volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@maria how about abortion?

@siderea I don't think you've proven your point here, you've just made an assertion out of nowhere.

The precautionary principle as you have stated, it seems completely logical and rational, even if you simply, without argument, declare otherwise.

@mikej exactly!

So there was plenty of bad evidence, and it needed to be called out as bad, not just ignored.

It was a huge problem, and it remains a huge problem, that all of this evidence is just ignored as not existing at all instead of being properly debunked and refuted.

So many people continue to believe this evidence today because so many in the mainstream never dealt with it, and that's a huge problem.

@mattblaze

@PricklyPam but that's not how statistics work.

More often the victim than perpetrator leaves a ton of room for any individual case being the perpetrator.

So yes, any individual case is perfectly open to being blamed on mental illness.

And guns don't have agency, so it's silly to blame them anyway.

@jackiegardina remember that the Supreme Court involvement in 2000 was to knock down a lower court that improperly got involved.

Courts don't get involved all the time. So often what people are really complaining about is courts hearing a case and saying, hey, we don't have any jurisdiction here.

That's largely what happened once Trump started complaining to them.

@tab2space I mean thanks for your contribution. My eye rolling will help spread the moisture evenly.
@ErrataRob

@WesternInfidels Oh I've known a lot of those people personally. Well I know both people who believe in the election steal and I know people who are literal flat earthers. (Although that Venn diagram doesn't really overlap in my personal experience).

And from what I've seen, the attitude doesn't vanish if the winter has an R. They just are falling for BS from the uncontested claims that they are receiving.

So in my experience the key is to systematically sit down and go through the claims that they are receiving from BS sources to debunk them one by one, as annoying as that may feel.

But yeah, I go out of my comfort zone to interact with these people so I know a little more about how they operate than a lot of people here seem to.

@mattblaze

@ErrataRob YES exactly!

@mattblaze

@quinn Why not both?

My ego can stand being so embarrassed. But yes he is being cagey.

What are you getting at with this post? shouldn't be a controversial or difficult question.

@mattblaze

@MattFerrel not at all!

I'm one of those people who say that if you vote a certain way, you should be blamed for the results of your votes.

@mnutty again, you have your facts backwards.

If anything Jan 6th just emphasized that it doesn't matter what politicians think, the law prevails, and no matter how much someone like Trump might dislike it, we don't let them decide whether or not the law will prevail.

It's not up to a criminal as to whether the law prevails. It does.

@peltast I mean there have been presentations with hours and hours of evidence, again bad evidence, tons of court filings with evidence, again bad evidence, conversations among friends about the evidence, yes bad evidence, and on and on.

Just off the top of my head I can point to statistical evidence (based on misunderstanding of statistics) and evidence of rich people funding get out the vote efforts to skew the election (which is legal in part of the game).

So there is an endless amount of garbage evidence. We need to call the evidence out as being garbage, not deny that it exists, because that way the folks falling for it don't get told that it's garbage and end up continuing to accept it at face value.

@mattblaze

@edyoung sadly, tragically, part of the issue is how people sort of accelerate as they fall down those rabbit holes, so it's really important to reach them early, to nip the claims off at the bud.

I never think people in general are unreachable (even though some individuals absolutely are) but the longer you wait to start engaging with them and debunking things they are falling for, the harder it is to arrest their fall.

These days I'm especially frustrated with the things people are spouting about COVID, and I sure do wish we had addressed some factual claims about vaccines and stuff even half a year ago when the misunderstandings were just beginning to really snowball.

And it was something I watched in real time, in frustration, because it's not like I have the microphone that, say, a national journalist does to answer questions being brought up but not addressed.

Anyway, it's my theme here that anyone is free to give up and I understand that choice. It's not the one I make, but I respect other people who just give up on the other side and don't bother addressing them.

@abraxas3d @mattblaze

@thomas_decker rulings are settled. The law is not. Huge difference.

@Alan @mikey_in_sd

@jackiegardina Oh, I disagree! 🙂

Courts are generally not the appropriate venue under the US system to challenge these irregularities, which was largely what the courts said, basically, Why are you bringing this to us?

That's just not how the US system works, and Trump's team was too damn ignorant to know. Or they were playing some sort of PR game with it, but I don't believe they were smart enough for that sort of next dimensional thinking. I think they honestly didn't know how US elections worked.

@ErrataRob You're assuming there's debate but I'm not! @mattblaze might be happily just spouting off into social media, and that's fine.

Anyway from your comment I would take away the phrase "the evidence shown to date" to highlight exactly what I'm saying, that evidence was shown even if it was really bad evidence.

But again, none of that matters if Matt's point was not to debate but just to preach to the choir.

@bks courts don't judge whether there is evidence at all. Courts judge how the evidence stacks up, which is my entire point.

So if you start pulling up those cases, you will see the evidence submitted to courts.

If anything, that there were 62 court cases highlights exactly what I'm saying, that there is evidence, it's just really bad evidence.

@mark the thing is, once a claim has been generally debunked, non-believing agitators are not only rejected by the mainstream, but they're rejected even more powerfully the stronger they agitate.

Heck, I saw this play out anecdotally just last night, hanging out with a group where one person became more and more forceful trying to promote a far out theory about the world, which just annoyed the rest more and more, so they got more and more excluded from the conversation.

No, you'll never convince everyone, but you don't have to.
Address the questions and concerns of a mainstream and what's left will be rendered marginalized and powerless.

@mattblaze I'm not very interesting, believe me.

I don't know why you're being so cagey about your motivations here, especially as mentioning what you're aiming for probably helps magnify whatever impact you're looking for.

@abraxas3d I don't know if he's taking on that job or not, as I tried to stress.

As I keep stressing, if a person's goal is just to preach to the choir, great!

If their goal is to do more and educate, even better in my book, but if so, there are ways to do that effectively that don't start with making the listener feel gaslit.

But whistling into the wind is definitely an option.

This is social media, after all, and Matt can pick his own job.

@mattblaze