4 ms·

> I have seen many claims of this sort, but every single time there's been video available of the incident, it's become clear to me that nothing of the sort is

> I have seen many claims of this sort, but every single time there's been video available of the incident, it's become clear to me that nothing of the sort is going on. Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video? Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity. That seems an obvious assumption. Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning? > This comment, like many others I've made on the topic, has been completely illegitimately flagged. I'm getting rather tired of that. > It perhaps just doesn't agree with your point of view. I don't really agree with the flags but this casual dismissal of "you just don't like it" is not helping you to understand the actual reasons others may have to flag (and downvote, which I do agree with). For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling regardless of said someone's self-perception of their commentary. You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all.

zahlman 9mo ago
> Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video? All such video has been third-person perspective, so no. > Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity. In the cases where video shows events prior to the arrest, it shows justification for the arrest. Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification. So why would I take claims at face value about the existence of unjustified arrests where nobody started recording before the arrest? > Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning? The repeated prior experience of seeing people make reports, look them up, and find that they've been misrepresented, yes. > For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling I disagree that this is a legitimate reason to flag a comment, according to my reading of the guidelines. "The videos" doesn't refer to a specific set of videos. I'm talking here about cases where people claimed that something (not the incident that OP is about) had happened in a specific way, and I had already seen video that disproved the narrative. If they saw a different video, or a clip of the video, or a social media rumour, and their emotions are running high because they can't imagine a justification, that isn't my fault. (For example, a sibling comment is pushing the "kidnapping and arresting" narrative for the child taken directly back to his home. We already saw during Trump's first term that the activists will raise hue and cry about "families being separated" by ICE; now they can't put the family together either.) And I'm talking about cases where people bring up some other random thing that they totally know happened, that I haven't heard of at all, and they don't proactively bring evidence but how dare I not know about it. Always described with a flurry of emotionally charged language. My priors are that all of this will evaporate under scrutiny, because of what I have experienced before when trying to look into things. This extends generally to protests of this nature before the current administration's use of ICE, too. And I'm talking about cases where people seem to have entirely wrong ideas about what the law actually permits. I get flagged, for example, when I make posts that consist of nothing but the evidenced truth about ICE's legal powers and what is or isn't a legitimate protest action. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452. It's hard for me not to perceive that I get flagged for no reason other than being on "the wrong side" of a contentious political issue, because people can't fathom that an honest person who tries to research claims could possibly disagree with them so starkly in good faith. But I do research these claims (although there's only so much time I'm willing to put into them). I did research this story. And I already previously reported back (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750401) that I now generally agree that this specific shooting looks unjustified (certainly it at least requires an investigation, which I would have said anyway, like for any high-profile LEO use of lethal force). I'm just not going to continue a direct chain of replies with people who openly insult me. I'm still human. Meanwhile, comments where people just openly go "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi", "fascist, fascist, fascist", spewing outrage without substance, stay visible incognito. > You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all. This is effectively intimidation.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 9mo ago
  > All such video has been third-person perspective, so no. Do you think it is not worth considering? > This is effectively intimidation. I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word). Again, you're not going to get anywhere with complaints about the responses to your comments.
  - zahlman 9mo ago
    > Do you think it is not worth considering? Because it is third-person video, "dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video?" is moot. There is nothing preventing the third person from starting the recording earlier, and indeed they have done so in many cases. > I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word). I read it just fine. You speak of more "thoughtful" posting, but I can find no charitable way to interpret this, because I am not violating HN guidelines but I am getting flagged anyway. I notice that you ignored the point about other people flagrantly violating guidelines without consequence because they have the approved opinions. I also notice that you did not try to defend the flagging of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 . Instead, you argue that it is my responsibility to not let other people perceive my strong disagreement as inherently trolling, or else not post at all. The net effect of this is to suppress strongly dissenting opinions, under threat of further community action ("flags and downvotes... will keep coming (on this topic) until..."). Hence, intimidation.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - zahlman 9mo ago
        You are consistently condescending throughout the above (thus, this is my last reply) and have repeatedly misrepresented my meaning (for example, I did not "try to hide behind things I call factual analyses"; where I call things objective fact, they are actually objective fact that I either have established or can easily establish, and where I don't, they are opinion to the extent that common sense would interpret them as opinion). Most importantly, you continually conflate flags with downvotes. I consistently, explicitly, extremely clearly was specifically complaining about flags and not about downvotes; the argument > Regardless, a threat of a downvote is hardly "intimidation" and calling it such is emotional rhetoric. is blatantly misrepresentative. I said the word "flag" over and over and over again and did not talk about downvotes; and I referred to the effects of flagging (a comment in my history that is [flagged] in the view presented to me cannot be seen even with a direct link in a private browsing tab; a comment that is downvoted, even to -4 but without flags, can be). You scold me for lack of reading comprehension, and then condescend to me about the "learning" process, but you overlook a central point that I made abundantly clear and attack a strawman. And you completely disregard everything I've shown you about how I've been treated unfairly in this situation. > I suspect you will arrive at the conclusion that these aren't murders (or that their actions are already normal and/or excusable) and therefore you are simply cannot be normalizing and/or excusing their actions. Of course, such thoughtless posts will be flagged Again setting aside downvotes because I did not complain about downvotes: That is unfair treatment. It does not violate HN commenting guidelines to express that conclusion. My conclusion is justified by extensive research and by prior general awareness of how LEO operates and what happens at protests. It is not at all "thoughtless" to say so; I put considerable thought into this, and have brought forward large amounts of evidence and reasoning. It is frankly offensive to tell me otherwise. I am simply not "thinking" about the specific matter of whether other people will have a strong emotional reaction to being told that the thing they consider murder might in fact be legally justified. Because I care about truth; and because HN (in principle, to my understanding) only tolerates these submissions because of the potential for actual discussion, which involves people disagreeing about things. You've made it abundantly clear, by this, that no matter how I actually went about it, you would consider it inappropriate to make comments that suppose that ICE agents (citizens with due process rights, BTW) might not have committed murder, and would consider that it's inappropriate that comments making any argument of that form are permitted to remain publicly visible (again: flagging, not downvoting); only concurrence is okay. And many recent political threads have made it abundantly clear to me where that leads: an environment where people chant "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, fascist, fascist, fascist" — despite the admonitions "Be kind." and "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Maybe you're okay with that, but I'm not. The solution to divisiveness is not to exclude one side of the divide.

zahlman 9mo ago

> Have you considered the potential bias that people are dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video? All such video has been third-person perspective, so no. > Perhaps the dragging out of the car happens while nobody is recording them, then people see and start recording for posterity. In the cases where video shows events prior to the arrest, it shows justification for the arrest. Activists have a clear incentive to hide that justification. So why would I take claims at face value about the existence of unjustified arrests where nobody started recording before the arrest? > Do you have reason to think otherwise such that you can dismiss others' reports with intellectual honesty rather than motivated reasoning? The repeated prior experience of seeing people make reports, look them up, and find that they've been misrepresented, yes. > For example, maybe others watched the videos and think there is no way to justify what they saw. To such an individual, seeing someone try to justify it might look like trolling I disagree that this is a legitimate reason to flag a comment, according to my reading of the guidelines. "The videos" doesn't refer to a specific set of videos. I'm talking here about cases where people claimed that something (not the incident that OP is about) had happened in a specific way, and I had already seen video that disproved the narrative. If they saw a different video, or a clip of the video, or a social media rumour, and their emotions are running high because they can't imagine a justification, that isn't my fault. (For example, a sibling comment is pushing the "kidnapping and arresting" narrative for the child taken directly back to his home. We already saw during Trump's first term that the activists will raise hue and cry about "families being separated" by ICE; now they can't put the family together either.) And I'm talking about cases where people bring up some other random thing that they totally know happened, that I haven't heard of at all, and they don't proactively bring evidence but how dare I not know about it. Always described with a flurry of emotionally charged language. My priors are that all of this will evaporate under scrutiny, because of what I have experienced before when trying to look into things. This extends generally to protests of this nature before the current administration's use of ICE, too. And I'm talking about cases where people seem to have entirely wrong ideas about what the law actually permits. I get flagged, for example, when I make posts that consist of nothing but the evidenced truth about ICE's legal powers and what is or isn't a legitimate protest action. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452. It's hard for me not to perceive that I get flagged for no reason other than being on "the wrong side" of a contentious political issue, because people can't fathom that an honest person who tries to research claims could possibly disagree with them so starkly in good faith. But I do research these claims (although there's only so much time I'm willing to put into them). I did research this story. And I already previously reported back (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750401) that I now generally agree that this specific shooting looks unjustified (certainly it at least requires an investigation, which I would have said anyway, like for any high-profile LEO use of lethal force). I'm just not going to continue a direct chain of replies with people who openly insult me. I'm still human. Meanwhile, comments where people just openly go "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi", "fascist, fascist, fascist", spewing outrage without substance, stay visible incognito. > You will get nowhere merely complaining about the flags and downvotes; they will keep coming (on this topic) until you start to comment more thoughtfully (on this topic), or not at all. This is effectively intimidation.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 9mo ago
> All such video has been third-person perspective, so no. Do you think it is not worth considering? > This is effectively intimidation. I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word). Again, you're not going to get anywhere with complaints about the responses to your comments.
- zahlman 9mo ago
  > Do you think it is not worth considering? Because it is third-person video, "dragged out of their cars before they can start recording video?" is moot. There is nothing preventing the third person from starting the recording earlier, and indeed they have done so in many cases. > I'd suggest reading it again more carefully; it is a call to be more thoughtful (I literally use that word). I read it just fine. You speak of more "thoughtful" posting, but I can find no charitable way to interpret this, because I am not violating HN guidelines but I am getting flagged anyway. I notice that you ignored the point about other people flagrantly violating guidelines without consequence because they have the approved opinions. I also notice that you did not try to defend the flagging of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750452 . Instead, you argue that it is my responsibility to not let other people perceive my strong disagreement as inherently trolling, or else not post at all. The net effect of this is to suppress strongly dissenting opinions, under threat of further community action ("flags and downvotes... will keep coming (on this topic) until..."). Hence, intimidation.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - zahlman 9mo ago
      You are consistently condescending throughout the above (thus, this is my last reply) and have repeatedly misrepresented my meaning (for example, I did not "try to hide behind things I call factual analyses"; where I call things objective fact, they are actually objective fact that I either have established or can easily establish, and where I don't, they are opinion to the extent that common sense would interpret them as opinion). Most importantly, you continually conflate flags with downvotes. I consistently, explicitly, extremely clearly was specifically complaining about flags and not about downvotes; the argument > Regardless, a threat of a downvote is hardly "intimidation" and calling it such is emotional rhetoric. is blatantly misrepresentative. I said the word "flag" over and over and over again and did not talk about downvotes; and I referred to the effects of flagging (a comment in my history that is [flagged] in the view presented to me cannot be seen even with a direct link in a private browsing tab; a comment that is downvoted, even to -4 but without flags, can be). You scold me for lack of reading comprehension, and then condescend to me about the "learning" process, but you overlook a central point that I made abundantly clear and attack a strawman. And you completely disregard everything I've shown you about how I've been treated unfairly in this situation. > I suspect you will arrive at the conclusion that these aren't murders (or that their actions are already normal and/or excusable) and therefore you are simply cannot be normalizing and/or excusing their actions. Of course, such thoughtless posts will be flagged Again setting aside downvotes because I did not complain about downvotes: That is unfair treatment. It does not violate HN commenting guidelines to express that conclusion. My conclusion is justified by extensive research and by prior general awareness of how LEO operates and what happens at protests. It is not at all "thoughtless" to say so; I put considerable thought into this, and have brought forward large amounts of evidence and reasoning. It is frankly offensive to tell me otherwise. I am simply not "thinking" about the specific matter of whether other people will have a strong emotional reaction to being told that the thing they consider murder might in fact be legally justified. Because I care about truth; and because HN (in principle, to my understanding) only tolerates these submissions because of the potential for actual discussion, which involves people disagreeing about things. You've made it abundantly clear, by this, that no matter how I actually went about it, you would consider it inappropriate to make comments that suppose that ICE agents (citizens with due process rights, BTW) might not have committed murder, and would consider that it's inappropriate that comments making any argument of that form are permitted to remain publicly visible (again: flagging, not downvoting); only concurrence is okay. And many recent political threads have made it abundantly clear to me where that leads: an environment where people chant "Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, fascist, fascist, fascist" — despite the admonitions "Be kind." and "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Maybe you're okay with that, but I'm not. The solution to divisiveness is not to exclude one side of the divide.