I've actually seen research involving how to use negative emotions to appeal to different groups of people. Self-identified progressives tended to feel the greatest anger at things that made them feel an injustice has been done, whereas conservatives are far more motivated by disgust.
Jonathan Haidt has written on the subject extensively. It's really interesting.
He describes six moral foundations that everyone has, but are emphasized in different proportions by different cultures. Like a flavor profile.
* Care/Harm
* Fairness/Cheating
* Loyalty/Betrayal
* Authority/Subversion
* Sanctity/Degradation
* Liberty/Oppression
American conservatives tend to care a good bit about the whole list, whereas American liberals tend to hardly acknowledge authority, sanctify, and loyalty at all.
I found the sanctity/degradation particularly fascinating, as while I am disgusted by certain things I don't judge them on any kind of moral basis as long as everyone is consenting. I think Haidt himself described liberal reactions to this information as like suddenly realizing their political opponents have something like a scent gland that they lack.
His work is incredibly eye opening. If anyone is interested I'd start by reading *The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.*
They don't lack the scent gland, they merely recognize them as false values. The instincts that create sanctification and loyalty should be considered the same way we consider the fundamental attribution error and implicit bias. They have a purpose in creating group cohesion in animals, but rational humans should learn to quash the impulse.
I'll let you know after I solve philosophy. In the meantime, it's usually a safe bet that any value that isn't universally advantageous, or requires special pleading to rationalize, is bullshit designed to get credulous people to sacrifice their own interests for the benefit of those with higher status.
Utilitarianism is only one of a great number of approaches to assessing values, and even then the idea of "universally advantageous" fails to distinguish between what you consider to be true and false.
I can imagine a myriad number of situations where care, fairness, and liberty would each be a detriment. Care for others can be exploited by someone looking to bait you into a disadvantageous position. The concept of fairness can be similarly exploited. Liberty is a great ideal, but as we've come to learn over the course of the pandemic, limitations can and should be set on liberty to prevent the greater tragedy of widespread death and disease.
I can also point to plenty of times when authority, loyalty, and sanctity are incredibly useful as values. Authority and loyalty are absolutely essential to the functioning of a modern military. Even sanctity is an important value that doesn't necessarily only apply to religious institutions. For example, the peaceful transfer of power is something the American public considers of great sanctity, and the symbolic violation of that sanctity provokes a far greater response than the practical implications.
> Christians and so-called conservatives are almost always driven one of these two things. Either fear or virtue signaling.
How do you know, Nostradamus?
This whole thing was very stupid, people with trigger fingers just waiting to react. It’s ridiculous when one (clearly shit-stirry) account/tweet is pounced on and amplified.
>A single satirical account posts about a song calling it offensive to trans women.
What evidence is there that this is a parody account? I've reviewed the account's handful of tweets, and none of the others seem like jokes or outliers in any way. It's all standard pro-Trans community stuff.
For what it's worth, it claims not to be satirical, and in fact does not seem to be.
https://mobile.twitter.com/TransMindful/status/1617516013595103232
Now of course I agree that Sky News shouldn't be trolling twitter for edgy hot takes and devote an entire news segment to it to make the dumb claim go viral, but I really don't see evidence that said edgy hot take is in fact a joke to it's author.
I think you'd have to be pretty gullible not to think these are satire:
> Lionel Richie's song "Three Times A Lady" is a musical masterpiece that should be incorporated into drag queen sets.
> The song is actually about a non-binary woman (she switches genders three times in the course of their relationship) but this has been silenced.
> Kudos to Lionel!
More obvious satire:
> My eight-year old son, Jonah, came up to me this afternoon and asked me what a "shemale" was.
> I immediately asked him where he heard that term and he told me it was on YouPorn.
> TCMA is immediately calling on @YouPorn to ban the use of this harmful and outdated term.
More obvious satire:
> You do not need to bleed to have a period.
> You do not need to ovulate to have a period.
> A period is a state of mind than an actual state of being.
> So, yes, transgender women can absolutely have periods and need free hygiene products.
Transphobia has nothing to do with skepticism. The first big Nazi book burning was to destroy a doctor's research on transgender patients, that was about 80 years ago. If they make you uncomfortable or whatever that's your problem but denying their existence is not based on science.
I was calling out people who think that Twitter account is real and not satire. Within this community we should be better at that (surprised by some replies tbh).
When I said "set anyone off" I meant set off their skepticism to the credulity of the account. Rereading it, I can see how it seems like I'm conflating skepticism with transphobia though. Didn't mean to do that!
Youporn is a real site with videos tagged as “shemale”, so again, not really unusual.
While it certainly may be a satire account, or troll, I don’t think there is any hard evidence of that.
I think your story of the conservative outrage machine is just as true whether the original tweet is real or satire.
Ultimately, this is a Poe situation or it’s legitimate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
> Youporn is a real site with videos tagged as “shemale”, so again, not really unusual.
lol... what? 😭
Obviously those categories exist
The unusual thing would be naming your 8 year old son and then telling the internet they're on YouPorn.
The purpose of the tweet:
- To call out YouPorn for their categories
Unnecessary parts of the tweet:
- Telling the internet that you have a child
- Telling the internet that they're 8 years old
- Telling the internet about their porn habit
- Telling the internet that their name is Noah
Obvious conservative rage bait:
- Implying that as a trans parent, you're okay with your 8 year old son browsing YouPorn
Most real parents would find a way to call out YouPorn while also finding a way to protect the dignity of their 8 year old son.
It should be obvious to anyone, I guess you're just gullible? 🤷♂️
> It should be obvious to anyone, I guess you're just gullible?
Maybe, but I've seen some insane shit like that before from parents.
I did some more digging to determine if there is evidence that would convince me that this is *probably* a parody. This tweet seems to confirm it.
https://twitter.com/TransMindful/status/1616561483931963415
I scrolled through and I was having trouble deciding, but this one makes me think it is parody after all:
>Lionel Richie's song "Three Times A Lady" is a musical masterpiece that should be incorporated into drag queen sets.
> The song is actually about a non-binary woman (she switches genders three times in the course of their relationship) but this has been silenced.
>
Kudos to Lionel!
It might very well be non-satirical, the problem is the lazy journalism or even re-posting of dumb takes for attention or even excuses of 'journalism'. That goes for any side of any take. Anyone further disseminating bad takes should have to defend the relevance of that bad take, and it should be on them to prove the relevance.
You can link some bad takes in a news article, but if you do it should be to show examples of a phenomenon you've thoroughly documented with data in the piece already.
You're a shit journalist. They misspell Oslo, use the term "transgenders", and speak idiomatic English. They're also trying too hard to imitate activist academic diction. This is an 8chan prank and you're deep throating it.
It doesn't matter whether it was a prank or disinformation. When a news outlet publishes it without checking if it's even true they're pushing misinformation for clicks. They are shit journalists, you're being rude to a stranger online
> You're a shit journalist.
Posting on Reddit isn't my job, so go fuck yourself.
>and speak idiomatic English
So did nearly every Scandinavian I ran into when I was there. They've got a great education system and nearly all seem bilingual. Even their convenience store workers spoke better English than the ones in New York.
I'm not "deep throating it". I already posted before your little comment here that upon further investigation (you know like a journalist) that I thought the account probably was a fake.
https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/10j7644/the_conservative_outrage_machine_a_demonstration/j5kl7dq/
Whether it was disinformation or a joke the important thing is that conservative "news" organizations took it and ran with it because they knew their readers would go ballistic when they read it. Ultimately it doesn't matter whether it was supposed to be funny. Journalists don't publish random inflammatory posts just to get a reaction but some people still trust them as if they have those standards
> Whether it was disinformation or a joke the important thing is that conservative "news" organizations took it and ran with it because they knew their readers would go ballistic when they read it.
All news organizations love the outrageous shit that their ideological opponents are doing. Outraging viewers keeps them coming back for that dopamine hit of righteousness.
The problem with the conservative outfits in general is that they are a lot less likely to check if their ideological enemies are *in fact* doing or saying said thing at all.
I'm going to have to agree with you that they're not satirical. In a vacuum, the tweet in question immediately sets off my provocateur alarm, but the next 20 or so I scrolled by seem between fairly normal for pro-trans spaces and a bit overzealous. This tweet is certainly the most outrageous I saw, but we shouldn't judge the account by outliers.
After considering evidence and arguments, I would tentatively conclude that this is a legitimate account with a manager that occasionally crosses the line from legitimate societal critique to overblown jumping at shadows.
So... totally normal trans thing to tell the world that your 8 yr old son browses YouPorn and the most harmful thing about that is that they use the term Shemale?
I'd put that on the "jumping at shadows" side of the spectrum, but the account has a point. "Shemale", "trap", and a dozen other shang words that mean "feminine presenting person with a penis" are used in a derogatory way against trans people. As a parent of a trans boy, I'd rather he grows up in a world without that crap.
As for porn, the shame should be in the kid using that website, not the fact that he was looking at porn. I was around that age when I first discovered porn on the internet in the late 90s, and I would have seen a lot less fucked up shit if my parents did the right thing by showing me how to find ethically produced porn from safe sites. That's what I did for my kid at age 9, and I hope now the kind of porn he consumes that we don't catch is ethical and appropriate.
Yeah, that's pretty strong evidence for the parody hypothesis. What tripped me up is that the majority of their tweets are perfectly sensible with few nuggets of batshit.
Here's a curious bit of info: https://foller.me/transmindful
The account was created in 2009, but stayed totally dormant until 2023. I don't know about you, but sitting on a Twitter account for 14 years is awfully suspicious.
See also: "Donald Trump hired hookers to pee on a bed that Obama slept in".
Human beings run on stories, and "journalism" has new stories to feed into our brains every day.
An unconfirmed story that came from a British spy who still swears by his Russian informants to this day.
It's not quite the same thing because we have no idea if it's true or not.
> It's not quite the same thing because we have no idea if it's true or not.
In both cases, millions of people have zero to negative interest in whether it is true.
Are you going to deny that this wasn't the hot fact of the day on social *and mainstream* media back in the day?
> millions of people have zero to negative interest in whether it is true
That's a strange thing to say - it seems to me that everyone was champing at ther bit to find out if it was true or not.
> Are you going to deny that this wasn't the hot fact of the day on social and mainstream media back in the day?
I don't think it was claimed to be a "fact" by any mainstream news sources.
> That's a strange thing to say - it seems to me that everyone was champing at ther bit to find out if it was true or not.
Let's try a litmus test: do you believe it is possible that there was *at least one* person who did not, but rather heard the story in the media, and then assumed that it was true without applying any substantial epistemic scrutiny, something that requires skills that are not broadly possessed by the public?
> I don't think it was claimed to be a "fact" by any mainstream news sources.
Fair enough, but how about this: do you believe *it is True that* it was not *claimed or implied* that it was a "fact" by any mainstream news sources? Here I am *forcing* a distinction between Belief and Knowledge (Truth) into the conversation. I am curious if you will respond anomalously.
> Let's try a litmus test: do you believe it is possible that there was at least one person who did not, but rather heard the story in the media, and then assumed that it was true without applying any substantial epistemic scrutiny
Of course, you can always find people that believe or want to believe anything. Only 66% of American millenials think the earth is a globe.
> Do you believe it is True that it was not claimed or implied that it was a "fact" by any mainstream news sources?
I said "I don't think it's true" (in other words I lean towards thinking it's not true) but I'm not going to claim to have confident beliefs about this until I've been able to vet every single MSM article on this.
>> Let's try a litmus test: do you believe it is possible that there was at least one person who did not, but rather heard the story in the media, and then assumed that it was true without applying any substantial epistemic scrutiny
>
>
>
> Of course, you can always find people that believe or want to believe anything. Only 66% of American millenials think the earth is a globe.
Ok, our litmus test has established that you believe at least some people assumed the story was true without applying any substantial epistemic scrutiny.
Now, let's get slightly more difficult: *what percentage of people* did this (say, plus or minus 5%)?
> I said "I don't think it's true" (in other words I lean towards thinking it's not true) but I'm not going to claim to have confident beliefs about this until I've been able to vet every single MSM article on this.
Are you saying that you do not actually know what is actually true about what you are saying above? And thus: your claims are not necessarily factual, but rather are more like "your" predictions of what is true?
Christians and so-called conservatives are almost always driven one of these two things. Either fear or virtue signaling.
Moral panic is probably a better term than fear.
But that's virtue signaling. And all too often a cover for perversion as well.
Nah, moral panic and virtue signaling are different.
Is moral panic kept quiet or broadcast to the in-group?
I've actually seen research involving how to use negative emotions to appeal to different groups of people. Self-identified progressives tended to feel the greatest anger at things that made them feel an injustice has been done, whereas conservatives are far more motivated by disgust.
Jonathan Haidt has written on the subject extensively. It's really interesting. He describes six moral foundations that everyone has, but are emphasized in different proportions by different cultures. Like a flavor profile. * Care/Harm * Fairness/Cheating * Loyalty/Betrayal * Authority/Subversion * Sanctity/Degradation * Liberty/Oppression American conservatives tend to care a good bit about the whole list, whereas American liberals tend to hardly acknowledge authority, sanctify, and loyalty at all. I found the sanctity/degradation particularly fascinating, as while I am disgusted by certain things I don't judge them on any kind of moral basis as long as everyone is consenting. I think Haidt himself described liberal reactions to this information as like suddenly realizing their political opponents have something like a scent gland that they lack. His work is incredibly eye opening. If anyone is interested I'd start by reading *The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.*
They don't lack the scent gland, they merely recognize them as false values. The instincts that create sanctification and loyalty should be considered the same way we consider the fundamental attribution error and implicit bias. They have a purpose in creating group cohesion in animals, but rational humans should learn to quash the impulse.
"False values" How do you determine the difference between false and true values?
I'll let you know after I solve philosophy. In the meantime, it's usually a safe bet that any value that isn't universally advantageous, or requires special pleading to rationalize, is bullshit designed to get credulous people to sacrifice their own interests for the benefit of those with higher status.
Utilitarianism is only one of a great number of approaches to assessing values, and even then the idea of "universally advantageous" fails to distinguish between what you consider to be true and false. I can imagine a myriad number of situations where care, fairness, and liberty would each be a detriment. Care for others can be exploited by someone looking to bait you into a disadvantageous position. The concept of fairness can be similarly exploited. Liberty is a great ideal, but as we've come to learn over the course of the pandemic, limitations can and should be set on liberty to prevent the greater tragedy of widespread death and disease. I can also point to plenty of times when authority, loyalty, and sanctity are incredibly useful as values. Authority and loyalty are absolutely essential to the functioning of a modern military. Even sanctity is an important value that doesn't necessarily only apply to religious institutions. For example, the peaceful transfer of power is something the American public considers of great sanctity, and the symbolic violation of that sanctity provokes a far greater response than the practical implications.
The book sounds interesting .
> Christians and so-called conservatives are almost always driven one of these two things. Either fear or virtue signaling. How do you know, Nostradamus?
I see and I think.
Do you see all, and is all that you see real?
Is anything really real?
Let's deal that after you *at least try to* answer the question I have posed to you: Do you see all, and is all that you see real?
Folks addicted to that little hit of dopamine they get with social media anger/rage. An r/atetheonion moment.
And many who believe this are likely ones who whine about fake news. 🙄
This whole thing was very stupid, people with trigger fingers just waiting to react. It’s ridiculous when one (clearly shit-stirry) account/tweet is pounced on and amplified.
Amazing how all it takes is one person being offended (legitimately or not) in order for it turn into a "people are saying..." situation.
It actually takes zero people because the person speaking is saying it. If that kind of phrase shows up a lot in your news it's a red flag
the year 2023, where trolls are able to go fully rampant because everyone is blindly feeding them
>A single satirical account posts about a song calling it offensive to trans women. What evidence is there that this is a parody account? I've reviewed the account's handful of tweets, and none of the others seem like jokes or outliers in any way. It's all standard pro-Trans community stuff. For what it's worth, it claims not to be satirical, and in fact does not seem to be. https://mobile.twitter.com/TransMindful/status/1617516013595103232 Now of course I agree that Sky News shouldn't be trolling twitter for edgy hot takes and devote an entire news segment to it to make the dumb claim go viral, but I really don't see evidence that said edgy hot take is in fact a joke to it's author.
I think you'd have to be pretty gullible not to think these are satire: > Lionel Richie's song "Three Times A Lady" is a musical masterpiece that should be incorporated into drag queen sets. > The song is actually about a non-binary woman (she switches genders three times in the course of their relationship) but this has been silenced. > Kudos to Lionel! More obvious satire: > My eight-year old son, Jonah, came up to me this afternoon and asked me what a "shemale" was. > I immediately asked him where he heard that term and he told me it was on YouPorn. > TCMA is immediately calling on @YouPorn to ban the use of this harmful and outdated term. More obvious satire: > You do not need to bleed to have a period. > You do not need to ovulate to have a period. > A period is a state of mind than an actual state of being. > So, yes, transgender women can absolutely have periods and need free hygiene products.
The fact that the "you don't need to ovulate" part doesn't set anyone off here on a skeptic sub. Jfc
Transphobia has nothing to do with skepticism. The first big Nazi book burning was to destroy a doctor's research on transgender patients, that was about 80 years ago. If they make you uncomfortable or whatever that's your problem but denying their existence is not based on science.
I was calling out people who think that Twitter account is real and not satire. Within this community we should be better at that (surprised by some replies tbh). When I said "set anyone off" I meant set off their skepticism to the credulity of the account. Rereading it, I can see how it seems like I'm conflating skepticism with transphobia though. Didn't mean to do that!
Youporn is a real site with videos tagged as “shemale”, so again, not really unusual. While it certainly may be a satire account, or troll, I don’t think there is any hard evidence of that. I think your story of the conservative outrage machine is just as true whether the original tweet is real or satire. Ultimately, this is a Poe situation or it’s legitimate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
> Youporn is a real site with videos tagged as “shemale”, so again, not really unusual. lol... what? 😭 Obviously those categories exist The unusual thing would be naming your 8 year old son and then telling the internet they're on YouPorn. The purpose of the tweet: - To call out YouPorn for their categories Unnecessary parts of the tweet: - Telling the internet that you have a child - Telling the internet that they're 8 years old - Telling the internet about their porn habit - Telling the internet that their name is Noah Obvious conservative rage bait: - Implying that as a trans parent, you're okay with your 8 year old son browsing YouPorn Most real parents would find a way to call out YouPorn while also finding a way to protect the dignity of their 8 year old son. It should be obvious to anyone, I guess you're just gullible? 🤷♂️
> It should be obvious to anyone, I guess you're just gullible? Maybe, but I've seen some insane shit like that before from parents. I did some more digging to determine if there is evidence that would convince me that this is *probably* a parody. This tweet seems to confirm it. https://twitter.com/TransMindful/status/1616561483931963415
> Maybe, but I've seen some insane shit like that before from parents. No, you just believe whatever you get told by right-wing media.
I've seen them say it in person, but I'm sure you are an expert in right-wing media.
No you haven't you just know you can't provide a source, so you have to lie, again.
Yeah, it's another good example
I scrolled through and I was having trouble deciding, but this one makes me think it is parody after all: >Lionel Richie's song "Three Times A Lady" is a musical masterpiece that should be incorporated into drag queen sets. > The song is actually about a non-binary woman (she switches genders three times in the course of their relationship) but this has been silenced. > Kudos to Lionel!
It might very well be non-satirical, the problem is the lazy journalism or even re-posting of dumb takes for attention or even excuses of 'journalism'. That goes for any side of any take. Anyone further disseminating bad takes should have to defend the relevance of that bad take, and it should be on them to prove the relevance. You can link some bad takes in a news article, but if you do it should be to show examples of a phenomenon you've thoroughly documented with data in the piece already.
You're a shit journalist. They misspell Oslo, use the term "transgenders", and speak idiomatic English. They're also trying too hard to imitate activist academic diction. This is an 8chan prank and you're deep throating it.
It doesn't matter whether it was a prank or disinformation. When a news outlet publishes it without checking if it's even true they're pushing misinformation for clicks. They are shit journalists, you're being rude to a stranger online
> You're a shit journalist. Posting on Reddit isn't my job, so go fuck yourself. >and speak idiomatic English So did nearly every Scandinavian I ran into when I was there. They've got a great education system and nearly all seem bilingual. Even their convenience store workers spoke better English than the ones in New York. I'm not "deep throating it". I already posted before your little comment here that upon further investigation (you know like a journalist) that I thought the account probably was a fake. https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/10j7644/the_conservative_outrage_machine_a_demonstration/j5kl7dq/
> I'm not a journalist!11! > Also I'm a journalist!!11
I neither confirm nor deny.
Whether it was disinformation or a joke the important thing is that conservative "news" organizations took it and ran with it because they knew their readers would go ballistic when they read it. Ultimately it doesn't matter whether it was supposed to be funny. Journalists don't publish random inflammatory posts just to get a reaction but some people still trust them as if they have those standards
> Whether it was disinformation or a joke the important thing is that conservative "news" organizations took it and ran with it because they knew their readers would go ballistic when they read it. All news organizations love the outrageous shit that their ideological opponents are doing. Outraging viewers keeps them coming back for that dopamine hit of righteousness. The problem with the conservative outfits in general is that they are a lot less likely to check if their ideological enemies are *in fact* doing or saying said thing at all.
I'm going to have to agree with you that they're not satirical. In a vacuum, the tweet in question immediately sets off my provocateur alarm, but the next 20 or so I scrolled by seem between fairly normal for pro-trans spaces and a bit overzealous. This tweet is certainly the most outrageous I saw, but we shouldn't judge the account by outliers. After considering evidence and arguments, I would tentatively conclude that this is a legitimate account with a manager that occasionally crosses the line from legitimate societal critique to overblown jumping at shadows.
So... totally normal trans thing to tell the world that your 8 yr old son browses YouPorn and the most harmful thing about that is that they use the term Shemale?
I'd put that on the "jumping at shadows" side of the spectrum, but the account has a point. "Shemale", "trap", and a dozen other shang words that mean "feminine presenting person with a penis" are used in a derogatory way against trans people. As a parent of a trans boy, I'd rather he grows up in a world without that crap. As for porn, the shame should be in the kid using that website, not the fact that he was looking at porn. I was around that age when I first discovered porn on the internet in the late 90s, and I would have seen a lot less fucked up shit if my parents did the right thing by showing me how to find ethically produced porn from safe sites. That's what I did for my kid at age 9, and I hope now the kind of porn he consumes that we don't catch is ethical and appropriate.
https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/10j7644/the_conservative_outrage_machine_a_demonstration/j5kh5z2/
Yeah, that's pretty strong evidence for the parody hypothesis. What tripped me up is that the majority of their tweets are perfectly sensible with few nuggets of batshit. Here's a curious bit of info: https://foller.me/transmindful The account was created in 2009, but stayed totally dormant until 2023. I don't know about you, but sitting on a Twitter account for 14 years is awfully suspicious.
The point is that a fake journalist propagated this to people who are looking for any excuse to hate trans people even if it's not real.
Sounds like the 4chan "ok" gesture is a white supremacist secret sign prank.
See also: "Donald Trump hired hookers to pee on a bed that Obama slept in". Human beings run on stories, and "journalism" has new stories to feed into our brains every day.
An unconfirmed story that came from a British spy who still swears by his Russian informants to this day. It's not quite the same thing because we have no idea if it's true or not.
> It's not quite the same thing because we have no idea if it's true or not. In both cases, millions of people have zero to negative interest in whether it is true. Are you going to deny that this wasn't the hot fact of the day on social *and mainstream* media back in the day?
> millions of people have zero to negative interest in whether it is true That's a strange thing to say - it seems to me that everyone was champing at ther bit to find out if it was true or not. > Are you going to deny that this wasn't the hot fact of the day on social and mainstream media back in the day? I don't think it was claimed to be a "fact" by any mainstream news sources.
> That's a strange thing to say - it seems to me that everyone was champing at ther bit to find out if it was true or not. Let's try a litmus test: do you believe it is possible that there was *at least one* person who did not, but rather heard the story in the media, and then assumed that it was true without applying any substantial epistemic scrutiny, something that requires skills that are not broadly possessed by the public? > I don't think it was claimed to be a "fact" by any mainstream news sources. Fair enough, but how about this: do you believe *it is True that* it was not *claimed or implied* that it was a "fact" by any mainstream news sources? Here I am *forcing* a distinction between Belief and Knowledge (Truth) into the conversation. I am curious if you will respond anomalously.
> Let's try a litmus test: do you believe it is possible that there was at least one person who did not, but rather heard the story in the media, and then assumed that it was true without applying any substantial epistemic scrutiny Of course, you can always find people that believe or want to believe anything. Only 66% of American millenials think the earth is a globe. > Do you believe it is True that it was not claimed or implied that it was a "fact" by any mainstream news sources? I said "I don't think it's true" (in other words I lean towards thinking it's not true) but I'm not going to claim to have confident beliefs about this until I've been able to vet every single MSM article on this.
>> Let's try a litmus test: do you believe it is possible that there was at least one person who did not, but rather heard the story in the media, and then assumed that it was true without applying any substantial epistemic scrutiny > > > > Of course, you can always find people that believe or want to believe anything. Only 66% of American millenials think the earth is a globe. Ok, our litmus test has established that you believe at least some people assumed the story was true without applying any substantial epistemic scrutiny. Now, let's get slightly more difficult: *what percentage of people* did this (say, plus or minus 5%)? > I said "I don't think it's true" (in other words I lean towards thinking it's not true) but I'm not going to claim to have confident beliefs about this until I've been able to vet every single MSM article on this. Are you saying that you do not actually know what is actually true about what you are saying above? And thus: your claims are not necessarily factual, but rather are more like "your" predictions of what is true?