Ad hominem, and not persuasive. Of course you don’t like your political opponents, why would anyone ever be convinced by you criticizing him for his weird evangelism when you say little about his actual academic work.
“Nitpicking over definitions of genocide”
Obviously dumb.
Just read the fucking papers. They’re not complicated, find the evidence backing up the claims they’re making and figure out how it poorly supports the claims made. Same thing with the organ harvesting stuff. When you actually read the original stuff you can readily take apart the arguments being used there.
I saw someone link an article they claimed was about Chinese troll farms to support a claim about Reddit being astroturfed. One of you fuckers probably just called him a CIA asset as if that’s not the exact same stupid argument but this time without a supporting source. All you had to do was read the abstract of it to learn that the actual conclusions of the paper were that there weren’t any actual “farms”, just people posting after work to Chinese social media, not reddit or any western social media. It was literally the easiest dunk in the world but they couldn’t be bothered to read anything that isn’t 100+ Year old pamphlets. I used to be much more critical of China, but I shifted on it by reading the sources supporting the critical claims and finding them worthless. Meanwhile most tankie China posts are just masturbatory bad faith in-group circlejerks. The western propaganda is not hard to dismantle if you’d just fucking try. But no, just use fallacious arguments for the 1,000,000th time and enjoy trolling the libs.
Libs love ad hominem and are often persuaded by it. This is why negative campaigning can work, for example. Adrian Zenz is very useful for making them question theiredia sources.
“Nitpicking over definitions of genocide”
This is usually a topic introduced by the lib. Sometimes they really want to talk about cultural genocide. Sometimes they're making claims of genocide and you need to remind them of the miraculous transformation of the cultural genocide claim into a straight-up genocide claim and that this happened through Mike Pompeo and a right wing foreign policy think tank - how loosey-goosey this is and that, again, the media has happily played along and unquestioningly repeated both narratives.
I've de-sinophobified 6+ people irl with these counternarratives and I'm not exactly canvassing on them, just talking to people in lib social circles.
Not just libs. Someone in here argued with me last month or earlier this month that something happened in Uyghur and CCP is covering it. It was on the post about some radlib quote tweeting "we did it" to the AP article about Uyghur. It ended with them saying that "neither you nor I know Chinese or have been there but something did happened". Idk how you can convince yourself to find "truth" in a right wing propaganda while posting on a leftist website.
Everyone loves ad hominem, it’s fucking fun to use. Doesn’t make it a valid argument.
These argument approaches sometimes work, for sure. But if the public consensus is anything to go by, there’s limited fucking reach for them. Sure they’ll work socially, but no institution is going to amplify those messages, and it fails whenever you encounter someone who knows to be rightly skeptical of ad hominem arguments.
Everyone loves ad hominem, it’s fucking fun to use. Doesn’t make it a valid argument.
Define validity. Topics like journalism fundamentally depend on trust, so attacking sources is 100% valid. The only source for many claims is going to be dubious and there will often be no other context to invoke because it's just what some prick in a think tank pulled out of their ass. The only option is to point at the source as being ridiculous and untrustworthy.
These argument approaches sometimes work, for sure. But if the public consensus is anything to go by, there’s limited fucking reach for them.
It definitely works better than sticking to some decontextualized platonic ideal of what arguments follow, which is my overly detailed guess at the alternative you're thinking of. The problem with ad hominem is that it's an entry under "fallacies" in Wikipedia, yes?
Sure they’ll work socially, but no institution is going to amplify those messages,
This is a problem for anything outside of the current ruling class's status quo, though it's not a 100% effective filter. The system will try to co-opt or villify grassroots narratives and can end up amplifying messages that way, with varying levels of success at deranging the ideas in question.
and it fails whenever you encounter someone who knows to be rightly skeptical of ad hominem arguments.
I've never seen it fail. Even the people who think they care about ad hominem use it constantly because authority is (1) a necessary aspect of non-deductive logic and (2) just plain part of how we rationalize our current positions. That person will discount something if Trump says it if they think Trump is a joke. That person will discount anything said by AOC if they think she's an agent of Satan. That person will discount something said by a scientist that believes the earth is round - because they're a flat-earther and such a person must be part of a cabal.
It's easy to deal with: you just start asking them how they know anything about the topic that doesn't come from an untrustworthy source and whether they just believe claims from charlatans by default or increase their standard of evidence for incompetents and liars.
This isn't entirely fair to the people pushing back, though I agree sometimes people choose the wrong arguments. There are better arguments that are commonly used, however: see explanations of why Zenz's work is lacking, "there is no refugee crisis", and "Muslim-majority countries do not support America in this" for three.
Also, the Zenz thing actually does convince people. The guy is fucking crazy, demonstrating that does make people more hesitant to trust his "research".
See I don’t find any of those arguments persuasive, and if someone is genuinely looking for rigorous critique they shouldn’t either.
The existence or non-existence of a refugee crisis is probably the strongest argument, but is easily challenged. “China’s control is just that powerful”, “The genocide is through authoritarian control and only limited state violence. So refugees aren’t necessarily present.”
As for the Muslim countries claim, there’s a lot of weird assumptions there. Primarily that state actors would give a shit about human rights abuses when it goes against their national interests to complain.
And finally, Zenz is a creep. Yeah some folks will find this persuasive, but it’s still a bad argument. A fallacy is a fallacy, if you’re talking to someone who cares about the weight of evidence they (and I) won’t give a shit about who he is unless you can demonstrate how his others beliefs affect how he interprets his research.
What weight of evidence? The studies use flawed methodology, the people involved have shown their bad faith. You can't prove a negative, all you can do is discredit the evidence. People are always going to have a rejoinder which amounts to "I just know in my heart that China is evil".
unless you can demonstrate how his others beliefs affect how he interprets his research.
He believes god sent him on a quest to destroy China, I'm pretty sure it affects how he interprets his research. He also works for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, known CIA cutout IIRC.
Yeah, but the methodology isn't correct. For instance, there was a study that involved a lot of extrapolation from a small number of interviews, and people were regularly bringing that up as a criticism.
Also, regardless of what you think, Zenz being a nutcase does cast doubt on what he says and is a very convincing argument for many people.
Just to add: I know his methodology is flawed and the data is poor. Because I read his fucking papers. That is what allows me to talk intelligently about it, and then go on to explain that he is likely motivated by ideological reasons. This is far more effective.
“The methodology is flawed in these ways which invalidate the conclusions.”
Not ad hominem.
Ad hominem on the other hand:
It’s persuasive some of the time, but it leaves you with nothing if the source is anyone but Zenz. Also it’s still fallacious. I mean, I find Zenz fucking abhorrent and am highly confident that his wacko religious views motivate his work, but if I tried to argue that in any kind of intellectually serious sphere I’d be laughed out of the room, and rightly so.
but it leaves you with nothing if the source is anyone but Zenz
Yeah, this is the real problem with the Zenz stuff. It's not really an "intellectually serious" setting in, say, a Reddit thread, so it can convince people. But if it's not Zenz then it's useless - though it's Zenz a surprising amount of the time.
Just read the fucking papers. They’re not complicated, find the evidence backing up the claims they’re making and figure out how it poorly supports the claims made. Same thing with the organ harvesting stuff. When you actually read the original stuff you can readily take apart the arguments being used there.
You're right because most of the time these propagandists rely on their audience not doing the investigation. Personally, I find your prescribed method the most persuasive. I'll use this example link here.
What I admire about this specific example of your method is that it simultaneously establishes one's credibility (it makes people want to listen to you, want to come to your side) by demonstrating intellectual rigour and also puts the claimant on the defensive by asking them to justify every claim, big or small. I included the whole comment chain to show the claim being defeated (then deleted) and the comments of the lurkers praising it. This is the exact phenomenon we want to see replicated everywhere on whatever internet forum.
Having said that though, I think we should understand that it's not about what any individual here finds persuasive. If there's a method people find effective in their circles, I say go ahead.
Just because it's an ad hominem attack doesn't mean it's a fallacy. If people were saying "Zenz has never bowled a 300 in his life, and you trust him about China??" then it would be, but Zenz's history is relevant to describe his motivations, especially given that he is often the sole source of the accusations.
The difficulty with anything around the Uyghurs is that leftists are tasked with proving a negative; we can point to the lack of direct evidence (no bodies or refugees, even), but libs just use this as evidence of China's oppression (parenti_quote.jpg). I think a better strategy than just "read the fucking papers" is to relate this to the WMDs in Iraq. There, we had a complicit media reporting on completely fabricated information about one of America's enemies - it even includes a Pulitzer-winning expose where reporters annotate a bunch of blurry satellite images as evidence.
Yes it’s an ad hominem. You’re saying he’s an untrustworthy source without examining any of his arguments, that the definition of ad hominem. And it’s lazy.
Your example is a non sequitur, not ad hominem.
You don’t have to prove a negative, just demonstrate that the evidence for the affirmative is insufficient. But that means reading so it’s hard I guess.
I don't think it's ad hominem to point out that a source is flawed, Adrian Zenz himself says he's on a holy crusade against China and is the primary source of many Ughyur related claims. Yes it's not going to convince anyone who already believes his shit surely, but it's the same way I'd go "It's fucking Tucker Carlson who cares what he thinks about the Covid vaccines, he's a known liar" for that topic.
I personally like to bring up Zenz before saying what research he's known for to people I know unquestionably believe the genocide narrative. They'll usually agree this guy is a nut and nothing he says should be instantly believed.
Did you address the content of the argument, or did you say the source is untrustworthy? The latter is ad hominem and it’s fallacious. Talk about why he’s wrong. People can be circumstantially correct even if they’re creeps. These arguments are only persuasive to people who either don’t know the weaknesses of them or are already on your team. Besides, there are other sources on China besides Zenz. If all you know how to do is tell me Zenz is bad you’re going to fall on your face in every other scenario. Which is exactly what is see happen in the wild.
The difference to me is that from a known liar, expecting a higher burden of proof is the only reasonable outcome. Of course, to dismiss all evidence would be wrong but enacting higher standards is only fair.
An anti vaxxer might give good medical advice about a boil that a doctor gave suboptimal advice for, sure that scenario can happen, but absent anything else it's completely rational to disregard the anti vaxxers advice and follow the doctors instead. The amount of evidence that the anti vaxxer would have to supply is much more intensive than the amount the doctor has to bring before I would flip to the anti vaxxers boil advice.
Just read the fucking papers. They’re not complicated,
They are intentionally complicated. I’ve read dozens of articles on the subject that just cyclically reference eachother with zero primary sources
find the evidence backing up the claims they’re making and figure out how it poorly supports the claims made
There often times is no evidence or its entirely in Chinese. You tell a lib that their article has no evidence and they completely ignore you. That’s all they ever do.
This subject in particularly is annoying as fuck. The only big repositories debunking this stuff are ML subs and grayzone articles and a lib will immediately discount those two sources. Best way to counter Zenz shit is to point out he’s a bigoted zealot to tarnish his word. Libs eyes gloss otherwise.
This is all ignoring the fact that Zenz is paid to write this bullshit and I am paid to do 40hrs a week of physical labor. I do not have time to go through every Zenz article and write up counter points with sources. Memes are a much better value proposition.
Every argument about the uyghurs.
“Adrian ZoopZoop bad”
Ad hominem, and not persuasive. Of course you don’t like your political opponents, why would anyone ever be convinced by you criticizing him for his weird evangelism when you say little about his actual academic work.
“Nitpicking over definitions of genocide”
Obviously dumb.
Just read the fucking papers. They’re not complicated, find the evidence backing up the claims they’re making and figure out how it poorly supports the claims made. Same thing with the organ harvesting stuff. When you actually read the original stuff you can readily take apart the arguments being used there.
I saw someone link an article they claimed was about Chinese troll farms to support a claim about Reddit being astroturfed. One of you fuckers probably just called him a CIA asset as if that’s not the exact same stupid argument but this time without a supporting source. All you had to do was read the abstract of it to learn that the actual conclusions of the paper were that there weren’t any actual “farms”, just people posting after work to Chinese social media, not reddit or any western social media. It was literally the easiest dunk in the world but they couldn’t be bothered to read anything that isn’t 100+ Year old pamphlets. I used to be much more critical of China, but I shifted on it by reading the sources supporting the critical claims and finding them worthless. Meanwhile most tankie China posts are just masturbatory bad faith in-group circlejerks. The western propaganda is not hard to dismantle if you’d just fucking try. But no, just use fallacious arguments for the 1,000,000th time and enjoy trolling the libs.
Libs love ad hominem and are often persuaded by it. This is why negative campaigning can work, for example. Adrian Zenz is very useful for making them question theiredia sources.
This is usually a topic introduced by the lib. Sometimes they really want to talk about cultural genocide. Sometimes they're making claims of genocide and you need to remind them of the miraculous transformation of the cultural genocide claim into a straight-up genocide claim and that this happened through Mike Pompeo and a right wing foreign policy think tank - how loosey-goosey this is and that, again, the media has happily played along and unquestioningly repeated both narratives.
I've de-sinophobified 6+ people irl with these counternarratives and I'm not exactly canvassing on them, just talking to people in lib social circles.
Not just libs. Someone in here argued with me last month or earlier this month that something happened in Uyghur and CCP is covering it. It was on the post about some radlib quote tweeting "we did it" to the AP article about Uyghur. It ended with them saying that "neither you nor I know Chinese or have been there but something did happened". Idk how you can convince yourself to find "truth" in a right wing propaganda while posting on a leftist website.
Everyone loves ad hominem, it’s fucking fun to use. Doesn’t make it a valid argument.
These argument approaches sometimes work, for sure. But if the public consensus is anything to go by, there’s limited fucking reach for them. Sure they’ll work socially, but no institution is going to amplify those messages, and it fails whenever you encounter someone who knows to be rightly skeptical of ad hominem arguments.
Define validity. Topics like journalism fundamentally depend on trust, so attacking sources is 100% valid. The only source for many claims is going to be dubious and there will often be no other context to invoke because it's just what some prick in a think tank pulled out of their ass. The only option is to point at the source as being ridiculous and untrustworthy.
It definitely works better than sticking to some decontextualized platonic ideal of what arguments follow, which is my overly detailed guess at the alternative you're thinking of. The problem with ad hominem is that it's an entry under "fallacies" in Wikipedia, yes?
This is a problem for anything outside of the current ruling class's status quo, though it's not a 100% effective filter. The system will try to co-opt or villify grassroots narratives and can end up amplifying messages that way, with varying levels of success at deranging the ideas in question.
I've never seen it fail. Even the people who think they care about ad hominem use it constantly because authority is (1) a necessary aspect of non-deductive logic and (2) just plain part of how we rationalize our current positions. That person will discount something if Trump says it if they think Trump is a joke. That person will discount anything said by AOC if they think she's an agent of Satan. That person will discount something said by a scientist that believes the earth is round - because they're a flat-earther and such a person must be part of a cabal.
It's easy to deal with: you just start asking them how they know anything about the topic that doesn't come from an untrustworthy source and whether they just believe claims from charlatans by default or increase their standard of evidence for incompetents and liars.
This isn't entirely fair to the people pushing back, though I agree sometimes people choose the wrong arguments. There are better arguments that are commonly used, however: see explanations of why Zenz's work is lacking, "there is no refugee crisis", and "Muslim-majority countries do not support America in this" for three.
Also, the Zenz thing actually does convince people. The guy is fucking crazy, demonstrating that does make people more hesitant to trust his "research".
yeah especially since in articles he's usually just cited as "an expert" and that is enough to convince libs
See I don’t find any of those arguments persuasive, and if someone is genuinely looking for rigorous critique they shouldn’t either.
The existence or non-existence of a refugee crisis is probably the strongest argument, but is easily challenged. “China’s control is just that powerful”, “The genocide is through authoritarian control and only limited state violence. So refugees aren’t necessarily present.”
As for the Muslim countries claim, there’s a lot of weird assumptions there. Primarily that state actors would give a shit about human rights abuses when it goes against their national interests to complain.
And finally, Zenz is a creep. Yeah some folks will find this persuasive, but it’s still a bad argument. A fallacy is a fallacy, if you’re talking to someone who cares about the weight of evidence they (and I) won’t give a shit about who he is unless you can demonstrate how his others beliefs affect how he interprets his research.
What weight of evidence? The studies use flawed methodology, the people involved have shown their bad faith. You can't prove a negative, all you can do is discredit the evidence. People are always going to have a rejoinder which amounts to "I just know in my heart that China is evil".
He believes god sent him on a quest to destroy China, I'm pretty sure it affects how he interprets his research. He also works for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, known CIA cutout IIRC.
He can believe all these things and still have a correct methodology with accurate data.
Yeah, but the methodology isn't correct. For instance, there was a study that involved a lot of extrapolation from a small number of interviews, and people were regularly bringing that up as a criticism.
Also, regardless of what you think, Zenz being a nutcase does cast doubt on what he says and is a very convincing argument for many people.
Just to add: I know his methodology is flawed and the data is poor. Because I read his fucking papers. That is what allows me to talk intelligently about it, and then go on to explain that he is likely motivated by ideological reasons. This is far more effective.
Yeah, you're right that that's a better approach in some contexts, especially (as you say) more serious ones.
See that’s a real argument though.
“The methodology is flawed in these ways which invalidate the conclusions.”
Not ad hominem.
Ad hominem on the other hand: It’s persuasive some of the time, but it leaves you with nothing if the source is anyone but Zenz. Also it’s still fallacious. I mean, I find Zenz fucking abhorrent and am highly confident that his wacko religious views motivate his work, but if I tried to argue that in any kind of intellectually serious sphere I’d be laughed out of the room, and rightly so.
Yeah, this is the real problem with the Zenz stuff. It's not really an "intellectually serious" setting in, say, a Reddit thread, so it can convince people. But if it's not Zenz then it's useless - though it's Zenz a surprising amount of the time.
Unless you can demonstrate how his work is flawed I don’t find it persuasive.
You're right because most of the time these propagandists rely on their audience not doing the investigation. Personally, I find your prescribed method the most persuasive. I'll use this example link here.
What I admire about this specific example of your method is that it simultaneously establishes one's credibility (it makes people want to listen to you, want to come to your side) by demonstrating intellectual rigour and also puts the claimant on the defensive by asking them to justify every claim, big or small. I included the whole comment chain to show the claim being defeated (then deleted) and the comments of the lurkers praising it. This is the exact phenomenon we want to see replicated everywhere on whatever internet forum.
Having said that though, I think we should understand that it's not about what any individual here finds persuasive. If there's a method people find effective in their circles, I say go ahead.
Just because it's an ad hominem attack doesn't mean it's a fallacy. If people were saying "Zenz has never bowled a 300 in his life, and you trust him about China??" then it would be, but Zenz's history is relevant to describe his motivations, especially given that he is often the sole source of the accusations.
The difficulty with anything around the Uyghurs is that leftists are tasked with proving a negative; we can point to the lack of direct evidence (no bodies or refugees, even), but libs just use this as evidence of China's oppression (parenti_quote.jpg). I think a better strategy than just "read the fucking papers" is to relate this to the WMDs in Iraq. There, we had a complicit media reporting on completely fabricated information about one of America's enemies - it even includes a Pulitzer-winning expose where reporters annotate a bunch of blurry satellite images as evidence.
Yes it’s an ad hominem. You’re saying he’s an untrustworthy source without examining any of his arguments, that the definition of ad hominem. And it’s lazy.
Your example is a non sequitur, not ad hominem.
You don’t have to prove a negative, just demonstrate that the evidence for the affirmative is insufficient. But that means reading so it’s hard I guess.
I don't think it's ad hominem to point out that a source is flawed, Adrian Zenz himself says he's on a holy crusade against China and is the primary source of many Ughyur related claims. Yes it's not going to convince anyone who already believes his shit surely, but it's the same way I'd go "It's fucking Tucker Carlson who cares what he thinks about the Covid vaccines, he's a known liar" for that topic.
I personally like to bring up Zenz before saying what research he's known for to people I know unquestionably believe the genocide narrative. They'll usually agree this guy is a nut and nothing he says should be instantly believed.
Then I hit them with the information.
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Did you address the content of the argument, or did you say the source is untrustworthy? The latter is ad hominem and it’s fallacious. Talk about why he’s wrong. People can be circumstantially correct even if they’re creeps. These arguments are only persuasive to people who either don’t know the weaknesses of them or are already on your team. Besides, there are other sources on China besides Zenz. If all you know how to do is tell me Zenz is bad you’re going to fall on your face in every other scenario. Which is exactly what is see happen in the wild.
The difference to me is that from a known liar, expecting a higher burden of proof is the only reasonable outcome. Of course, to dismiss all evidence would be wrong but enacting higher standards is only fair.
An anti vaxxer might give good medical advice about a boil that a doctor gave suboptimal advice for, sure that scenario can happen, but absent anything else it's completely rational to disregard the anti vaxxers advice and follow the doctors instead. The amount of evidence that the anti vaxxer would have to supply is much more intensive than the amount the doctor has to bring before I would flip to the anti vaxxers boil advice.
They are intentionally complicated. I’ve read dozens of articles on the subject that just cyclically reference eachother with zero primary sources
There often times is no evidence or its entirely in Chinese. You tell a lib that their article has no evidence and they completely ignore you. That’s all they ever do.
This subject in particularly is annoying as fuck. The only big repositories debunking this stuff are ML subs and grayzone articles and a lib will immediately discount those two sources. Best way to counter Zenz shit is to point out he’s a bigoted zealot to tarnish his word. Libs eyes gloss otherwise.
This is all ignoring the fact that Zenz is paid to write this bullshit and I am paid to do 40hrs a week of physical labor. I do not have time to go through every Zenz article and write up counter points with sources. Memes are a much better value proposition.
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