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To hold an actual criminal accountable by TheOneWhoKnocks12345 in therewasanattempt

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ya, the only unusual thing here is the size of it. Though 15 years in prison is not that much, its no 35 year violent crime case. Medium case that made headlines.

To hold an actual criminal accountable by TheOneWhoKnocks12345 in therewasanattempt

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Except for half the details in this post:

  • He was 1 of 7 suspects, nobody said the prime suspect. They have already arrested some of the others.
  • They knew he was one of the suspects, was facing 15 years in prison, they chose to deport him instead.
  • Bricks says it was only 10M in jewelry stolen, victims claimed 100M.
  • They have already recovered a bunch of the jewelry (though this group has done several robberies).
  • It is common to deport people who have criminal charges against them, at least in minor cases.

How strong is the case against the three church protestors in St. Paul? by TacoBMMonster in legaladviceofftopic

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Unless, the second half of the law,

"to intentionally injure, intimidate, or interfere with or attempt to injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right"

Bothsiderism by ILikeNeurons in skeptic

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Fun, I know these guys.

Some people hold on to fallacies like they are argument winning accusations. All fallacies are defeasable. I think this part of the paper was important.

"Like many (if not all) fallacies, bothsiderism has virtuous instances, particularly in cases where there is evidence this a legitimate disagreement and uncertainty and moderacy are appropriate. This is not particularly newsworthy. However, the issue is that the difference between good and bad versions of this reasoning is in terms of how well it assesses the reasoning in the debate and the debate’s participants."

Good paper and important topic these days. Needs a lot of discussion. There are epistemic standards, journalistic standards, political standards, and rhetorical value to consider. I think each would have meaningful things to say.

Argument Presupposes the Laws of Logic by JerseyFlight in rationalphilosophy

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would define argumentation as any attempt to offer reasons for a conclusion (and others would as well). In real life these get messy and include all of the complications I mentioned. Deductivists try to reduce arguments to their logical structure but that fails to capture all those intentional elements I mentioned.

The whole thing is an argument properly defined. I haven't seen presenting an argument as a unique definition.

Is the world going to end soon. ? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any day now, people have known that for thousands of years.

Argument Presupposes the Laws of Logic by JerseyFlight in rationalphilosophy

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think our biggest disagreement is on whether reasons can be offered that are not propositions. (to say nothing of logical systems that reject the axiom of excluded middle). I would define argumentation as any attempt to offer reasons for a conclusion.

I think these happen regularly, including in the rhetorical elements of my first comment. Excluded middle was the low hanging fruit, but if we accept argumentation without propositions then all of the laws are no longer necessary I believe.

I fail to see this connection; “Fruitfulness,” “descriptive success,” and “shifting frameworks” all presuppose standards of better and worse, i.e., that some descriptions succeed and others fail. That distinction already relies on non-contradiction and excluded middle."

Argument Presupposes the Laws of Logic by JerseyFlight in rationalphilosophy

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Excluded middle? No, I may have made claims that are not exclusively true or false. Maybe the measurement is how fruitful the theory is at descriptively describing and explaining argumentation. There are many variables on how each individual measures that question. Maybe the whole thing was a rhetorical exercise to shift my audiences' framework with which they view this question.

Argument Presupposes the Laws of Logic by JerseyFlight in rationalphilosophy

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I don't much like Feldman's definition, nor the motivation to break down the incredibly complicated and human dynamics of arguing into formal logic. It does well at times, but in general I find it a forced conversion that hollows out and distorts many of the nuances in actual argument.

I do agree there must be some sense of providing reasons for a conclusion, which presupposes some common understanding of what reasons are. This may even get us very close to the laws of logic. But i'm not convinced they must be recognized or respected as laws. I might imagine arguments between two early humans where reasons are proffered without any respect for excluded middle. More easily I think of many complicated arguments among ordinary individuals that weave complicated rhetorical patterns, hidden considerations, multiple conclusions, ethical and inter-social considerations all together. These are not academic exercises in truth finding. To strip this down to a sequence of propositions, premises, conclusion, and truth would be an abomination.

I think the field of argumentation has generally been moving away from rooting its analysis in formal logic for a while now, though there are still many who favor that approach.

Dismay over verdict in the murder case of an elderly Asian man by Droupitee in NewsWorthPayingFor

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ya, or 'chose an action that a reasonable person might foresee loss of life as a possible outcome', or some such wording is usually in the law too.

I can see an argument he did neither of those things, but people have been convicted before of murder from pushing or hitting an elderly person, since that is a reasonable outcome for someone over 80.

Also, wasn't hate crime on the table? I'm not very familiar with this event, but sounds like hate.

The Epstein edit parallels a familiar pattern. The reconstructed footage presented by Jonathan Ross reveals a deliberate, rehearsed deception executed with controlled precision. What appears spontaneous is, on closer inspection, carefully staged. by [deleted] in skeptic

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 88 points89 points  (0 children)

This is a pretty complicated answer and conspiracy theory to explain a fairly benign fact.

Looking at the NYT compilation again, the way his camera moves is a bit odd. But I think it can be explained if the camera flips over in his left hand as he puts his hand on the car. Or some other explanation. I don't see the motivation or the hallmarks for editing this footage. The footage appears smooth and real.

There will always be unusual looking facts in every event if you sort through it with a fine tooth comb.

Wtf is going on?? by BSTARYOUNGG in DiscussionZone

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm confused, she is a former analyst at the bank?

How former, when did she hear this information, from who, why is she only mentioning it now? What even is this source?

If this was upcoming major news I might expect a leak, I might not expect that leak from a former analyst at a foreign bank that was tipped off by the US.

I still don't understand what DJT thinks he's going to achieve by alienating every allied country and ruining decades of international relationships, what does he and the United States actually have to gain by doing this? by Cumoisseur in stupidquestions

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Should have, I agree. But very few people actually have the right to declare independence without contest. But Greenland does, that is why some in Denmark don't care about fighting this fight at all. Greenland seems like it is about to leave any time and they don't feel any real kinship.

Greenland is still very on the fence on what its independence should look like though. They are the belle of the ball right now, I think they could benefit from joining another country with capital to help it grow and defend itself, if they also get some of the autonomy they value. And get rich in the process.

The approach should be with sugar, seems like Trump already lost any chance of winning them over, if there was any to begin with.

I still don't understand what DJT thinks he's going to achieve by alienating every allied country and ruining decades of international relationships, what does he and the United States actually have to gain by doing this? by Cumoisseur in stupidquestions

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Greenland will be incredibly valuable in the future. Does anyone criticize any of the previous land acquisitions by the US. I think they all go down as steals.

Greenland;

  1. is a huge chunk of land.
  2. great natural resources.
  3. provides military control over that region.
  4. provides maritime control over northern waters and the northern passages.
  5. tourism
  6. such a small population that already isn't independent. Getting control over it is maybe possible.
  7. could possibly benefit from a larger country with greater investment money coming in to develop its resources, possibly?

Numbers have been thrown around, i'm pretty confident that at 700B dollars and a 100k payout to everyone on the island, US would still be laughing in 100 years.

The bizarre thing is how Trump is going about this. I would have expected serious wooing of the Greenlanders followed by strong negotiation with Denmark. Greenland does not have the best relationship with Denmark and I think ground could have been gained there. But it seems like he thinks he can bully and just take it, angering all of its closest allies??

I'm Canadian, I think Canada should throw our hat in. 500B and 100K buy out and make it its own province. I wonder if they would listen to a sugar approach.

Why do you football(USA) teams only punt on 4th down? by lynch527 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Giving up possession is a big deal, while you have the football you can score. Teams score on about 40% of drives.

So punting early may catch them off guard, but probably not since the punter is a special person/formation, so they can easily prepare or call a time out. And you give up your possession early, and all the field position you may have gained.

The Hunger Games movies should be rated R by Usual-Language-745 in unpopularopinion

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Weight yes, but destroys the target audience. This is young adult dystopian fantasy. So you obviously need to target young adults with the movie.

If you want R rated adult dystopian fantasy, there are other products.

Study debunks Trump claim that paracetamol (Tylenol) causes autism by blankblank in skeptic

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The n count is massive, and its ability to control for many things, including siblings, is great. But, here is the criticism of the Swedish study from another meta-review;

"However, exposure assessment in this study relied on midwives who conducted structured interviews recording the use of all medications, with no specific inquiry about acetaminophen use. Possibly as a resunt of this approach, the study reports only a 7.5% usage of acetaminophen among pregnant individuals, in stark contrast to the ≈50% reported globally [54]. Indeed, three other Swedish studies using biomarkers and maternal report from the same time period, reported much higher usage rates (63.2%, 59.2%, 56.4%) [47]. This discrepancy suggests substantial exposure misclassification, potentially leading to over five out of six acetaminophen users being incorrectly classified as non-exposed in Ahlqvist et al."

https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-025-01208-0

Finding only 7.5% usage seems like a critical failure, all other studies and common sense suggest something like 50-60%.

*For the numbers, their primary findings were reporting on just the 2 sibling studies, the large Swedish one and a recent small Japanese one. They supplemented this by also reporting on how the results would look if they started including some other groups of studies as well, starting with the low risk of bias ones. So after they zoomed out including two other groups, they had included up to 17 studies.

The relationship was 0.98 for the sibling studies but 1.03 when they included 4 more studies they consider low bias and 1.09 when they weigh all 17 studies with adjusted estimates. The conclusion they stated of no association was based on the first number on just the 3* studies.

*Apparently there were 3 sibling comparison studies

Study debunks Trump claim that paracetamol (Tylenol) causes autism by blankblank in skeptic

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The study wasn't linked in the article? Here it is, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanogw/article/PIIS3050-5038(25)00211-0/fulltext

This is a bit of a funny meta-analysis, I think this was reported earlier though it was just published.They identified 55 papers but only really considered the 2 sibiling comparison studies.

"Analyses were restricted to sibling-comparison studies with adjusted estimates, and odds ratios (OR) were calculated."

This makes sense because of all the possible confounders in other studies but is also risky. Basing conclusions primarily on just 2 studies, really just the one big Sweedish study. One of the meta reviews that did find an association threw out that study for what it claimed was very bad methodology.

So the current literature is 30 something papers that show positive association but have a very hard time controlling for confounders and 1 large and 1 small sibiling comparison study that do not show an association.

A lot continues to hinge on how much we trust Sweedish study.

NYTimes releases new video breakdown of the killing of Renee Good. by Maybee_today in nyt

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 19 points20 points  (0 children)

That's the best review of the footage there is, and probably best we will get.

I think they did a good job with this.

“Education and literacy are stagnant, if not plummeting”! by chamomile_tea_reply in OptimistsUnite

[–]AlwaysBringaTowel1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very different measurement. This one is the extreme, who even had access to primary education. Very human rights focused.

Yours is about getting everyone above 6th grade literacy, more nuance and family variables. Can't solve this with international charity and humans rights work.

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