what happened here?
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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sorry but your post was the embodiment of the
/
archetype.
If you wrote a polite question like "What happened in June 1989 in Tienanmen Square, is the tank man photo real?" or "What is the origin of this picture?" then you'd get a polite response.
No one is obligated to be nice to you if you're not respectful back.
And yall don't need to start every interaction by being a massive douchebag and acting like everyone is out get you. The actual language of my question is pretty innocuous (though, perhaps less so given the context of the instance, but still).
If I asked if it was real, I would get answers biased by belief in the events legitimacy. I'm also not going to ask what the origins are as I already know where the image comes from. By very purposely asking such a vague question, I'm openly inviting people answer with the information that they deem important to the context of this image. By asking in this way and in this instance specifically, I have the greatest chance to learn and stumble into some new information. As with all things, there are extremely polarized opinions about Tianamen Square, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Typically untrue. The rest of your comment I agree with though, you do need to be aware that an instance like this is consistently trolled by
smuglord liberals so people are on guard and view vagueness as indicative of bad-faith participation. Given that most people don't want to waste their time with someone they know is acting in bad-faith the result is hostility and easy cheap responses instead.
Do you think the truth typically lies at the extremes of reason? In my experience Occams Razor holds in almost every situation, especially with controversial topics like this.
"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.
But what if they 50% had them and 50% didn't? Did you consider that?
Schrodingers WMD
But what if the extremes of reason are the start and the end, and the correct position is in the middle of that
I mean, the correct stance need not be bound to abstract spatial relations of stances
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.
Yeah I was willing to give OP the benefit of the doubt until this comment. Classic
brainworms
Personally I believe that Neil Armstrong only made it halfway to the moon
He forgot to go pee first
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.
I would argue it does. One extreme wants to say; "Tienanmen Square was a horrible tragedy and China/ Communism is the evilest thing in the world", likely not true, but also, neither China nor Communism have clean hands. The other extreme wants to say; "Nothing interesting happened with Tienanmen Square and the West/ Capitalism is the evilest thing in the world", equally unlikely to be true, but also, neither the West or Communism have clean hands. In this case, Occam's Razor implies that neither of these extremes is reasonable and that the true story is actually some composite of both. I'm not using Occam's Razor as a form of neutrality, merely as a mechanism for determining when a reasonable conclusion can be made.
If we are your proxy for this extreme and this was your takeaway from the readings and videos you’ve been linked, I don’t know what to tell you. The June 4th Incident was the culmination of weeks of protests and has lasting impacts to this day both domestically and internationally. Chinese students are taught as much in school.
that is not what Occam's Razor is though
Tfw you confuse Occam's Razor with the Golden Means Fallacy
You can't possibly think anyone here believes this, this is just the cartoonish (racist?) western propaganda image of a society brainwashed into forgetting massive historical events, akin to "no winnie the pooh in China" or "1M Uyghurs genocided in Xinjiang." You've gotten at least a dozen articles and sources elaborating on the causes, events, and outcomes of the protests and riots on June 4th 1989
I'll use a more recent example here than some of the other comments. The west claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Iraq claimed otherwise. Is the truth simply in the middle because both George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein are unreliable and bad people? Did Iraq have half a WMD? What does your interpretation of Occam's Razor say about this situation?
is already a centrist position in the US. It's not extreme, it's mainstream.
is a straw man and not a position many people hold.
So no, the truth is not in the middle of those two things. China doesn't hold that nothing interesting happened. China doesn't even hold that capitalism is the most evil thing. Individuals on the internet may play fast and loose with moralizing, but it's not about capitalism being evil. It's about it being exploitive and abstracted slavery. People don't engage in slavery to be mean, or because evil has possessed them, they do it because they materially benefit from it.
But that's not what Occam's Razor is. Occam's Razor is an appeal to parsimony: the explanation that requires you to take on the fewest unwarranted assumptions is the best one, at least most of the time. The idea is that if you one possible explanation for an event that requires you to invent a whole metaphysical system and another that doesn't require that, you should prefer the latter explanation assuming both have equal explanatory power. It has absolutely nothing to do with "splitting the difference" between two explanations or anything like that.
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?
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.
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?
They could be among us even now!
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.