There are definitely similarities, but China has its own fascinating history there, with a lot of traditional beliefs resurfacing as weird, sanctioned versions of themselves after the cultural revolution had mostly suppressed them.

I think you’ve got it backwards. One of the lesser known, positive parts of the Cultural Revolution (which was primarily a horrible clusterfuck) was the Barefoot Doctors program, in which medical students were fast-tracked in education and sent out to the rural regions of China, which had never before had access to modern medicine. It was a very basic level of care, but it increased the number of doctors per person tenfold in the span of five years, and access to vaccines had a significant impact, increasing life-expectancy and reducing child mortality. However, because medical supplies in those regions were limited (and the scale of the program), the doctors were instructed to supplement care with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This allowed the program to be rolled out more quickly, and the partial reliance on TCM may have helped with public acceptance (since it was what they already believed in), but it had an unfortunate side effect that it legitimized TCM.

This program was phased out in the 80’s with China’s broader economic shift, towards privatization, while also moving away from TCM. The new policies made care less accessible and focused more on curing serious ailments rather than preventative care. China has made some efforts to address these issues, though I’m not well informed enough about their current system to weigh in.

A lot of the modern popularity of TCM likely comes from the time of the Barefoot Doctors program, because people remember their quality of life improving during that time and then declining later when the focus was shifted away from TCM, incorrectly attributing it to TCM’s effectiveness rather than the accessibility of care and focus on prevention. Which is to say, many of the people who believe in TCM may actually be nostalgic for the healthcare system implemented during the Cultural Revolution.

No “only” but primarily. Domestic billionaires are the primary enemy, they’re the ones who directly benefit from making things like rent and healthcare more expensive, they’re the ones who benefit from keeping unions weak and disorganized, they’re the ones who benefit from mass surveillance and the police state. Foreign billionaires might benefit from doing those things in their own countries, but for the most part we have more to fear from our own rich people than from other countries’ rich people.

Whataboutism.

It’s always foreigners, isn’t it? What about the domestic private money flooding US politics? What, because they’re American billionaires, it’s fine?

Troll.

I’d just like to remind you that I started out trying to have an intelligent, civil conversation. Sorry you were too dumb to keep up. Sad that this is all you’ve got, I genuinely pity you.

That’s not how logic works, dumbass. That’s not a thing. If you want to apply my standard, you have to apply it consistently.

What you’re probably trying to do, very badly, is a reductio ad absurdum, where you show that accepting my position would lead to an absurd or self-contradictory conclusion. The problem is that my position doesn’t lead to any absurd conclusions, so what you’ve done is assume my position, and then assume the opposite of my position in the same line of logic. Naturally, if you assume self-contradictory positions, then the result will be absurd, but that doesn’t prove anything except that you don’t understand how logic works. It’s not self-contradiction if you have to flip back and forth between your standard and mine to get there.

But then, of course you don’t understand logic because you operate on blind faith.

Let me dumb this down to your level.

“Double” is a word for when you have two of something.

You use one standard when looking at whether the media is lying.

You use another standard when looking at whether I’m lying.

1+1=2

So, you’re using a double standard.

That means that your logic is complete bullshit. End of story.

A child could understand this. If you can’t, you’re either brain damaged or trolling.

Again, you’re literally flipping the standard halfway through your chain of “reasoning” 🤣 You don’t get to apply your absurdly generous standard to them and my reasonable standard to me, that’s not how logic works. You have to either be reasonable in both cases or be absurdly generous in both cases.

It doesn’t really matter how much reason or evidence I present to you, can’t argue with blind faith. It seems you’re not only unwilling to reason and think critically, but unable to.

I weep for our education system. I suppose it’s achieved it’s objective of producing an unquestioningly loyal subject incapable of thinking for yourself or reasoning independently, following whatever your told. You must be an American, because only my countrymen are this confidently stupid.

That’s so obviously a double standard. Apply my rules to both cases, and the media is lying, which means I’m telling the truth. Apply your rules in both cases, and the media isn’t lying, and neither am I. The only possible way you can get to me being a liar is if you apply a more favorable standard to the media, and switch to a more unfavorable standard with me. It’s literally the textbook definition of a double standard.

Your bias is so obvious, and it’s also really fucking stupid. These people are not your friends. You’re no different from people who go around stanning billionaires, against all sense and reason.

No, I presented plenty of evidence. The problem is that you consider anything short of 100% to mean 0% (only when it comes to the media, ofc). Like, you’re expecting me to be able to prove it in a court of law, but obviously there are a lot of things that are true where the evidence doesn’t meet that standard. Even in a court setting, there are situations where they’d be concerned with standards like “more likely than not” or “reasonable cause to believe” rather than the standard you’re applying of, “beyond any reasonable doubt,” for example, if I shot someone in self defense, I wouldn’t have to prove “beyond any reasonable doubt” that they were trying to kill me, only that I had probable cause to believe that was the case. “Beyond any reasonable doubt” is only the standard for a conviction because the state’s monopoly on violence creates a special danger for abuse, and because the state has special abilities and privileges that allow it to conduct investigations, beyond what a private citizen could. To hold private citizens to that standard as a requirement for their beliefs to be considered rational is completely and utterly insane.

I definitely have good reason to believe that the media lies, and I have presented plenty of evidence and arguments to that effect. What I can’t do is present evidence like a signed confession, which obviously would never exist regardless of whether they’re lying or not. If you want to come back down to earth, stop having blind faith in the media, and actually engage with the evidence I have presented, then we can have a discussion. I highly doubt that you have any interest in doing so, in fact, I’m sure that if I had presented the signed confession you’re demanding, you’d dismiss it, move the goalposts, and say it was just an isolated incident. Because you prefer the comfort of your faith over facing the reality the evidence shows.

And there’s the double standard, plain as day. To call me a liar, you would need to prove not only that I said something false, but also that I had knowledge and intent that it was false. Short of a signed confession, you cannot call me a liar, because it’s impossible for you to read my mind. Perhaps I thought there was proof when there wasn’t. Isn’t that what you’re saying is true of the media, for example, with the fake news story the NYT put out? If anyone’s a liar here, it’s you, for accusing me of lying when you can’t meet your own standard of evidence for making that claim.

There’s no point in reasoning with you any more than there is in reasoning with any other religious fanatic operating on blind faith and refusing to apply reason, skepticism, and critical thinking. You’ve simply chosen a worse God to worship.

I have. I just can’t meet an impossible standard of evidence that you’re obviously selectively applying in order to exclude evidence that you want to pretend doesn’t exist.

I don’t know, but it definitely seems like it.

So, are you admitting you can’t actually find a single lie told by Vladimir Putin?

Where are you getting this, “seems like” he lies and “seems like” journalists care about truth and fact checking? Exactly the same number of “lies” have been produced for each in this conversation. I mean, I did link to a fake news story from the NYT but that doesn’t count because I didn’t break into their offices and find a signed confession.

You set an impossibly high standard for proof in the one case, but “seems like” is enough in the other, you’re operating off pure vibes, or more accurately, your own bias and preconceptions, with zero critical thought.

But sure, I stand corrected, they didn’t “lie” in those cases (since basically nobody ever lies, by your absurd standard), they just published blatant falsehoods at just the right time to advance their interests, then suddenly realized their “mistakes” as soon as what they wanted to happen happened.

Jesus loves me The media is reliable, this I know, for the Bible media tells me so. Blind faith rivaling any Bible-thumper.

Ridiculous double standard. Has Putin ever lied, once in his life? Yes or no please, and be prepared to meet your own standard of evidence.

Do you think they’re so incompetent as to leave evidence laying around that they had advance knowledge? I wonder, if that’s the bar you set for US media, do you also set the bar there for, say, Chinese media? If Chinese state media publishes something that’s untrue, would you dispute someone calling it a lie if you didn’t have access to some official document openly confessing to advance knowledge? Even if such records did exist, it’s not as if I, a private citizen, could get a warrant to raid their offices for it. You’re setting the standard unreasonably high, you’re just trying to shut down reasonable skepticism and legitimate criticism in favor of blind trust. I mean, what kind of idiot would write down “I know this story is false but I want you to publish it anyway,” and then leave it lying around where someone could find it, when there’s absolutely no reason to?

Here is an Intercept article about the fake news story published by the NYT to justify Israeli aggression in Gaza.

You’re saying the media knowingly made up stories because they wanted to trick the US into going to war in Vietnam? What specific examples do you have of that?

That’s not what I said at all. The US government wanted to go to war with Vietnam, the media simply wanted to win favor with the government and sell papers.

Were you aware that, in the aftermath of the Kent State Massacre, the vast majority of Americans placed more blame on the students for getting shot than on the National Guard for shooting them? Were you aware that, leading up to the shooting, there were all kinds of fake news stories on TV about how, for example, the protesters were putting LSD into the water supply? Stories that they conveniently retracted, after the moment had passed and the chance for a backlash was gone?

Anyway, the fact that they lie frequently isn’t even the main point. The main currency of propaganda is not lies, it’s emphasis. Biased framing and leading language are perfectly capable of shaping public opinion towards their agenda. Historical events that would justify or explain hostile actions of other countries are very rarely deemed relevant, and the same with internal politics that might show that only certain factions supported it. Our own crimes and acts of aggression are downplayed or ignored, so that when the other side retaliates, it seems to come out of nowhere.

For example, the 1953 coup in Iran, which was conducted by the CIA and successfully covered up for decades, demonstrates that even if Iran had a peaceful, democratic government, it would still likely be subject to US aggression so long as they tried to assert control over their own oil. The breakdown of relations in the 1979 revolution occurred when the revolutionaries took hostages at the US embassy, but what provoked that action was the US granting refuge to the deposed shah - the very same man who they had previously installed as a dictator in 1953. I think both of those events are very important to understanding US-Iranian relations, but you won’t hear the news mention them, the hostage crisis is always presented as this unprovoked act of aggression.

This is just basic media literacy, really. You should always be skeptical and aware of bias and conflicts of interests with anything you read. Unfortunately, there’s a tendency some people have to put certain sources on a pedestal as if critical thinking and skepticism isn’t necessary when reading them.

Your source says a peak of 86%, Gallup got 90% but either way it was an overwhelming majority.

The media told all sorts of lies to justify the war in Iraq, more recently, the New York Times published a false story about Hamas committing mass rape, if you want to go further back they lied to get us into Vietnam, and in every case it takes time for the lies to be exposed and by the time they are, fewer people see the retractions and it’s usually too late to do anything about it anyway. Even when they aren’t lying, they’re using biased language and framing to push their agenda, and their agenda is, as I said, always pro-war, because war sells papers and if they’re hostile to the White House (especially with Trump in there) then they’ll get press passes revoked and won’t be privy to information they would otherwise receive. Never in my life have I seen widespread media condemnation of any military action (unless you count the withdrawal from Afghanistan), and I believe you’ll see the same thing if you look in the past, in conflicts like Vietnam. When Trump launched an unprovoked missile strike on Syria, during his first term, these people jumped over each other to praise him, to say that “that was the moment he became presidential,” even publications that had been very critical of him before.

None of the media people (just like none of the politicians) were ever held accountable in any way for lying the public into a war, which set a clear precedent that they can do so freely going forward. Worse yet, it’s often the very same people in similar positions of power. If you think that they’re trustworthy and not biased, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

60+%

It was 90%. Only 10% of Americans were capable of resisting the massive propaganda apparatus that manufactures consent at the start of every war of aggression. Vietnam was also very popular at the start.

But you are right that he’s doing this without a strong justification. From what I’ve seen, mainstream media is still on his side, they love war, great for business. Whether enough Americans have learned anything from the disaster of the War on Terror to make any sort of lasting dent in the number capable of resisting propaganda remains to be seen, you’d think Vietnam would have but it’s always “different this time,” and people are frequently “anti-war, except the current one.”

The US has a freebie wildcard to bomb anyone anyway.

Alright, you know, if you won’t use reason, then whatever your faith tells you I guess.

OK, so returning to the original point, if you agree that our senses our subjective, then the difference between a scientist reading a scale and me remembering whether I turned the oven on is just a matter of the degree of reliability, and both are evidence-based.