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by Traster 2249 days ago
You want me to be fastidious in my representation of his tweets, but you're okay citing this guy who is literally arguing literally just about headlines of articles. He's not linking to the articles and talking about them - he's literally taking headlines and even then he's misrepresenting them.

I'm fine talking about his qualifications, but I think it's unfair for you to talk about his biotech start up without talking about the fact that we're talking about a guy that basically wants to gut FDA regulations - regulations that, if they were in place in China, would have prevented this outbreak. And of course the fact that he was called out on that bullshit by... Vox media!

2 comments

> You want me to be fastidious in my representation of his tweets

I want you to be honest in addressing what you disagree with. That's it.

> this guy who is literally arguing literally just about headlines of articles.

That's just not true. He's dug into the contents of the articles both in podcasts and threads like this one (very near what I just shared): https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1228447960008183808

I think I gave a fair representation of what he was saying, if you disagree, you're welcome to actually point at something specific I said that you think doesn't represent him fairly but I can't address just general gripes.

So let's take your specific tweet here:

He claims recode said :

> "cases...have been contained to those who have recently traveled to Wuhan and their direct family members"

What recode actually said:

> "Public Health officials in the area have said there's currently a low risk to public health; the cases they say, have been contained to those who have recently traveled to Wuhan and their direct family members"

I don't want to accuse you of being disingenuous or what-not,but really? Pretending something is a direct claim of Vox, when actually it's a claim that they're reporting from public health officials in Silicon Valley is a dramatic mis-representation.

Ok, so let's lay aside what I think is mis-representation. The things that this tweeter seems to be claiming are counter points:

>"We're probably going to see human-to-human cases within the united states" Dr Robert Redfield said in an interview with stat.

A claim about the current situation within Silicon Valley cannot be countered with a forward looking statement about the entire US. It just can't. I just don't think this criticism is serious.

You can’t be serious claiming you are fairly representing his tweets. Your representation of what he said is a very poor strawman at best. Just as an example, you say Vox is reporting “factually” when the headline literally says “the tech industry is terrified of the coronavirus”. That’s very obviously not factual reporting.

That you’re accusing GP of being disingenuous and claiming the tweeter is strawmanning Vox while you’re strawmanning him to prove that point is just the cherry on top.

The tweeter is quite literally strawmanning Vox as he claims Vox is responsible for the coronavirus. That's a textbook definition of a strawman.

And now you appear to be strawmanning him in attempt to defend strawmanning.

The tweet’s original text is “Vox & Recode helped cause the greatest crisis in modern US history.”

That is very different from GGP’s interpretation “Vox is responsible for the coronavirus”.

All you provided is further proof that GGP is strawmanning. Thanks

No it's not. You're being intentionally pedantic here and seem to be ignoring the actual meaning of those words.

If I helped someone do something bad, then I bear some responsibility for the outcome. That is the definition of responsibility. What is your definition, considering it seems to differ from the dictionary definition?

It was also FDA regulations that made it impossible for the US to perform comprehensive testing early on.