If you ever take a calculus or precalculus class, when you are testing for minima and maxima across a zone, you usually test the corners first. The wisdom therein is that you don’t know for sure whether you are starting out centered on the critical point.

It’s the same thing for politics. You can’t assume that the observable range is equidistant from The Truth in all directions. In many cases, you’re going to have an edge or a corner that is closest. Starting out by saying “we’re going to define truth simply by the average of the opinions that are out there” assumes that all perspectives are equally reasonable, that the average of the masses is always right, that it does not need to evolve, and that it is immune to manipulation. All of these assumptions are deeply wrong. Using this approach, you are always going to end up defining truth by the principles of strangers, instead of developing your own principles.

Do you think the truth typically lies at the extremes of reason?

yeah, pretty much always. What truth lied in the middle of the geocentrism debate? Does God exist or not? Can the truth be somewhere in the middle for any of the most important questions?

Well yes because the truth is the truth and our reason is Calvinball that changes over time and space. Scientific advancement always happens at the edge of knowledge and reason. That’s how it advances. You have to question the existing premise in order to move past it. You’re the one moving, not reality.

Occams Razor does not mean that the truth is always in the center of reason. It’s that all things being equal (aka equal evidence for all sides), the truth is the thing that requires the fewest assumptions. Your lack of awareness about the evidence (ie full video of Tienanmen Square) isn’t the thing that requires the least amount of assumptions. You’re just assuming you have all the information and acting on that. We’re not assuming the information, we have it. So ours requires one less assumption than you.

“Reason” isn’t something with extremes, normally. Events are events, the truth is in the evidence. Interpretations of the evidence can vary, but truth doesn’t vary. There’s nothing about being in the “middle” of two positions on what happened in a historical event that makes the median stance any more or less accurate than the stances themselves.

As an example, Iraq with WMD. The US line was that Iraq had WMD, the Iraqi line was that they didn’t. The Iraqi line was 100% correct and the US line was 100% fabrication.

Occam’s Razor has nothing to do with the truth being in the middle of two arbitrarily chosen positions you pseudointellectual lib.

You’re just throwing out phrases that you think make you sound smart.

Personally I believe that Neil Armstrong only made it halfway to the moon

Invoking Occam’s Razor here is conflating neutrality with simplicity which is not always the case. Most political dichotomies of opinion are social constructions which themselves have bias. While there is a kernel of truth to “the truth lies somewhere in the middle” (you should try to get a complete picture before reaching a conclusion), applying it to already-biased dichotomies and then landing in the middle is going to result in you favoring the original bias present in the construction.

No I think that when multiple people are telling history there is usually one that is correct and it’s usually the ones that were actually physically present at the time it occurred.

There aren’t multiple liars, there are multiple liars and one person telling the truth. You aren’t seeking a “middle”, you’re seeking the person telling the truth. “The middle” would be incorrect as well, as it would be in-between the lie and the truth.

I know that 1+1=2 but some people think 1+1=3. So probably 1+1 is approximately 2.5 since objective truth usually lies somewhere between two ends huh.

Now you could say that you don’t know enough about math to know either way and that would be fine too, but then you shouldn’t have an opinion on it or say anything about math at all

Have you ever heard of the golden mean fallacy?

I like this line of thinking, but I’m having a hard time using it to understand the phenomenon of crop circles.

Explanation 1: it was a previously unknown spacefaring species that uses giant circles to communicate.
Explanation 2: it was a couple middle aged Brits with some boards

Does Occam’s Razor say that it was a couple of aliens with some boards, or it was a previously unknown advanced civilization of middle-aged British men?

Unrelated but I always read your posts in the mighty monarchs voice and this one is really funny coming from The Monarch

Yes I am. What goes around comes around.

And?

It’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean

Yeah someone also used “natopedia” lol, we need to do some self-crit about being normal online (when appropriate)

I feel like debatelord is pretty self-evident, but there’s other ones like smuglord where I agree. Gonna change it to debatebro though

“Debatebro” is used pretty commonly outside of here. I think “debatelord” is close enough most people will get it.

You are being rude in the way I’ve pointed out. Engaging in this discussion, but ignoring points you dislike is rude. You are doing this in this very response here.
By being rude you appear as a dipshit. You therefore receive uncivil attitude back. If you were less condescending about your way of interaction, then you would receive kinder responses. You are not owed any cool jets, when you yourself are behaving poorly.
Go look thru the linked thread to learn how you actually behave in a civil chat.

Let me engage in my own time.

“Your post” lol buddy it’s a public forum and the block button is right there. Let me point out how you’re being obvious in my own time.

If that’s true, why post this? What is this image supposed to mean, to you?

Let us look at a specific example. A claim like “There’s cultural genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” is simply unreal to most Westerners, close to pure gibberish. The words really refer to existing entities and geographies, but Westerners aren’t familiar with them. The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” and the elementary mistakes people make when they write out statements of “solidarity” make that much clear. This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China, and retrospectively I think to some extent it was a mistake to personally have spent so much time trying to teach them. It’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.

What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.