leak was shut down under the same premises. “Our” evidence is strong, and “their” evidence is conspiracy theory. Except it wasn’t. So I don’t trust anyone, you included, to be the decider of valid evidence. I’ll sort through it myself.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
> If a socialist candidate is assassinated in South America and someone on YouTube says “this was the American imperialist regimes doing” without evidence, I wouldn’t assume they are right, but I’d see it as an opinion You are conflating "opinion" with "unsupported statement of fact", "assumption", and "guess". Assumption and conclusion are not synonyms, but your statement here treats them as though they are. "Murder is wrong" is an opinion, because it's a compressed substitute for an expansive syllogistic trail that starts from some initial premises that are purely personal and subjective about the value and nature of life and being and leads to the conclusion. You reach a moral ruling starting from an instinctive feeling. Expressing that feeling itself is not an opinion, but concluding a moral position from that feeling is. "I like the taste of this cheese" is a factual observation about the self that is not an opinion, because while it observes something personal it itself is not subjectively based on an initial position. You either like the taste of this cheese or you don't. Statements about the cause of things that happen in the world are either true or false, not opinions. There's a reason for the old saw that opinions can't be wrong. Subjectivity is the critical element that makes them opinions in the first place. People tend to lose or forget that distinction or insert subjectivity where none exists, but that's an error which disrupts effective communication and muddies thought.
- nwienert 5y ago
  I never conflated opinion, everything is opinion there are just more or less circumstantial evidences, and it varies widely based on your priors and worldview. I just don’t think YouTube should be silencing them. If we have to have some private unelected board at YouTube deciding where opinion ends and fact begins, that’s dystopia. People state opinions as facts all the time. “It was the United States gov” is an opinion it’s just a colloquial American thing to say it in that style. Their real belief may be that it’s actually only 90% probable, and their threshold for wording it as certain is lower than yours. Only a fool listens to a strongly stated opinion, even when it’s worded as though it’s a fact, and isn’t skeptical. If we designed our society to cater to the greatest fool, we’d have ridiculous rules all over. I don’t want that. I actually think the main difference is I have a lot more faith in the intelligence of the average joe, and it seems people who don’t get real worried that their “better” opinions will drown out. I don’t think so. And I’ve seen the people with the right opinions be wrong too often lately to ever trust them.
  - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    > Only a fool listens to a strongly stated opinion, even when it’s worded as though it’s a fact, and not be skeptic. I think I have bad news for you about the world, then. > If we designed our society to cater to the greatest fool, we’d have ridiculous rules all over. What is your plan for a society like the one we currently live in that appears to be mostly greatest fools? > I actually think the main difference is I have a lot more faith in the intelligence of the average joe According to polling, in the US the average joe claims that God directly created humans in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years and that evolution is, to put a common phrase in their mouths, "fake news". https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creati... Feel whatever you want about the benefit of religion, that belief is based on something entirely extraneous to evidence.
    - nwienert 5y ago
      > I think I have bad news for you, then. Exactly. As I had edited in my last comment before I saw your reply, you have a huge lack of faith in the intelligence of others (that, or a big ego). Believing in religion got humans a lot further due to in-group cooperation. Their exact beliefs may look wrong, but the way it makes them act is more right than atheism or anything else. In your world talking about any religion would be banned, and what a sad world that’d be.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago

> If a socialist candidate is assassinated in South America and someone on YouTube says “this was the American imperialist regimes doing” without evidence, I wouldn’t assume they are right, but I’d see it as an opinion You are conflating "opinion" with "unsupported statement of fact", "assumption", and "guess". Assumption and conclusion are not synonyms, but your statement here treats them as though they are. "Murder is wrong" is an opinion, because it's a compressed substitute for an expansive syllogistic trail that starts from some initial premises that are purely personal and subjective about the value and nature of life and being and leads to the conclusion. You reach a moral ruling starting from an instinctive feeling. Expressing that feeling itself is not an opinion, but concluding a moral position from that feeling is. "I like the taste of this cheese" is a factual observation about the self that is not an opinion, because while it observes something personal it itself is not subjectively based on an initial position. You either like the taste of this cheese or you don't. Statements about the cause of things that happen in the world are either true or false, not opinions. There's a reason for the old saw that opinions can't be wrong. Subjectivity is the critical element that makes them opinions in the first place. People tend to lose or forget that distinction or insert subjectivity where none exists, but that's an error which disrupts effective communication and muddies thought.

nwienert 5y ago
I never conflated opinion, everything is opinion there are just more or less circumstantial evidences, and it varies widely based on your priors and worldview. I just don’t think YouTube should be silencing them. If we have to have some private unelected board at YouTube deciding where opinion ends and fact begins, that’s dystopia. People state opinions as facts all the time. “It was the United States gov” is an opinion it’s just a colloquial American thing to say it in that style. Their real belief may be that it’s actually only 90% probable, and their threshold for wording it as certain is lower than yours. Only a fool listens to a strongly stated opinion, even when it’s worded as though it’s a fact, and isn’t skeptical. If we designed our society to cater to the greatest fool, we’d have ridiculous rules all over. I don’t want that. I actually think the main difference is I have a lot more faith in the intelligence of the average joe, and it seems people who don’t get real worried that their “better” opinions will drown out. I don’t think so. And I’ve seen the people with the right opinions be wrong too often lately to ever trust them.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  > Only a fool listens to a strongly stated opinion, even when it’s worded as though it’s a fact, and not be skeptic. I think I have bad news for you about the world, then. > If we designed our society to cater to the greatest fool, we’d have ridiculous rules all over. What is your plan for a society like the one we currently live in that appears to be mostly greatest fools? > I actually think the main difference is I have a lot more faith in the intelligence of the average joe According to polling, in the US the average joe claims that God directly created humans in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years and that evolution is, to put a common phrase in their mouths, "fake news". https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creati... Feel whatever you want about the benefit of religion, that belief is based on something entirely extraneous to evidence.
  - nwienert 5y ago
    > I think I have bad news for you, then. Exactly. As I had edited in my last comment before I saw your reply, you have a huge lack of faith in the intelligence of others (that, or a big ego). Believing in religion got humans a lot further due to in-group cooperation. Their exact beliefs may look wrong, but the way it makes them act is more right than atheism or anything else. In your world talking about any religion would be banned, and what a sad world that’d be.