this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, there is still some level of uncertainty as they could just have crafted that data, but Reports (which are mainly talkie talkie with selected pieces of information - hence prone t cherry picking) are even more distant from raw data hence harder to confirm as "the whole truth" and when they're from Think Tanks funded by Governments (or, worse, with undisclosed funding sources) in nations that see China as an adversary (or China, or one of its allies) you know with absolute certainty that the makers of such reports have a huge incentive to push the viewpoint of the mainstream politicians of those nations.

Ultimatelly Trust is a scale rather than just two absolute points, and highly processed selective data wrapped with lots of text is itself less trustworthy because it's harder to check that it's both true and complete (i.e. hasn't been cherry picked), and sources which are funded by those who openly have very specific views of the target of such reports are much less trustworthy on that subject than sources not suffering from such a conflict of interest.

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time. They could not just "craft data" and get away with it. Forging verifiable data is the stupidest thing that a think tank could do if they want their future reports to also be picked up by mainstream media. They can be creative with their conclusions or accusations, but claiming that official government data says X, while it doesn't, that's not going to fly and they know it.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time.

Well, yeah, that's the whole point of Think Tanks - it's to produce reports for the media to unquestioningly parrot and in this day and age they definitelly unquestioningly parrot Think Tank reports without actually checking them, especially when they align with what the Government says and the target is a different nation's Government (they're more likely to actually check those things and even question them if the target is an internal group in a country, but even in certain countries you see for example reports of the words of spokespersons from, say, representatives of the industry treated with more implicit trust than those from unions, even though both sides should be thought of as equally biased towards certain interests),

Australia specifically falls in the "Country with wholly captured Press" category, same as the US, the UK and China itself.

As an example, a lot of the Propaganda pushed out around the 7 of October attack of Hamas on Israel was also pushed out by amongst others similar organisations and was widely reported in the media at the time as well as repeated by countless politicians in the West, and in the fullness of time most of that turned out to be wildly exagerated, misportrayal of events and even complete total bollocks.

Given the present day levels of "journalistic" "integrity" of the Press, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, "widely reported on the media" isn't the stamp of trustworthiness you seem to think it is.

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The report is 4 years old and as far as I can find, since then there have been no retractions of anything in it, nor has anyone shown that their were flaws with their methodology. You may not want to acknowledge it, but that data is real. This is something that has really happened.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Plenty of things published about the 7 October attack have never been retracted, most notably the count of deaths assigned to Hamas which in light of the activation of the Sampson Doctrine by Israel was almost certainly wildly exagerated since the Israeli Military was activelly murdering any of their own citizens that had been captured by Hamas.

It took almost a year of Israel doubling down almost daily on Murdering and Lies for those retractions to happen and even then they were only in a few Western News media, not as far as I know in the actual Israeli News Media who still now and almost without expection (the notable exception being The Hareetz) keep on unqestioningly publishing whatever the IDF and the Israeli Government says as God's Own Truth.

Using "the Press didn't retracted it" as measure of trustworthiness of something published by the Press is just circular logic: News Media who knowingly published Propaganda aren't going to retract it unless it blows up in their face to such a level that they are forced to do so, and that almost never happens with wordy "reports" that don't stay long in the spotlight, are hard to validate and which basically say that "country we see as adversary are bad people".

But even more simpler than that: replace everything with China and Chinese - if a Chinese Think Tank funded by the Chinese Government and even receiving funding from whatever is equivalent to the Department Of Defense in China, put out a report saying that the Uyghurs have been treated just as well as everybody else in China and all Western talk about an Huyghur Genocide are outright lies, would you believe them?

Because if you believe it when it's all Australia and Australians but not when it's the exact same structure but with China and Chinese instead, then your trust is entirelly anchored on your biases, not on any objective analysis of the problem space and the actors involved.

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Whataboutism? I'm not going there. All your arguments against the data that you don't like were ad hominem. You have no objective basis for your narrative other than your personal beliefs.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks for with your evasion of the question and even switching to attacking me rather than actually arguing the point, confirming that ultimatelly your entire chain of trust is anchored on nothing more than the nation from where the information, comes rather than trust levels being the results of system analysis.

That's Nationalism not Rationalism, exactly the kind of shit that polutes most discussions about the Uyghur Genocide and ends up making people distrust most information about it in the West because the real and unbiased information is poluted and swamped by state-sponsored propaganda from the more heavilly Propagandistic Western nations being parroted by Nationalists who believe it because it comes from the "right" nations.

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Nationalism? You're really stretching there. I don't really get how that comes into here either. More ad hominem arguments, this time against me, won't convince me either.

Ultimately it's really simple to convince me. There is data. You want this data to not be true and you want to convince me that this data is not true. To convince me that this data is not true, your options are:
A) showing that the institution has on other occasions fabricated data. B) or showing that that report has been shown to contain fabricated data or used a flawed methodology.

You can do neither. All your arguments against it are purely ad hominem, against aspi, against the entirety of Australia, against the evil west with their freedom of expression, with also some whataboutism about Israel thrown in. But you have no actual arguments or any kind of proof whatsoever that that data is not real. You may not want it to be real, but it apparently is. Your unwillingness to accept facts that do not align with your beliefs is a you problem.