@uanews I think this is #Falseequivalence, a #fallacy. And what a terrible man this #ramaswamy.

ChatGPT, Please show me a clear example of the term "false equivalence"

Okay. Hunter Biden tax case and gun possession is NOT the same as trading on America's Military top secret documents.
Hunter Biden's drug conviction and gun possession is NOT the same as CONSPIRING TO OVERTHROW THE ELECTION.

Hunter Biden's tax case is not a $2 Billion bribe from the saudi wealth fund.

#falseequivalence

When we talk about #values, and differences between Western values like #lgbtq rights, #womensrights vs Muslim values rejecting those,

THERE IS ONE DIFFERENCE:

WE allow people to live in freedom - those who don't share these can ignore it.

THEY forbid others that do not comply with cultural/religious values

#falseequivalence

"And, frankly, the mainstream media has made it that much easier for cowardly Republicans to stick with Trump.

Rather than challenge Republicans at every turn to defend their embrace of Trump or even to examine seriously the historical origins of toxic racist, xenophobic and delusional beliefs, the mainstream media largely sticks to horserace politics."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/trump-nomination-gop-doomed/

#Journalism #BothSides #FalseEquivalence #HorseRace
#Politics #USA

@mawil1013 @BlackAzizAnansi Oh, HELL no. What we have here is over four centuries of evidence that you and me and ALL our fellow white folks must—MUST—reckon with. STAHP. NOW. #ReverseRacismBS #FalseEquivalence #LogicalFallacy

I'm really, really tired of the ridiculous comparisons between the capsized refugee boat, and the lost Titanic submersible. It's classic online madness, where an emotional overreaction obscures the reality.

The two situations have *nothing* to do with each other, other than the fact that they both happened in the ocean.

The comparison is absurd. A full analysis would reveal this, but people just love to trumpet false equivalencies to accomplish....what?

Does this comparison make the world a better place?

There are valuable lessons to be taken from both tragedies. The comparison obscures those lessons in favor of impotent outrage. Let's review:

Lesson 1, Billionaires are Criminals

Yes, billionaires are evil. It's not about whether property ownership or wealth is moral or immoral. It's not even so much about inequality, although that's a side effect. In every way that matters, having a billion dollars *identifies a person as a criminal.* Because there's no way to "earn" a billion dollars legally, or in a way compatible with democracy. An average working career for an American is 77,400 hours. That translates to about $12,000 per hour to "earn" a billion dollars in a lifetime. No human being is worth that hourly rate, in any industry or pursuit. So wealth on that scale can only be created through dealmaking, corruption, lobbying and power plays that undermine civil society. In effect all billionaires are guilty of grand larceny, and sedition.

Lesson 2, Wealth buys Power and is anti-democratic

Wealth beyond a certain scale no longer buys additional physical goods that are usable for one person or one family. Trust funds for heirs can only be so large, before they lose utility. There are only so many homes and cars and yachts a person needs. Even if they have unlimited funds. So after they've paid for all those things, and there's money left over, the only use for additional funds is the acquisition of political or cultural power. Billionaires are now our effective world government. They've stormed the castle of democracy in a way that won't easily be reversed.

Lesson 3, Power Causes Brain Damage

The poor design of the submersible that just killed 5 people including the CEO who designed it, is a direct result of this person believing he was an exception to the laws of physics, and exempt from compliance with industry best-practices and certification. Hubris doesn't even begin to cover it.

Lesson 4, Hubris Underlies Every Problem

The same hubris that killed the 5 occupants of the submersible, is also responsible for billionaires denying climate change. Climate change is directly responsible for the floods, droughts, and crop failures that put millions of human beings on the move away from the homes that they know and love. The creation of refugees is only one or two steps removed from the bulging stock portfolios of billionaires. So the refugee boat that sank wouldn't have even been in the ocean in the first place, if not for half a century of ill-gotten fossil fuel profits that have been made, long after the entire world was well aware of the risks. Every billionaire therefore has the blood and misery on their hands, of every refugee who has lost their home and way of life to the climate crisis.

Lesson 5, Jurisdiction and How The World Works

Not trying to rescue the submersible, would not have helped the capsized refugees. The news media not covering the submersible rescue, would not have improved coverage for the refugee shipwreck. There are different governments and agencies involved, in vastly different parts of the world. The timescale of the two tragedies was completely different. A lot of women and children died immediately within the hold of their ship. When a boat capsizes, you have minutes to just a few hours for rescue operations. Titanic rescuers were operating on a presumed 96 hour timeline that later proved to be false, since the submersible was already lost. Both situations are 20/20 in hindsight.

Lesson 6, Guilt and Dilution of Empathy

It's easy to hate on wealthy people taking a sightseeing trip to the bottom of the ocean. It's easy to feel compassion and pangs of guilt for innocent refugees who already have nothing and then also lose their lives. Both tragedies were preventable. But through dilution of empathy it's well known that people tend to care more about a few identifiable victims, than they do about the daily grinding tragedies that kill millions every year. It's why we get so worked up about mass shootings of a few kids, but shrug at the greater carnage of auto accidents or hospital errors which kill far more people. (To be clear, it's good that we get worked up about mass shootings, because they are 100% preventable).

Lesson 7, Ignoring What We Can't Fix

According to UNHCR, there are 100 million people in the world who have been forcibly displaced. This is a gargantuan problem. That's roughly the population of Florida, California, New York and Texas, put together. Fixing it would involve nothing less than remaking the entire world (away from authoritarian capitalism), and changing attitudes of wealthy nations. Faulty submarines, on the other hand, can be fixed through failure analysis. And that's the secondary purpose of sub rescue operations. Recovering debris that can provide answers. Bottom line is that people don't like to think about sinking refugee ships, any more than they like to think about mass shootings, because they know that tomorrow or next week, there will be another one. And there will.

Lesson 8, We Feel Powerless, Because We Gave Up Our Power

We only make these weak, facile comparisons, and use "whataboutism," because we on some level know that this is the way the world is and it's not likely to change. Billionaires will always get priority in rescues, healthcare, and everything else, because we've let them set the world up that way. This is us. We've all done this. Why? Because too many of us secretly lust after them. Too many of us cling to the fantasy that one day, we'll be billionaires too, so we don't want to treat them like the criminals they are. The way a lot of people vote, they'd rather live in a world where they have a 0.000001% chance of becoming a billionaire someday, than a world where there was a 100% chance that everyone would have enough. To achieve true justice and social democracy, we'd have to forcibly seize the property of the rich, and lock them up for their crimes. We'd establish salary caps, and wealth caps. We'd put corporations under accountable public ownership--not bullshit stockholder proxies. And we truly don't have the stomach for it. There is no real left wing in the US or other democratic countries. We've abdicated our citizenship to wealth, and there's no explanation for that, that makes any sense.

So we flail with impotent outrage, when the results of our abdication are rubbed in our collective faces by two farcical, preventable tragedies that happened close together in our fucked up timeline. Everyone wants to yell, and nobody wants to hear the truth.

#titanic #titan #refugees #billionaires #ClimateCrisis #falseequivalence

@BodyofBreen A human’s lack of due diligence doth not make a tool bad (nor good), though. #falseequivalence

In the right hands, this particular use case of ChatGPT can yield MUCH better results for the audience (and I’ve been proving that — for my audience — for months).

In the end, audiences will continue to choose content which appeals to them, regardless of how the sausage-stuffing is made. It’s up to us creators to use whatever tools we can to create the best stuff we can.

The False Equivalence Between The ‘Far Right’ And The ‘Hard Left’

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/the-false-equivalence-between-the-far-right-and-the-hard-left

#TalkingPointsMemo #FalseEquivalence #FarRight #HardLeft #PoliticalExtremism #MediaAnalysis #Politics #News

The lesson from the Diane Abbott furore: neither false equivalence nor hierarchies of victimhood help us | Marcus Ryder | The Guardian
#HierarchiesOfVictimhood
#HierarchyOfVictimhood
#HierarchyOfHate
#HierarchiesOfHate
#EnglishLanguage
#RaceIsASocialConstruct
#HierarchyOfPrejudice
#HierarchiesOfPrejudice
#FalseEquivalence
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/24/diane-abbott-letter

Let's talk about some wrong doors and wrong comparisons....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsb3KIZ9DmY

#BeauOfTheFifthColumn #FalseEquivalence

You cannot make this up. Acoording to the Adani Group fair business practices are like Colonization. Why else would their CFO equate the report against stock manipulation to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre https://www.businesstoday.in/amp/latest/corporate/story/adani-group-cfo-says-stock-rout-similar-to-jallianwala-bagh-massacre-368158-2023-01-30 #AdaniGroup #Colonialisation #falseequivalence.

A final #FalseEquivalence perpetuated by headlines and soundbites: turning over docs found after leaving office is the same as refusing to return WHEN ASKED and then continuing to lie about possession.

Repetition cements memories, whether misleading/misinfo or without bias. Especially when it’s about political beliefs.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2022.2127771

#biden
#trump
#ClassifiedDocuments
#Jan6thInsurrection

And #ABCNews is amplifying a poor poll.

The margin of error, 4.5%, is so huge as to render results almost like tossing darts. (Good polls cost a lot more than poor ones.)

Another #falseEquivalence perpetuated by headlines and soundbites: all #ClassifiedDocuments are equal.

The National Archives knew #Trump had documents because they were VERY secret. TOP secret.

The Archives didn’t know Obama-era docs were missing.

Adding insult to injury, poll details ARE ON A $-to-view site!

Surprise! False equivalence FTW, #ABCNews!

Most Americans get “news” via phones (82%) and TV (64%). Only 1-in-3 choose print. Pew lumps TV news and online newspapers in the same bucket, but watch/read ratios are probably similar.

Thus, Trump-Biden #FalseEquivalence grows.

STOP. TREATING. POOR. #POLLS. AS. HEADLINE. NEWS.

WHY?

Because news stories (1) tell us “what’s important” AND (2) what to think about it.

#ClassifiedDocuments
#Trump
#Biden
#MediaCriticism

"oh, gosh, look 'both sides' do it."
fer chrissake.
#falseequivalence

@DemocracyMatters With the corollary #falseequivalence that it’s not the gun that’s the problem, it’s the owner. After all, we don’t blame the cars for car wrecks.

We can’t ban guns just because they can be used to hurt people. After all, cars can be used to hurt people, so if we ban guns then we would have to ban cars too!

-- any given Republican
#FalseEquivalence #LogicalFallacy

Where critical thought withers & dies.

#falseequivalence #falseequivalency #whataboutism

@rbreich puts it very plainly. The document situation between Trump and Biden have absolutely nothing in common.

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/false-equivalence-b30

#documents #falseequivalence

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@roguespaceforce/109666940469773022 #falseequivalence