what happened here?
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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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.
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.