A common tic among right-wingers and conspiracy theorists is to describe someone engaging in debate as "silencing debate" www.bmj.com/content/374/... - ThreadSky

michaelhobbes.bsky.social • 50 days ago

A common tic among right-wingers and conspiracy theorists is to describe someone engaging in debate as "silencing debate"
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656

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bensenhsu.bsky.social•50 days ago

Breakdown of the article:

The paper discusses the ongoing debate around the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease. For most of 2020, the idea that the virus may have originated from a lab in Wuhan, China was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. However, in early 2021...

dazerla.bsky.social•50 days ago

@alt-text.bsky.social

alt-text.bsky.social•50 days ago

Alt text retrieved

loudme.bsky.social•50 days ago

It’s crazy they never considered the conspiracy theory that they were weaponized to spread Covid-19. I guess the truth is stranger than fiction.

lunch-meat.bsky.social•50 days ago

Conspiracy nuts (especially right leaning ones) use rhetorical tricks and sophistry to run their whole gambit, namely in asking bad faith questions and then suggesting that they have a right to question and if you impede that (say, by answering their questions well) then you are rude and stupid

thewanderingturkey.com•50 days ago

Reactions are more valuable than substance.

At least, that’s what the ad-revenue-driven gamification of human interaction and communication has demonstrated.

jdelwiche.bsky.social•50 days ago

Similarly, in my area, expressing an opposing (progressive) viewpoint is characterized as “creating a chilling environment to stifle free speech.” No fair disagreeing, especially not with a cogent argument.

rowyourbot.bsky.social•50 days ago

Yes. This drives me nut. ‘I said something that someone disagreed with and you would not BELIEVE what they said back!’ This is a constant refrain. It’s a bunch of people who seem to think nobody should vehemently disagree with them.

chadfarrenburg.bsky.social•50 days ago

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say most white males in this country, especially in rural areas, never experience pushback. So they never expect it and are instantly affronted when someone doesn’t either agree with or silently accept their argument.

chadfarrenburg.bsky.social•50 days ago

Some of this is patriarchy, some of it is Midwestern “politeness”, a lot of it is the echo chamber most of them live in.

lromeranth.bsky.social•50 days ago

If you scrutinize these claims of being “silenced”—you too are labelled an enemy of Free Inquiry. Without a hint of self awareness.

lromeranth.bsky.social•50 days ago

Mirror argumentation all
the way down https://bsky.app/profile/lromeranth.bsky.social/post/3llm374hpss2p

rismith.bsky.social•50 days ago

"We think this is a possibility based on [random unconnected inferences]."

"This is why your evidence doesn't mean what you think it means."

steverocks35.bsky.social•50 days ago

They’re STILL on this lab leak bullshit? If you think about it for more than 1” seconds you can work out why it makes no fucking sense

ghostyspook.bsky.social•50 days ago

Zoonosis happens all the damned time

The lab leak folks just prefer to pretend that isn’t true for some reason? A lab leak always needed stronger evidence than the existence of a lab!

siezetheclay.bsky.social•50 days ago

The lab leak folks desperately need it to be true.

Human error is easier to live with than "there's a whole bunch of nasty viruses out there and just one could mutate and wipe out half of humanity in a short amount of time."

That stupidity makes it more likely to happen with the next one.

ghostyspook.bsky.social•50 days ago

This is why I want all of these people read a bare minimum of three books on viruses before commenting

caveatruptur.bsky.social•50 days ago

Maybe one book on statistics first?

siezetheclay.bsky.social•50 days ago

During the pandemic, I listened to audiobooks on the 1918 flu pandemic, a cholera outbreak in London in the 1850s and the Black Death/bubonic plague outbreak in Europe in the 14th century.

You'd think people would have gained some understanding by now. Alas...

agnoster.net•50 days ago

When you speak, you’re silencing debate

When we arrest and deport people for saying things we don’t like, we are free speech absolutists

jtunes6.bsky.social•50 days ago

Or, you are engaging in “cancel culture” because you are challenging me. 🤦‍♂️

climateofgavin.bsky.social•50 days ago

Thacker is appalling whether writing on climate, GMOs, or Covid. There’s no amount of interviewing or explanation that will divert him from his agenda.

al-bud.bsky.social•50 days ago

It's gaslighting as the conservative/liberal divide is basically people who are okay with abuse vs people who are not okay with abuse.

shallit.bsky.social•50 days ago

Thacker is a nutjob

mattbrignall.bsky.social•50 days ago

I dealt with this for years debating people in the alt med world. This is a way of poisoning the debate by pre-emptively painting it as an ad hominem attack. Not a good faith move, obviously

neverjaunty.bsky.social•50 days ago

I am old enough to remember when right-wingers sneered at about “silencing” and argued that the correct response was to “fight fire with fire” (more speech) and “grow a thicker skin”.

golmia.bsky.social•50 days ago

I feel no reluctance in silencing them. We have seen what they're about. What they're doing right now, I certainly will not forget.

roninspoon.bsky.social•50 days ago

Anyone, and I mean anyone, who demands “Debate me!” is neither interested in debate, nor will accept any evidence presented against their position.

swiffy.bsky.social•50 days ago

There were raging conspiracy theories at that time, like the film Plandemic. It was promoted by Alex Jones, Bannon, and other bad actors

goingonawalk.bsky.social•50 days ago

debate is when i say something and you tell me how smart i am

silkscreenfiend.bsky.social•50 days ago

That is such a strong point.

davidcorbett.bsky.social•50 days ago

brofessornick.bsky.social•50 days ago

Reaching a common consensus = silencing debate? 🤦

dogefort.bsky.social•50 days ago

Getting hit with arguments they cannot reasonably answer does not mean they've been silenced.

It's totally the opposite, a debate has been concluded and everyone had the opportunity to become smarter from experiencing it.

ilmariwalker.bsky.social•50 days ago

you see, everyone has a right to an opinion, and if you say my opinion is wrong, that’s infringing on My Right to have My Opinion.

alyssaroyse.bsky.social•50 days ago

I just got "you don't want to have a good-faith debate" from someone who bought a Tesla last week because of the cool tech, and didn't like being called out (by many) as supporting Musk. Like, dude, that's just a fact, whether you like it or not.

annabellelecter.bsky.social•50 days ago

Bill Maher and Gavin Newsome are cranks. Full stop

veganspacemanspiff.bsky.social•50 days ago

The trumpy right wing has exactly two forms of communication:
Projection
and
Lies.

jay-baller-reborn.bsky.social•50 days ago

They think lost debates are “censorship”

kidchemical.ca•50 days ago

An important part of being the faultless victims in absolutely every area of their lives, world without end, amen

eastsidegadfly.bsky.social•50 days ago

Pointing out a factual error is silencing debate!

sababausa.bsky.social•50 days ago

I absolutely hate how obvious it is that all this credit being handed to the lab leak hypothesis is basically affirmative action for right-wing bullshit

sababausa.bsky.social•50 days ago

It’s not the substance of the arguments that is causing this “reappraisal” of the lab leak hypothesis, it’s that right-wingers have bitched about it long enough that establishment institutions have just given in and decided to take it as an alternative hypothesis on equal standing with others

weirwoodtreehug.bsky.social•50 days ago

If the far right hadn't abandoned Q anon, there would probably be op-eds about how we should take it seriously in the mainstream media by now.

sababausa.bsky.social•50 days ago

And then we get another round of bog-standard scolding of expert consensus or debate among subject-matter experts as some sort of illiberal exclusion

catznjam.bsky.social•50 days ago

It was the same way with tobacco, with gun legislation, with climate change - there was a preponderance of evidence, and it was either denied or covered up or spun as just another opinion - they weren't just opinions, they were based on observable statistics and scientific evidence.

sababausa.bsky.social•50 days ago

Mike Pence was a tobacco truther *in this century*

https://bsky.app/profile/sababausa.bsky.social/post/3ljgbeb2uhk2h

otherworldlygayz.bsky.social•50 days ago

wow. i'm a little stunned i hadn't heard about this before.

jeninmotion.bsky.social•50 days ago

They think push back and good debate silences them and that's why never take them seriously

annabellelecter.bsky.social•50 days ago

Have you tried sprinkling Vitamin A into the discussion?

jeninmotion.bsky.social•50 days ago

Tfw RFK Jr is gonna give a kid Vitamin A toxicity

annabellelecter.bsky.social•50 days ago

It's the 'choose your poison' presidency.

annabellelecter.bsky.social•50 days ago

I'm a fan of whale oil, myself.

realannemarie1.bsky.social•50 days ago

Many right-wingers typically come out of high school debate that rewards yelling, rhetorical fallacies, and true facts aren't required. That's why they are the most annoying in college classes. Then to Fox, social media, podcasts, and now the federal government.

sughrue.bsky.social•50 days ago

Seriously! Someone disagreeing with a right-wing or even just expressing a different view is called “cancel culture”, and too many folks buy this framing.

joho.bsky.social•50 days ago

Discussed here. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/muzzled/

catznjam.bsky.social•50 days ago

They debate? That's news to me, all I usually see is personal attacks, slurs and insults bc they don't have a winning position in any debate and they know it - if they don't know it, they're too ignorant to govern.

goaskalis.bsky.social•50 days ago

I get so fucking sick of it. The lying, the bad-faith assholes, the blatant payola. So fucking sick and tired

darrelplant.bsky.social•50 days ago

Debate me, bro. No, not like that.

housano.bsky.social•50 days ago

It's why it's not worth it to debate those imbeciles. As Brandolinj's law states “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

debschwartz.bsky.social•50 days ago

Dear @michaelhobbes.bsky.social sir, really enjoy your work, please add alt-text to to your screenshots so everyone can appreciate them.

urban-achiever.bsky.social•50 days ago

And more specifically it's when they are losing their side of the debate that they retreat into this canard.

wisko.bsky.social•50 days ago

This is just like when the head librarian at my local library said ‘you can’t bring tacos in here’, silencing any debate

fairbanb.bsky.social•50 days ago

And winning a debate is censorship.

heptaglemious.bsky.social•50 days ago

This very annoying piece ignores the fact that lab leak conspiracism predates *any* credible data on origin beyond the early case plots. It was an a priori assumption.

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