Can you find anything wrong with the video?
I split this into its own thread. Critical thinking about this video is a good chance to deal with tribalism and bias.
If you want to stick to pure philosophy and you never read, watch or discuss politics that’s totally fine too. But most of you are not doing that and therefore ought to able to analyze stuff like this.
Note that the early part of my video is more heavily loaded with comments than latter part.
Main issue I saw (in case people don’t want to watch a long video) is that Lauren seemed to cherry pick a particular narrow definition of “mass graves” in order to criticize the media, and I didn’t think that was reasonable or even necessary to make her point about media narratives/framing/bias.
I had some more issues with a weird rumbley sound but think I snipped most of it with manual editing.
How would you compare the bias and tribalism level of LS’s video to other stuff like Tucker Carlson or NYT? Can you name some things that are more, similarly and less biased?
One thing about Lauren’s vid is I think there was some actual honest effort to investigate and research facts, to get different people’s perspectives on the record, and that kind of thing. I don’t think it was premeditated propaganda. And as I said in my video, I thought she raised some legit points about the mainstream media going too far in what they were claiming/inferring based on the scientific and other evidence that was actually available. OTOH she cherry-picked a definition to try to make her case stronger and also wound up going further in her claims than was warranted, which was ironic given what she was criticizing. The fact that she either didn’t have anyone in her circle point out the issue of cherrypicking the definition OR ignored them if they did indicates that her criticism-seeking methods aren’t very robust, since I don’t think that’s a super sophisticated point.
In terms of situating bias and tribalism levels in her videos relative to other stuff…hmm, well, to start with a comparison point with a high level of biased, the most biased thing I can think of in terms of stuff that is mainstream would be something like CNN (and other mainstream) coverage of/opinion editorials about Trump. With that stuff, there’s basically no effort to seek truth or do honest investigating - it’s 100% pure political points-scoring. And if something is ambiguous (as Trump’s statements often were) they just assume the worst possible interpretation. So against that example of some of the worst, most tribalistic and dishonest mainstream material I can think of, I think Lauren’s vid was better.
One documentary I watched a while back that I thought was pretty decent as far as not being tribalistic or biased was “The Red Pill” by Cassie Jaye. I think maybe the issue there was that the filmmaker was a feminist who actually changed her views somewhat and went through some internal struggle and conscience-searching as part of the film-making process. I don’t think Lauren’s video-making process was like that - she had some preconceptions and biases and a basic point that she wanted to make. So I think Lauren’s vid was worse than “The Red Pill” in that respect.
It looks like you were purposefully not answering my question (e.g. the parts about Tucker Carlson and NYT) while also not providing framing for your post as anything other than an answer to my question.
It looks like you tried to disguise not answering by writing way more than was necessary.
I interpreted the reference “to other stuff like Tucker Carlson or NYT” as a suggestive/illustrative list, and not as a request for a comparison to those two specific examples. I actually disagree with you that I should try comparing stuff to Tucker. I should have mentioned that!
Re: Tucker, I thought that I should actually avoid doing any comparisons to him since I’ve been criticized for linking his stuff and being tribalistic lately, so comparing stuff to Tucker seemed like an especially bad/hard example of stuff to use as a point of comparison. Like I’m not sure I’m a good judge of relative bias levels using Tucker as a baseline.
Re: the NYT, I actually haven’t read them much for many years. I know their general style, but given how I took the question, “substituting in” CNN, who I’ve seen a bit more of recently (at least Trump-presidency recently) seemed reasonable.
I’d say that in general the NYT can be a bit more subtle and sophisticated and require that you read between the lines more, where I think that Lauren kind of wears her heart on her sleeve more - or maybe it’s that she has more of a reputation as a right-winger and than the NYT has as left-wing, and so I interpret her stuff as coming more from a certain perspective. IDK. Anyways one qualification re: the NYT is that I would say that they used to be more subtle, but the past few years (as the more woke people have pushed out the more “old time” liberals and more middle of the road people, and since they got rid of their public editor) they’ve actually gotten much more blatant (writing open direct praise of communist societies, repeatedly, recently, which is actually really disturbing).
In my mind I have been trying to write and say more as an attempt at making more of an effort to engage. I could give shorter responses but that seems like it’d be worse.
I don’t really want to get into explaining it but FYI Lauren Southern’s video is super bad, tribalist, biased propaganda. Missing most of that problem means engaging with most political material in general is going to get you misled, indoctrinated, etc. You don’t have the critical and analytic skills for engaging with that kind of material to be reasonable.
This applies to most people here (and elsewhere). Political material is a dangerous by design. Learn stuff about how to think and rationality instead/first. Or at least stick to areas with much less propaganda and controversy.